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Art War in Cradle of Civilization by Doniphan Blair
Whirling Dervishes, Sufis from the group started by Rumi's son in the 13th century, dance at a public performance in Turkey. photo: courtesy Mevlevi group
I RECENTLY SHARED A TASTY THAI
lunch and glass of wine with a brilliant and lovely Sunni Muslim woman.
Although it was Ramadan, the Muslim month of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting and television watching, fasting is not obligatory if a hardship, notably for the young, elderly or infirm, which she was.
Wine is another story.
Despite the well-known Islamic prohibitions, al-cohol is an Arabic word and tolerated by most Sufis, moderates, intellectuals and, on one occasion, by Muhammad (see Sura 2:219: "There is great harm in both [drinking and gambling], although they have some benefit for men." ).
When I asked my date about the famous Sufis of Morocco, where she had just spent six years studying Islam, she told me, "I saw pictures of Sufis dancing in circles and they appeared drunk and sexual."
"Did you know most Muslim artists are Sufis," I asked. "And that Islam's real civil war is not so much between Sunnis and Shi'a but against the Sufis?"
Apparently, she did not.
"I don't suppose you've read my 'Art Fatwa'," I asked, waxing a little presumptuous, if not pretentious, since my "Manifesto in Defense of Islamic Art" was self-published and performed but once (Halloween 2001).
The 'Art Fatwa', in defense of Islamic art, a 2001 manifesto and performance piece by Doniphan Blair, see full text. illo: D. Blair
I thought it was a good conversation starter since, two days before on June 30, the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, which I prefer, to avoid blaspheming a beloved goddess), had changed its name to "Islamic State".
Moreover, the breakaway al-Qaeda faction, deemed "too violent" by al-Qaeda central, had awarded its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the authority of "caliph," or leader of the caliphate, the ancient political-religious structure embracing all Muslims.
Not only did ISIL unveil their new caliphate in Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city, which is 50 miles from Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian city, they were some 80 miles south of Turkey, home to the last Caliphate.
The Ottoman Empire (1299-1923) was also famous for its Sufis, notably the Whirling Dervishes of Rumi's Mevlevi Order but also dozens of other groups, some achieving transcendence through chanting and meditation, others practicing all sorts of art forms, including portraiture.
Although Sunni, the Ottomans were notably cultural, multicultural and tolerant, not only of other Muslims but Christians, for whom Istanbul remained a center, and Jews, who live today in Turkey in greater numbers than any other Islamic country.
The new Islamic State, however, is not your grandfather's caliphate.
In an attempt to earn respect from militant Islamists worldwide, ISIL professes to believe not so much in a one god, one universe and one humanity, but in one prophet, one book, one way to interpret that book and the right to force that view on others.
Although Sunnis, Shi'a and Sufis all accept one Koran, which opens: "Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful...," al-Baghdadi and his Islamic State are anything but.
Indeed, ISIL's stated intention is to murder all non-ISIL Sunnis as well as all Shi'a, to keep women entirely covered, or inside, and to eliminate all music and art—except that used for religious, political or military purposes. Alcohol drinkers, for their part, face death on the spot.
Strategic bravura is easy when life is cheap and ISIL's success was notable in Syria and spectacular in Iraq. Moreover, as they conquered swaths of territory, they adapted and solidified gains by providing social services.
Indeed, many Iraqi Sunnis welcomed ISIL's relief from the democratically-elected regime of Shi'a Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which has also become intolerant, oppressive and outright murderous, since radical Shi'a and Sunni tend to mirror each other.
Nevertheless, Shi'ites have always allowed human figuration, most of the arts (except women singing) and film. This art tolerance turned the Islamic Republic of Iran into an international cinema superpower, far ahead of the two Sunni media Meccas of Turkey and Egypt. Their sophisticated shows are currently entertaining post-Ramadan revellers across the Muslim world.
ISIL beheads an English teacher, Mohamed Mohamed bin Mohamed, from northern Syria, after he stood up to them. photo: courtesy al Jezeera
Although the elephant in the room is that ISIL's program of sectarian genocide is reminiscent of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the Middle East has endured a lot of murder of late and ISIL's kill rates are not yet startling.
What is startling is the end of art, the termination of art for romantic, enlightenment or entertainment purposes—total art war, in other words—in the cradle of civilization, where the incredible art of the ancients rose us up from the animals.
Ending art, as advocated by the Taliban in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, included the blowing up of the majestic Bamiyon Buddhas. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which seized northern Mali from 2012 to 2013, outlawed all music, despite that nation's large number of international stars, their five Grammy Awards, Timbuktu's Festival in the Desert and the local obsession.
Terminating all secular music and art is serious business.
I wonder what the Dadaists, Surrealists or Futurists who have played with "Anti-Art" as a theme—not to mention contemporary artists of a certain radical ilk—would make of the modern Muslim movement to end all art?
