What can‘art’mean in a culture where the primary organ of perception is
not the eye or the ears, but the heart? It requires a shift from the visible to the
sensible, in which attention is directed not outwardly toward the object, but
inwardly, within the heart. This shift–from the eye as an organ of (potentially
rational) verification to the heart as one of (necessarily perceptual) validation
shifts the aesthetic from one located between a disinterested subject and object
toward an aesthetic located between an interested subject and an object made
malleable through the performance of perception.
The Quran scarcely differentiates between material and immaterial
perception: external receptors, the eyes and ears, function indivisibly
with the heart, the internal sensory organ. This enables a heart-perception
of the unseen that unbalances and confuses the distinction of the senses.
Whereas a visually mimetic model of representation requires light to
expose material reality, in the Quran light can simultaneously show and
blind, sometimes at the same time.
God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and
in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fuelled from a
blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when
nofire touches it–light upon light–God guides whoever He will to his Light; God
draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything–
shining out in houses of worship. (Q24: 35–36).^40
The verse constructs a simile through which the perception of an immaterial
Godmustdependonthemediationofthevisibleensconcedwithinlayers
simultaneously suggesting barriers and transparency, each perpetually differing
to the other. Although suggesting materiality through the lamp and implying
the sense of vision through the provision of light, neither is fully realized. The
textual image plays between the presence and absence of glass and light, with
matter that is permeable and oil that burns withoutfire. In contrast to mundane
vision, where materiality and luminosity are interdependent, in God’sunity
they become indissoluble. Yet the light cannot function solely through its own
presence: it relies on the vehicle, the lamp, just as the passage relies on the simile
of the lamp, also associated with the Prophet Muhammad (Q33:45–46). Unlike
with material vision, in which light on an object enables perception, in the light
verse, the likeness of light (not light itself) representing God defers presence,
always pointing toward the Prophet pointing toward revelation pointing
toward the Tablet pointing toward the Divine.
(^40) Abdel-Haleem, 2004 : 223; Böwering, 2001 : 116.
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