The Narrative of Resistence
(No Paradise in Sight)

 

44th AICA Congress, Asunción, Paraguay, 18.10.11

 

 

 

 

How did Islam and Terrorism get so deeply intertwined in the narrative of Terrorism in the mainstream media is an interesting story of engineered rhetoric in which words like crusades, jihad, ‘God is on our side’, Axis of Evil etc were used for emotive responses. In the beginning, this knee jerk reaction may have come from the political leaders of the US faced with the attacks of 9/11, but after ten years and two catastrophic wars, the fact that Islam is still in the forefront of this debate and has created a serious a trust deficit between the followers of the world’s two major religions and heightened anxieties around the world.

Tarek Fateh, in his widely read book Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, observes :

“ The Right ( in the West) is all too quick to see fundamentalism as culturally determined or grounded in a distinctness of Islamic ‘civilization’ as opposed to a Western , rationalist one. The Left, on its part has been wedded to an economically determined notion of exploitation via globalization and underdevelopment, to explain recent events”. 1

According to Tariq Ali, the well known author and social commentator “ Symbiotic and perfidious relationships between many Islamic groups were spawned and indulged by CIA and Imperialism ….for decades the United States had clandestinely helped jihadi groups squash pro-communist and nationalist Muslims inside the Muslim world . By the end of the 1970s, this covert practice was visible and US had become a covert supporter of international Jihad”. 2

In the last ten years researchers and commentators, and Wikileaks documents, all point to a complex architecture of espionage built and patronized by neo- imperialists makes the claims of Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, seem simplistic and uni-dimensional.

My paper focuses on the emergence of a new discursive framework that addresses the ideological crisis within Pakistan created by the country’s geographical proximity to the Afghan War and its role as the training ground for the Mujahideen during the Anti-Soviet War in Afghanistan.

This discourse is centered round moderate voices that espouse a personal and reformist Islam as opposed to the exclusivist and violent version created by extremists and un-questioningly picked up by the global media. As the mainstay of the War on Terror rhetoric, this has had an international implication that has turned a political confrontation into a religious one.

Interventions by artists and art critics to re-contextualize Islam have taken place at a particularly difficult and dangerous time for despite the repressive environment they understand the urgency to turn the tide of politicization and militant-ization of Islam with an alternative narrative that represents the views of the peaceful majority.

Pakistan, which was founded almost 65 years on the fault lines of tension between conservative religious groups and the moderate Muslim population of the Indian Sub-Continent. The independence of the new country was opposed by the leading seminaries for they distrusted Jinnah, who as a secularist lawyer envisioned a modern Pakistan. Most importantly they feared being relegated to the political fringe.

Their fears were realized when the biggest political party with a religious agenda, Jamat-e-Islami, was never accepted for a political role by Pakistanis and continued to be rejected at the ballot box till the 1980s.

The popular verdict of the Pakistani voter was discarded in 1980s when the frustrated zealots of Jamat-e- Islami got an advantage during the Anti-Soviet Afghan War. This was when the Western Powers entrusted them with the task of creating the Mujahideen or religious army, which was the ideological genesis of Al Qaida and Taliban.

Throughout the 1980s when Pakistanis suffered under the extremely repressive regime of dictator Ziaul Haq, who connived with Western powers against his people and empowered Jamat-e- Islami to open jihadi madrassas (schools with emphasis on a curricula based on orthodox teachings ) to create nurseries for the Mujahideen.

This historical chapter is aptly documented in the film Charlie Wilson’s War, A bi-product of this intervention which is lesser known is how the forced introduction of the orthodox interpretation of Islam through the national school curricula, a parallel religious judiciary (Federal Shariat Court) and religion based constitutional amendments undermined human rights. Not only did this alienate the population from its cultural moorings but the large scale infiltration of arms, fractured the nation with violence.

The religious fundamentalism used by Ziaul Haq as a tool to entrench his power was rejected and actively resisted by writers, artists, journalists and civil society activists in a movement which was brutally crushed and protestors were beaten up, jailed and tortured.

At the forefront of this resistance was painter A R Nagori whose subversive work was banned from official venues by the Zia Regime. Nagori was the first to take on the army by portraying it as a party to the state violence against the people of Pakistan. In this caricature like depiction that uses the totem pole to depicts the changing power structure under the dictator.

