Reem Wasay

Symbolism has taken precedence over reason and a vehement streak of bellicosity towards anything and everything related to religious identification has become a common denominator for most Muslim people throughout the world

There are times when the adage, “a picture can tell a thousand words”, stands for so much more than a mere point to ponder. Just the other day I was enjoying as close to serene a drive as one can get along Lahore’s canal when a very common, very accepted image complimented my ocular domain. The car in front of me boasted a bumper sticker of the unvaryingly zealous variety with the first kalma plastered all over it; the overt use of negative symbolism is what irked me. As is typical of many written modes of the first kalma, there was a sword placed under the lettering. This sort of picture is one that I am sure everyone has seen. It is typical and a casual denotation of those beautiful words that represent us as Muslims. The crux of our entire religion, a few words that qualify as the dotted line between belief and question, faith and supposition, is being spearheaded by carnage’s counterpart: a weapon.

In the global circumstance that is today’s misguided crusade towards a clash of civilisations, do we really need to reinforce everybody’s already twisted perceptions of Islam by identifying the soul of our religion as being one in tandem with a view of violence?

Symbolism has taken precedence over reason and a vehement streak of bellicosity towards anything and everything related to religious identification has become a common denominator for most Muslim people throughout the world. We see it everywhere from the aforementioned decorative attempt at projecting the kalma to the increasing number of women who don the black coat of feminine enshroudment as a means to pledge allegiance to their faith. In a world where we are truly becoming what we see, have we stopped seeing the bigger picture?

Developed, civilised societies throughout the world have always relied on the power of the written word to influence and guide informed decisions resulting in many folds of enlightenment and widespread education. Violent imagery usually comes with an ‘R’ rating and provocative representations are subject to controversy and question. However, in the developing world where a dearth of education is seen as a frontrunner in the obstacles to any sort of progression, we associate our limited and highly impressionable understanding to what we see instead of what we read. Societies with a literacy rate as low as ours are societies that debone the essential bulk of an idea, a notion, an ideology, through the imagery that accompanies it and with said imagery being one that could be a potential lethal weapon. We are playing into the very Hollywood stereotype we harp on as being an embargo on who we really are.

People of the Book that we are, our national dialect awards limitations on how we truly understand a Book revealed and passed down in Arabic. With translations of the Quran being considered inferior by the unapologetic clergy, we rely a lot on pictorials and visuals associated with the text’s sacred words as a means to identify and express the written clause. With the sword spread under the belly of our collective belief, we ought to rethink how we wish to be perceived by an ever judgmental global perspective. When the ‘all ye of little faith’ scattered around the world express discomfort and a nervous sort of concern over what they see emanating out of the Muslim world, we pull up our shalwars, dishdashahs and burqas in assembled allegiance to our cause instead of looking inwards and directing a little constructive introspect towards the symbols (swords), images (young children employing religiously inscribed bandanas and kalashnikovs), and habit of habits (the all popular image of the submissive burqa clad woman) we generously throw out to those who are unfamiliar with the finer teachings of Islam. They see only one face and we have not painted too pretty a picture.

Jihadi organisations have used the power of visual representation to coax a new breed of neo-kamikaze draftsmen by using the internet, posting videos that need no words to describe the hold they project religion can have on the Muslim body. A very famous propaganda video incites violent submission by showing a willing recruit plunge off a hillside to his death on the behest of his jihadi leader. These too are images, frightful and horrific, yet they fulfil their purpose. With more spontaneous human combustion (of the more voluntary variety) being made common upon our shores, the war of words has ended: we have now entered a new period of perceptible warfare where images of religiously motivated ethnic cleansing are paramount in creating the present apprehension towards Islam.

In this day and age of visual overload and limited attention spans, the pictures we project and the marks of identity we uphold need to reverse the negative stereotypes we have been reinforcing so far. We are, sadly, an intellectually diluted lot; susceptible to almost all forms of fleeting visual veneers. In a society where the burqa and the beard are regarded as the all-embracing slogans of puritanical representation and where slogans and ‘million’ man marches are suffered as the logical manifestation of whatever it is that irks us, we have made Islam suffer from enough of a bad hair day as it is. We need to refocus and project our faith — our own collective identity — as a positive precursor to welcome change, not the negative challenge we have unmistakably become.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at reemk80@gmail.com