Certainly the end of art in Nineveh, where civilization began, MUST means something special to us as metaphor makers.
In Mali, neither Bono, Human Rights International nor the Grammies went to bat for the musicians and other artists, as George Harrison did for Bangladesh in 1971. Certainly, taking a stand against al-Qaedian anti-art might have helped rally a native, Sufi and creative opposition that could have forestalled French intervention.
Like Afghanistan before it, however, northern Mali is largely a desert redoubt far from civilizational centers. Indeed, the Taliban termination of Afghan art from 1996-2001 went virtually unprotested.
Indian Sufis smoke marijuana during the annual 'Urs' procession, 2012, Ajmer, India. photo: Times of India
Also unmentioned, in the dialogue about Afghanistan's recovery, was the massive outpouring of art, media and art institution building by Afghans inside and outside the country.
In addition to the emergence of dozens of television and radio stations and newspapers, there have been internationally-sponsored tours of Afghan painters and ancient gold artifacts from the Kabul Museum (successfully hidden from Taliban, who tunneled for months intent on melting it down).
In Kabul, artists and professionals joined to start two art and one music school(s), the latter run by an Australian-Afghan, who also provides scholarships to street kids to study violin and other instruments.
Meanwhile Afghan cinema has exploded.
Although there is no actual film school, as of yet, Kabul was graced by the star cinema family of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, previously of Tehran. His Arriflex 35 mm camera allowed the shooting of Siddiq Barmak's polished and moving "Osama" (2003), an excellent example of the popular "Girl Dresses as Boy to Get Education" genre. Indeed, one of the Makhmalbaf daughters followed suit in her first feature "The Buddhas Exploded" (2010).
Other cities, like Herat, also have cinema activists. While Roya Sadat became the first woman to direct a feature in Afghanistan, her younger sister, Alka Sadat, did "Half Value Life", a great documentary about Afghanistan's first female judge (see her 2012 Interview in CineSource).
But if you search the web about Afghanistan, from 2002 to today, music, film and the Taliban's philosophy of anti-art, are almost never mentioned.
Hence, here we are again. Instead of exploding Buddhas, we have the ending of art in the cradle of civilization. Certainly, such an attack on our common heritage, we would do well to oppose, at least symbolically, to show that anti-art simply will not triumph in the end.
As citizen artists, don't we have that responsibility?
It could be said, in fact, that the only plausible prayer for Middle East peace, for the region to avoid the world war it has been cooking up since 1967, when they rose to reject the supposedly foreign Jewish sect, is a vast injection of art, filmmaking, Sufism and, thereby, tolerance.
"I myself consider myself a Sufi," the Egyptian filmmaker Muhammad Diab told me (see his 2013 CineSource interview), although not an "extreme Sufi," he was careful to note.
"Sufi is the closest understanding of Islam that you can get across to anyone," Diab explained. "Sufism is all about love; it's all about finding what is common in humanity, believing that humans are one entity."
Iraqi Sunnis chant in support of ISIL at government headquarters in Mosul, 50 miles from the cradle of civilization in Nineveh (6/16/2014). photo: courtesy AP
"This is exactly what I think filmmaking is about. Finding what is common in humanity. If you saw life through anyone's eyes—anyone's, even the person you hated most in your life—you are going to sympathize with him."
"Sufism used to be very popular in Mecca and Saudi Arabia," he concluded. "But Islam has been kidnapped for the last 200 years."
"In the late 19th century, Arab nationalists were great admirers of Western societies," is an another view put forth by Khaled Diab (no relation), an Egyptian-Belgian writer who seems to live in London ("Caliphate Fantasy", NY Times, 7/2/14).
"The first reality check came when Britain and France carved up the Middle East following World War I... But after World War II, America filled the void left by France and Britain by emulating its imperial predecessors... [and propping] up a string of unpopular autocrats. This resulted in an abiding distrust of Western democratic rhetoric."
"Then there was the domestic factor," he admits, "(t)he failure of revolutionary pan-Arabism to deliver its utopian vision of renaissance, unity and freedom led to a disillusionment with secular politics."
"The wounds that mattered were self-inflicted wounds," is also the central thesis of "The Arab Predicament" (1980) by Fouad Ajami, the neo-con but brilliant Lebanese-American scholar, who died on June 22.
"The outside world intruded, but... The divisions of the Arab world were real, not contrived points on a map or a colonial trick of divide-and-conquer. No outsiders had to oppress and mutilate. The whip was cracked by one's own."
Regardless of historical precedents, "There are deliberate acts of arson," is yet another view postulated by Nader Mousavizadeh, an Iranian-American scholar (NY Times 6/29/2014).