His series of small paintings, the size of a child’s primer, phonetically connects the alphabet to instruments of violence and oppression allude to grassroots pedagogic change and erasure of history, introduced by the Zia Regime via text books and curricula. For the madrassah’s ( traditional schools), the lessons of violence started early and ‘… even the textbooks for the Jihadi madrassah’s came from United States. In these books , the alphabet consisted of jeem for jihad , kaaf for Kalashnikov , and tay for tope ( cannon).’ 3 Here a similar work by Kadim Ali, in the revivalist miniature genre creates a page from the primer in which , Alif the equivalent of A which once stood for Anar , the Urdu word for the pomegranate, mutates into a grenade, which the children after the Afghan War had became more familiar with as their gardens of pomegranate were being destroyed by ‘daisy cutters’ and cluster bombs.

It was against this political and social backdrop of emerging extremism that artists began to introspect on challenges that pushed religion from a personal space into the public and political arena. This could only be done by breaking out of the prescribed space of Islamic Art and subverting the canon with fresh symbols. Their focus became issues of gender, freedom and knowledge, as these were the entry points of extremist manipulation.

The attempts to impose Sharia or Religious Law to validate orthodox practices by declaring it as divine law was opposed by citizens who wanted this theoretical discipline to integrate the time-space factor into its system so it could be responsive to the realities of social change.

According to progressives Muslims ‘ The Holy Quran’ lays down fundamental laws , and the working details are left out to be determined by the people according to specific circumstances’ .

Ziaul Haq introduced two very controversial Sharia based ordinances, that violated the constitutional rights of women as equal citizens. With this began the thirty year long struggle for its reversal. Despite evidence of its extensive abuse, it still has not been completely revoked because of the powerful lobby that defends it in the Parliament.

For the artists, writers and human rights activists there was no compromise on the social and political status of women and these discriminatory laws gave impetus to a home grown feminist movement that gave a strong voice to women in the national narrative.

The artists, by subverting the veil, the very garment used by the orthodox clergy to objectify and control women, transformed it into a potent symbol of autonomy and insubordination.

Aisha Khalid, since the 1980s has invested veil with new meaning in her exquisite miniature paintings. Employing the double meaning of the word purdah, that in Urdu means both the veil and curtain she has created a corpus of work that comments on social alienation caused by the forced segregation and veiling pushed into the social mainstream by the orthodox clergy. In her work floral and geometric patterns become a devise that optically expands and constricts the space around the ever present shrouded figure that sometimes becomes near invisible. Her art conveys the growing distance between societal expectation and personal freedom for a woman in Pakistan.

For sculptor Jamil Baloch who hails from the conflict ridden province of Balochistan, presents a group of larger than life completely shrouded figures titled Silence. This work was banned from display in the front courtyard of the National Art Gallery, in the capital to avoid a backlash from extremists.

His is a deliberate attempt to use scale to break the Silence. The pared down faceless forms reinforce their physical presence to all those who wish to banish unveiled women from public space. It also foregrounds the fact that any country that silences fifty percent of its population can have no hope of progress.

This politically charged work became a banner outside the National Gallery that was inaugurated by General Musharraf , five years ago, as it questioned the violation of rights and freedom enshrined in the constitution for women as citizens of Pakistan.

Mariam Agha’s installation ‘72 Virgins for my Suicide Lover’ deals with the link between sexuality and extremism. It underscores how radicalized youth are often enticed with pleasures in the afterlife. According to the training videos captured, the men brainwashed to become suicide bombers are often promised financial support for their impoverished families and a place in heaven, where according to a myth, 72 virgins await the martyr. Thus the extremists are not above bribing the youth with forbidden pleasures.

The installation based on 72 swatches of cloth bear stitched line drawings of the vagina. Embellished with beads and sequins they evoke the garments in a bride’s trousseau that is invested with the dreams of a life that sharply contrasts with the objectification of her body.

Mariam’s art questions the way extremist interpretation of Sharia denies women respect and treats them as sexual objects and points to the blatant contradiction of the women rights enshrined in Quran.

Progressive Islamic scholar Hasan Mahmud emphatically states ‘No law that perpetuates injustice against our mothers and daughters can be considered Islamic . Sharia forces Muslims to turn away from Islam’s spirit of moral guidance, and instead make ordinary Muslims pawns in a manmade political power struggle’ 6

Yet another law under the Sharia framework , against blasphemy has fueled violence and bigotry putting both Muslims and non-Muslims at risk.

