‘FIGURATIVE representation is forbidden in Islam’, as pointed out by Farida Batool in her book, Figure, the Popular and the Political in Pakistan.
The book is Farida Batool’s research work on the topic of figurative art as practised in the Muslim society of Pakistan with particular reference to Punjab. She has selected two areas of popular culture for her research, the first being the one dominated by religion such as sufi shrines and the Imambargahs. The other is the domain of secular popular culture represented by film posters and billboards. Both these areas, as probed in by Farida Batool, appear completely indifferent to the Mullahs’ verdict forbidding figurative representation.
But how is it that though there is no Quranic injunction in this respect, the notion that figurative representation is forbidden in Islam travelled through centuries of Muslim history and came to stay as an article of faith with the Muslims in general? Farida Batool is perhaps not very clear on this point. But to my good luck, just when during my study of Batool’s book I was confronted with this question, I received KK Aziz’s voluminous work, The Meaning of Islamic Art, which has just been published by Al-Faisal, Urdu Bazar, Lahore. By the way, with the receipt of this book I got the sad news that KK Aziz was seriously ill and is, at the moment, lying in hospital. We should hope that in time publication of this work, which is the outcome of twenty-four years of research on the subject, will bring him back to full health.
The book, in two big volumes, is spread over twelve hundred pages. Being a lazy reader I will take time to go through it. But I was in a hurry to know about his findings on the question under discussion. And here it is.
“There is” he says “absolutely no prohibition of representation of figures or of painting or even of idol making in the Quran”.
The reference to any Hadith in this respect will not convince him. The reason he tells us is that “the sayings of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) were fabricated on such a large and unscrupulous scale that every possible kind of religious or social commandment can be, and has been, laid down on their authority.”
“I think” he says, “the alleged prohibition was rooted, neither in the Quran nor in any Hadith, but in the social and mental make-up and group culture of the Arabs of the first two or three centuries of Islam. It is a well-known fact that the various law-makers of classical Islam mirrored the views and opinions prevalent in the societies of Madina and Kufa rather than the doctrines and teachings of Islam... The law-givers needed Prophetic support to justify their interpretation. The tradition collectors supplied the required support.”
As for the views prevalent in the societies of those times KK Aziz says: “The Arab society of the Prophet’s (pbuh) time and for about two hundred years after him was not highly developed in the field of culture. People could not easily grasp the difference between a living creature and its representation. The image was believed to be identical with the archetype, and therefore its maker was credited with the power to create life like, if not living, objects. A more detached consciousness of painting and with it an appreciation of figural representation were alien to that society. It had no instinct and no gifts for pictorial or plastic art.”
As far as Pakistan is concerned, Farida Batool traces the anti-figure campaign to the times of Ziaul Haq when the dictatorial regime showed antipathy towards figurative art and offered patronage to calligraphy treating it as “the only creative medium suitable for an Islamic society”. The significant turning point, according to her, was the attack by a group of zealots on the exhibition of Colin David’s figurative paintings privately arranged at his residence. However, for her information, the first to bear the brunt of anger of these zealots was the exhibition of Sadeqain’s figurative paintings held in the Punjab Art Council. And it did serve as a turning point as far as Sadeqain is concerned as after this attack he concentrated more on calligraphy than on figurative paintings.
Farida has read too much in Ziaul Haq’s action, in his antipathy towards figurative art and in his extending state patronage to calligraphy. This, according to her, was not simply an attempt to reduce the collective heritage of the country to only one single form of creative expression. More than that, “it affected women directly as being the central focus of the upcoming ordinances”. She finds it very meaningful that the time of the emergence of the ‘infamous symbol’ of Chadar Aur Chardivari coincided with the promotion of calligraphy to the status of the sole official art of Pakistan. She had discovered some hidden relationship between the two but has not been able to explain this relationship in a convincing way.
‘FIGURATIVE representation is forbidden in Islam’, as pointed out by Farida Batool in her book, Figure, the Popular and the Political in Pakistan.