"[Fires are] set by different leaders to advance their narrow and shortsighted political, economic and security objectives.... a narrative of irreversible Sunni-Shi'a conflict ... is historically false and releases the region's leaders from their responsibility."
Mousavizadeh is nominally right. Although there has always been oppression and massacres, mostly of Shi'a by Sunni, it is exacerbated when times are tough.
With Sunni extremists proselytizing violently for decades, even centuries, and taking actual territory in Algeria, Afghanistan, Mali and now northern Iraq, the Sunni-Shi'a civil war, which started following Muhammad's death, appears to be to the death.
Although the rise of ultra-militant Islam has been blamed by most academics, and the militants themselves, on the arrival in the Middle East of European and Jewish colonialists and imperialists, Europeans didn't take any territory until Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 and Islam's seismological theological shift started fifty years earlier.
A scene from 'UnderExposure' the 2005 docufiction filmed guerrilla-style in Baghdad by Oday Rasheed. photo: courtesy O. Rasheed
That was when Muhammad Wahhab (1703-92), a cleric from the desolate deserts of southern Arabia, started his impassioned ministry against all forms of polytheism, rituals not in the Koran and the occupation of Islam's sacred cities by Ottomans.
Wahhab's fundamentalism paralleled Martin Luther's two centuries earlier, when radical Protestants also opposed any added-on ritual, the showing of female flesh and music, but he went an order of magnitude further: The elimination of secular culture in general.
The simple if simplistic reasoning behind this severe response to social corruption and stagnation is: Despite the popularity of Islam's patriarchal monotheism, which swept much of the equatorial earth over a millennia earlier, Wahhab's Arabia remained mired in matriarchal polytheism and saturated in sex.
After the Wahhabis held Mecca for a few years early in the 19th century, in the 20th they conquered all of Saudi Arabia, including two of Islam's three sacred cities, and were updated for the modern world by Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood's and the Egyptian culture critic, Sayd Qutb.
Less well-known is that the Wahhabis, with their austerity, opposition to art and extreme literalism, were nothing more-or-less than a counterrevolution against the Sufis who had their own revolution in the 12th and 13th century.
"The most striking socio-religious development of post-thirteenth century Islamic societies was the emergence of Sufism in innumerable variations as the principle expression of Islamic beliefs and communal identities," is how Islamic scholar Ira Lapidus puts it, in "History of Islamic Societies" (2002, p207).
Less formally, we can summarize that Sufis saved Islam three times: they revived a moribund Sunnism with mysticism in the 12th century; they rebuilt the Middle East after Mongolian annihilation of the 13th; and they provided artistry and insight not just to the leaders of the Ottoman, Persian and Mughals empires but in West Africa, Morocco, the Balkans, Pakistan, Indonesia and elsewhere.
Over a half a millennia, however, they could not help but decay and suffer leadership problems, many becaming overly mystical, materially corrupt or both.
To be sure, there remained many artistic or enlightened Sufis, many immigrating to West Africa, Europe and then the United States, but by the 17th century, the desert was ripe to produce the revisionist and reformist mystic, Wahabbi.
By the 18th century, a flurry of Sufis sages and warriors turned towards austerity as a logical reform movement. Instead of evolving with age, however, Wahabbism revanched more extreme, outlawing the culture dominated by Sufis, as well as attacking or exterminating them.
It is no coincidence ISIL's sheikh has taken the name al-Baghdadi. Although the city was home to great Sufis, Houses of Wisdom and publishing, it had already been purged of most of its Sufism centuries ago with the last remnents going with Saddam and the wars.
With no more Sufis to provide a tolerant counterargument to the Sunni masses, the inflaming of Sunni-Shi'a relations is inevitable.
Sufi practices continue privately, even in Mecca (according to a Berlin-based Sufi and friend of this author), or as traces in storytelling and others arts.
Before the Arab Spring, Damascus was a hotbed of Sufi philosophy, music and dance, and a production center for a lot of the Arab soap operas and dramas popular across the Middle East, including in Sunni lands like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Turkey's big recent television hit, "The Magnificent Century", was about the Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, who was also a poet and avid culturalist as well as conqueror.
Meanwhile, Iraqi film and publishing was just coming back to life after a decade of brutality, with first major in-country feature, XXX, completed in 2013. A powerhouse publisher since the 9th century, Baghdad will undoubtedly continue to some degree even in war time with the ISIL.
But will they be able to invent the stories, make the movies and music, that can open the eyes of the residents of and the avenues of dialogue in the Middle East? Can they can fight the good art war with the anti-art Islamists (who, in turn, allow art for their own propaganda)?
If a highly educated and talented Sunni women living in San Francisco is not aware of this art war to the death in the cradle of civilization, who is? If filmmakers and artists and musicians don't take it upon themselves to defend the arts in the face of literal anti-art activists, who will?
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 07, 2014 - 07:21 AM