Islamic Art and Architecture as an Expression of Spirituality in Islam
Abdulaziz Sachedina, Religious Studies
1999 TTI Fellow
Email: aas@virginia.edu
Home page: http://www.people.virginia.edu/~aas/home.htm
The project will undertake to develop a web site course under SUFISM (RELI 312) which deals with the mystical dimension of Islamic tradition. Mysticism has been one of the three constituent elements in the development of what is usually called "Islamic or Islamicate" civilization -- the other two elements being the religious law and the statecraft. Scholars of Islamic tradition have rightly acknowledged that without Sufism the Sense of Unity that permeates Islamic visual arts would have been impossible. It is the dedication and personal commitment of the craftsmen, who also happened to be the members of the guilds headed by Sufi masters, that created the remarkable resources which manifest human religiosity in the form of visual arts.
Thus far no attempt has been made to study this subjective phenomenon as part of religious studies program for two reasons: first, the intellectualist approach to religion has stressed cognitive rather than the emotional function of religious expression of the sacred, regardless whether that sacred is located in the texts or material culture; second, thus far the pedagogical devices for teaching and evaluating the cognitive function of religiously inspired arts in a classroom situation have been limited to a linear screen presentation. Instruction in Islamic civilization in general demands the use of the usual media of slides, films and music. The limitations of the standard media available through the traditional linear presentation has thus far not allowed the necessary interaction of text and images. With the phenomenal advancement in the interactive technology it is now possible to create a digital environment for the class to enable students to analyze visual materials and interpret them in a new meaningful order through the textual and sound materials.
Such an interactive environment will allow students for the first time to appreciate and interpret the spiritual dimensions of art and architecture in Islamic tradition. It will, moreover, provide them with appropriate idiom in classifying and explaining both natural and social dimensions of religious expression through art and architecture. In addition, since the web site will deal with universal aspect of mysticism shared by all world religions, the web site will become part of the elecronic archive for study and research by the faculty teaching courses on comparative mysticism, thereby allowing students to develop necessary idiom to articulate cognitively the subjective religious experience of other humans through visual arts.