This understanding of the image retreats from its physical form, the
object of art history, in favor of a mediating function that the Quran
indicates as part of perception, not in the representational power of the
image, but in the receptive capacity of the subject. The Quran provides no
guidelines for art as such because any matter, including but not limited to
things we moderns understand through the rubric of art, can mediate
meaning. The Quran thus informs the visual culture of Islam without
necessitating the boundary between art and the rest of the world.
Rather, materialism ranges between excesses: Satan’s refusal to revere
creation (absolute iconoclasm); and the worship of the golden calf (ido-
latry). Materiality is necessary because its balanced perception enables
apprehension of God.
In the creation of the heavens and earth; in the alternation of night and day; in the
ships that sail the seas with goods for people; in the water which God sends down
from the sky to give life to the earth when it has been barren, scattering all kinds of
creatures over it; in the changing of the winds and clouds that run their appointed
courses between the sky and earth: there are signs in all these for those who use their
minds. Even so, there are some who choose to worship others besides God as rivals to
Him, loving them with the love due to God, but the believers have greater love for
God. If only the idolaters could see–as they will see when they face the torment–
that all power belongs to God, and that God punishes severely. (Q 2:164–165)^55
All of creation potentially signal the divine, but apprehension of such signs
depends on believers understanding their senses. Ibn Rushd interprets the
similar passage“Consider, you who are able to see”(Q59:2) not as a
demand to read scripture for guidance, but as a demand that believers
should use their intellect to recognize the art embedded in all things and,
through it, to recognize its artisan.^56 For ibn Arabi, the recognition of such
similitudes (tashbih) shows the similarities between the unity of True
Knowledge and its reflection in the multiplicity of creation, and constitutes
the self-disclosure of God.^57 The image-function is not limited to the
workings of the representational image in the Western tradition, and
transcends the categorical distinctions of the senses in the internalized
perceptual realm of the heart. This becomes articulated in the ontology of
internal senses theorized by ibn Sina as the faculties of common sense,
representation, imagination, and memory. By abstracting objects, these
internal senses interface with the intellect, which has the capacity to
evaluate them as true, pure, and good.^58(^55) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 : 18. (^56) Lerner, 2007 : 270. (^57) Chittick, 1998 : 13.
(^58) Berlekamp, 2011 : 21.
122 Seeing with the Heart