The most high profile victim of the Blasphemy Law was Governor Salman Taseer after he publically declared support to a poor peasant woman on death row after she was convicted under the controversial Blasphemy Law. Salman Taseer was gunned down in the street by his own police guard, a self-confessed fanatic incited by the hate rhetoric of his religious mentor. Amean J, in a memorial to Salman Taseer uses a montage of metal plates etched with bullets to convey the violence of his death which resulted from 29 bullet wounds according to the autopsy report. Shaped like a coffin reflected in mirror that echoes its shape. The visitor reflection in the mirror suggests vulnerability when death threatened everyone who spoke out against the blasphemy law.

The murder in broad by a member of the police detail that was suppose to protect Governor Taseer, shook the nation. Even the priests who worked for the Governor House mosque were unwilling to lead his funeral prayer. The priest who finally did has had to flee the country in fear of personal safety.

In October 2011 under tremendous pressure from activists the murderer finally received the death penalty after almost 11 months of the crime. This can be seen as a minor victory of the civil society as their efforts through protest marches and an anti blasphemy law campaign in the media, showed results.

The work is a monument to Governor Taseer’s courage and to the courage of the activists who continue to struggle for the repeal of the blasphemy law.

Muslim youth indoctrinated with de-contextualized Quranic quotations on Jihad, who were once fodder for the Anti- Soviet War and later for Taliban and Al Qaida, today form the nucleus of the suicide squad that have killed over 33, 000 Pakistani citizens by mid 2011. ‘ The death cult of the jihadis ‘ evolved into a form of a death cult where the highest level of Islamic worship is to die and leave this world to its satanic existence’ explains Tarek Fateh 7. According to Tariq Ali these terrorists have no social vision as “their goal is to seek paradise, not in life but in death” 8

Artists who are a witness to this bloodstained history of bomb blasts, assassinations and drone attacks mediate with diverse aesthetic strategies. Durriya Kazi’s life size terracotta figure which was displayed in a grass patch to simulate bomb death at a roadside. Its face concealed in the grass and arms still clinging to the dead infant are a grim echo of a war fought by faceless combatants in the streets, bazaars, schools and places of worship. Made from unbaked clay and displayed in public unpaved sites, the artist’s objective it to allow it to disintegrate into the soil like the nameless victims of violence.

Nausheen Saeed’s Baked Delicacies deals with issues of loosing human empathy through over-exposure to blood and gore as she presents a life size truncated body made from baked dough in wooden bakers trays. Her work emphasizes the way tragic deaths become as routine as serving bread and yet her life-size body has the power to shock the audience into introspecting on the brutalizing effects of violence.

Inviting visitors to stand under a ‘flying carpet’ of drone like forms crafted from menacing box-cutters blades, Abdullah Syed, evokes the anxiety of a population that live under the constant threat of hovering un-manned predators. Misleadingly conveyed in the media as precise and clinical, these attacks, according to the interview of victims, are far from being so. The large number of women, elderly and children killed and maimed vastly outnumber the terrorists killed in drone attacks. This phychological scarred population has become the forgotten collateral damage of the Afghan War.

Abdulla who associates the drones with the romantic legend of flying carpets explains “ Poetically viewed the flying rug conjure dark complexities that elicit serious thought on the part of the viewer , rather than the repetition of didactic certainties or so proclaimed in extremist propaganda and the populist media.” 9

Imran Qureshi’s site specific work (Sharjah Biennale 2011) ‘Blessings Upon the Land of My Love’ covers the courtyard of a heritage building, with red pigment stains and splashes that seem to emerge from chrysanthemum like flowers painted in the same blood red pigment. Standing over the painted surface one is not sure if blood has drowned the flowers or flowers are emerging from the blood.

Bizarrely evocative of a bomb blast site, it invites refection on how public carnage sites in the recent past have been washed to destroy precious evidence. His reference is to the death of public figures like Benazir Bhutto, Governor Taseer and others.The work also reflects the artist personal encounter with a blomb blast side on the way to his children’s school.

The title Blessings Upon the Land of My Love , acts as a prayer in response to a trauma that the nation has deeply internalized.

