Meredith Johns
"There is no moving creature on earth whose provision is not guaranteed by Allah. And He knows where it lives and where it is laid to rest." (Qur'an 11:6)
"Even then your hearts became hardened like a rock or even harder, for some rocks gush rivers; others split, spilling water; while others are humbled in awe of Allah. And Allah is never unaware of what you do." (Qur'an 2:74)
In my calligram project, I wanted to focus on the notion of "tawḥīd," or the oneness or unity of God, which is manifest in many Muslim rituals and the foundation of many Islamic doctrines. I was interested, in part, because of my questions about the development of "oneness" in the English language, and our course's discussions of the problems of translating the Qur'an, or other Islamic texts, from Arabic into other languages. In my previous research, I have focused on Christian Middle English devotional texts, and the emergence of God's ability to, in nascent English, "one" as a verb, meaning something close to "to join." God, in this power, is able to accept and enclose entities that might be considered outside of Himself, within Himself. While this is an interest that began outside of this course, I am particularly interested in the Islamic relationship to tawḥīd, and its praxis through the shahādah. What can this unified nature of God, so essential as to be the first of Five (or Seven) Pillars of Islam, teach us about the relationship between the human and the divine in Islam?
For my artistic representation, or calligram, of "Allah," I turned to nature, because of the all-encompassing unity of Allah, and the lesson, from the Qur'an (11:6) that earth itself, all "moving creatures," are connected to God. I collected these rocks on several contemplative walks, since this past August, around Cambridge—usually starting where I live in Winthrop House, along the Charles River. I am inspired by the creative potential which the Qur'an locates in rocks (2:74). Even these non-moving, non-breathing, famously-non-emotive entities find animation in, and devotion to, Allah. I was struck by calligrams of "Allah," which were highly geometric—all straight lines and black and white, which seem to introduce order, making a kind of easily identifiable oneness out of the chaos of life. I wanted to explore that possibility in my own representation. I placed my calligram against a black stone background, to harness some of this contrast, simplicity, and uniformity. When deciding how to photograph my calligram, I experimented with "flash" photography lighting, and I found this bright center to evoke Allah's presence of light—and one of Allah's names, "an-Nur." On another level, it is only possible to see the rocks, for them to be recognizable as one design or name of "Allah," when the light is present, reflecting the necessity of, and the inextricable majesty and beauty, of the oneness of Allah.
