5 Seeing through the Mirror
Far from a secularflaunting of sanction, the image in Islamic discourses
can reveal faith, often in the most unlikely of guises. This is exemplified in
the story of the competition between the artists of Rum and Chinese
artists.^1 Retold by al-Ghazali, Nizami, Jalal al-Din Rumi, and ibn
Khaldun, it underscores the enduring interconnectedness of the Islamic
intellectual world with ancient philosophy in Greek and contemporary
interlocutors from neighboring regions. The temporal, linguistic, and
geographical persistence of the story points to its importance, as well as
to the dynamic self-referentiality constituting Islam. Rather than making a
direct mimetic claim, the image in Islam emerges as a symbol of the
necessary distractions through which humans may come to apprehend
the Real.
5.1 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali between Plotinus
and the Buddha
The trope of competition in instructive stories deploys the common poetic
device of antithesis to establish an apparent contradiction whose resolution
points to a greater truth. Al-Hujwiri’s parable of the prophet David’s
musical competition (Chapter 2.2) emphasizes the centrality of subjectivity
in understanding the permissibility of music. Similarly, Abu Hamid al-
Ghazali uses a framework of competition to describe the relationship
between visual images and perception. His parable was repeated in many
forms over the centuries, reflecting his longstanding popularity as a pre-
mier Islamic thinker. Although contested by later puritan scholars, his
popularity reflected his ability to integrate the teachings of philosophy and
mystical inspiration into Islamic theology. His 1091 appointment as a
(^1) Often translated as‘Roman’or‘Greek,’the word‘Rum’was used in the Islamic hegemonic world
to refer to the peoples of the Eastern Roman Empire (and subsequent political entities), who
spoke Greek and whose life and travels often included modern Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece.
In this chapter, I use Rum in my own discussion and translations, but maintain the translation
choices made in directly quoted materials.^131