The Madrassah, which has been a source of affordable education to impoverished millions, before they were turned into nurseries for Mujahideens in the 1980s, in recent years have been demonized by the Western media, not unlike the harem by Orientalists in the past. The work ‘ God grows on Trees” by Hamra Abbas with its 99 portraits of children is the outcome of her time spent time with madrassah students. It can be read as a ‘ critique on the ambiguity and duality on the nature of her subjects , between spirituality , militancy and her own sense of identity’. 10

Another work that mediates a space between perception, reality and stereotyping is her ‘Woman in Black’ with her aggressive posture with a stick and in a body hugging black veil deconstructs the myth of the docile veiled woman. This work is inspired by the women students of the Lal Masjid seminary who took over a neighboring Children’s library by force. When confronted by the State, hundreds appeared in black veil with sticks on the seminary roof. Later many of them died when their seminary was attacked by the army in a bid to close it down. The work combines the techniques of illuminated manuscript and stained glass, techniques identified with Christian and Islamic arts to point to osmosis of influences.

Amin Rehman who lives in Toronto focuses on global perceptions of the war on terrorism. In his encaustic paintings words become the tool to mediate an identity that is increasingly identified with Islam. With textual statements layered and stylized to resemble classic Arabic Kufic script over functional san serif fonts Amin work communicates the double speak of what has been called the ‘rhetoric of aggression’ in the media. The works deal with ‘looking both ways’ which is also the title of a work.

The artist overlays a Quranic verse that treats the killing of a soul as the killing of entire mankind with a suicide bomber claim that his act is a ticket to heaven. As one contradicts the other, the truth is lost in the propaganda of war. Perhaps the most telling is a sign stridently claiming in neon, ‘God is on our side – Allah on your side’. This unpacking of cultural, religious and political dichotomies quoted by the extremists and media to support their agenda. In the end his art calls attention to the power of language, its presentation and accessibility.

 

Conclusion

The contemporary art in conversation with Islam is personal, experiential and activist as it treads into a new territory previously closed to them by anti-ijtihad religious scholars that had closed the door on discussion on scholarly interpretation of Quran. The contemporary artists with this corpus of interventionist art, transcends the historical frames of reference that have connected art and Islam only through a precise and sanctioned format with little space for individual interpretation.

The art critics provide the didactic to interpret the art that questions what, Tarek Fateh calls Islamo- fascism and provide the context of a nation’s splintered unity through systematic erasure of history and exploitation of religion. This re-thinking and re-visualizing prompted by the anti-tolerance, anti-humanist environment has made this art an important document of 21st century terrorism.

Any serious attempt to study the ideological crisis spawned by terrorism in Islamic countries calls for a new theoretical framework free of interpretative limitations and one that takes into account cultural and religious sensitivities. It needs to be a discursive space free of ideological privileges so it can gain legitimacy outside the existing centers of power.

Such a framework has begun to evolve in countries where artists and critics are working against extremism to further progressive Islam “By eliminating the spirit of imitation and obedience that is the hallmark of popular religion and replacing it with a critical revolutionary , aggressive spirit of independent reasoning ”. 11

 

Notes

1- Pg 300, Fateh, Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State Publisher : John Wiley & Sons , Canada, Ltd. 2008

2- Pg 273, Fateh Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. 2008

Pg 300, Fateh, Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State Publisher : John Wiley & Sons , Canada, Ltd. 2008

3- Pg 273, Fateh Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State. 2008

3-Pg 269, Fateh, Tarek , Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, 2008

4-Pg 239, Fateh,Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, 2008

5- pg 122, Ali Amra, No Honor in Killing – Making Visible Buried Truth, NuktaArt, Vol 6, One 2011

6- pg 249, Fateh Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, 2008

7- pg 272 Fateh, Tarek, Chasing A Mirage, The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, 2008

8- pg 280 Arooj Zia, Learn from Latin America, The Daily Times, Lahore, Sept 5, 2007

9- Pg 155, Artists Statement, Exhibition Catalog, The Rising Tide, New Directions in Art From Pakistan 1990- 2010,

10- pg 45, Ali, Amra , The Pakistani Diasporas- A Home Perspective , NuktaArt Vol 5, Two, 2010. www.nuktaartmag.com

11- Ali Shariati, Modernization and Islam: Refinement of Cultural Resources and from where we should begin? http:/ www. Ghazali.net/book4/ Appendix I appendix –i.html.

 

© Niilofur Farrukh

 

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