Jeromel Dela Rosa Lara
For Muslims, reality is about Allah. God is everywhere. Our lives and the world are a reminder of God’s creation, mercy, and compassion.
During my Spring Semester study abroad program in Jordan, I had the honor of living with a Palestinian Muslim host family. As a Christian, I specifically indicated to my study abroad program that I want to be in a Muslim-practicing family. I embrace an interfaith life where we value people’s religious and spiritual experiences. With my host family, we’ve had many conversations on these topics. And I had the honor of celebrating Ramadan with them.
This calligram was inspired by a story that my host family shared with me during Ramadan 2022. Talking about Allah, my host family shared with me how God is present everywhere and that Muslims engage in ritual practices like fasting and prayer to remind themselves about this. They told me to look at the palm of my hands, how the left hand has the marks ٨١ and the right hand has the marks ١٨. Those are Arabic numbers that stand for 81 and 18. If you add them together, you get 99, which stands for the 99 names of God, the Al-Asma Al Husna الأسماء الحسنى. Reminders about God’s presence is everywhere in nature, including our own hands. And even those hands bear with them the resemblance of the word Allah. This is what I am depicting in my calligram where nature such as the human hand reveals the presence of God.
I extend this further by including all the 99 names of God around the human hands in this calligram. There are verses in the Qur’an that talk about how God revealed these names to the first humans––Adam and Eve. This calligram depicts that moment of revelation for the primordial human being. The first humans looking at the palm of their hands, seeing the mark of their creator who then tells them all about the names and attributes of God. This revelation we can relate to today as Muslims and Christians believe that they inhabit a world that God has created. Hands don’t only symbolize humankind’s power but the ultimate source of power that, for Muslims and Christians, comes from Allah, God.
