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The Missing Body

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6. The Missing Body
Figurative Representations in Islamic Iconography

Hatem N. Akil

Abstract
This chapter considers the presumed absence of figurative representa-
tions in Islamic art, which to some is yet another indication of Islam’s
inability to face and represent reality (accept modernity) – as opposed
to the body-centric aesthetics of the Renaissance. It is discovered that
Islamic history in fact overflows with examples of representations of
sentient life. The contrast between Islam’s figurative art (as secular) and
abstract and geometric art (as sacred) should not be seen as contradictory,
but as a case of cultural simultaneity, which reflects an Islamicate daily
life that has always been both religious and secular at the same time.

Keywords: Islamic art; nachleben; Islamic iconography; bilderverbot;

Islamic secularity; Islamic aniconism

Bilderverbot

Who took the body out of Islamic iconography?1 The Quran does not have
a clear or specific commandment against graven images – so why does it
seem that we hardly witness the body anywhere in Islamic art?2 What is it
about the Islamic body that calls for veiling? elision? and omission? But is
it possible that the body has been always here – right at the center – staring
us in the eye, seen but unnoticed?

1 Iconography here is used in the sense of “writing with images” or image as text. This concept
includes all elements of image iconic and aniconic.
2 It is generally accepted that representation of sentient beings is not acceptable (frowned
upon, rather than prohibited) in Islam on the basis of recorded Ḥadīth (Prophetic Sayings) rather
than as stated explicitly in the Quran.

Akil, H.N. and S. Maddanu (eds.), Global Modernity from Coloniality to Pandemic: A Cross-
disciplinary Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022
doi 10.5117/9789463727457_pre

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Towards the end of Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss asks (rhetori-

cally, of course),

Why did Moslem art collapse so completely once it had passed its peak? It
went from the palace to the bazaar without any transitional phase. This
must have been a result of the rejection of images. (2012, 400)

Aha, it is bilderverbot (aniconism) then, that Semitic iconophobia! Being

deprived of all contact with reality, the Muslim artist has become incapable
of representing the reality that surrounds him.3 Is this a result of an artistic
failure? Or is it the restrictive prohibitions of his faith? “It was chiefly the
presence of Islam which troubled me,” complained Levi-Strauss (2012, 397).
French Orientalist Georges Marçais (1876–1962) seems to agree with
Levi-Strauss that the issue with Islamic art lies in its rejection of images
and incapability of verisimilitude. In a remarkable and densely-researched
study on Islamic art entitled “Picasso the Muslim,” Finbarr Barry Flood,
says Marçais “represented Arab creativity as a series of lacks that extends
well beyond the realm of the visual arts, as symptomatic […] of the Arab
inability to create ‘living fictions,’ among them narrative (as opposed to lyric)
poetry or prose, or theater.” Likewise, French Orientalists Gaston Wiet and
Louis Hautecoeur viewed Islamic art as “a rigid, joyless art characterized
by an excess of unmajestic decoration, and conducive only to dreams and
melancholy.” To them, “the interdiction on figural representation meant that
Islamic artists rarely took their inspiration from nature, favoring the use
of drawings over direct observation” (Flood 2017, 52). The same emphasis
on Islam’s rejection of naturalistic images was also claimed by German art
historian Wilhelm Robert Worringer (Flood 2017, 50). Social anthropologist
Jack Goody, who had a keen interest in the world of Islam, once said of
Islamic art, “Mimesis was aberrant; representation was not only worthless,
it was blasphemous” (Goody 2004, 112).
Could it be argued that the loss of the body in Islamic iconography – and
by extension, the loss of nature – is related to an Islamic conception of art
that rejects a relationship with the incorporeality of the Divine? To the
Muslims, God is not male or female, not matter or spirit. God is transcendent:
“There is nothing like Him.”4 But God is also immanent and omnipresent in

3 I am using the pronoun “he” to refer the Muslim artist as an arbitrary indicator. This is not
intended to ignore the mostly undocumented role of Muslim women visual artists, particularly
in textile arts and carpet making.
4 Holy Quran, Ash-Shura, 42.11.

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all things: “To God is the East and the West. Withersoever you turn, there
is the face of God.”5 In most of the Christian conception of art, the body
necessitates the iconic for reverence. The sacrament of the Eucharist brings
to the present an almost metonymic connection with the body of Christ.
In European art, the obsession of the materiality of the body becomes
central. This is the kind of sensibility that could easily give us classic and
Renaissance figurations where the body is both a measurement of beauty
and a connection with the divine. No wonder European critics notice and
(are perturbed by) first and foremost the absence of the body in Islamic art,
and finding that there is no body present, their perception mostly crumbles
because all that we are left with is seen as empty decorations.
But in Islam, a faith that is solidly committed to the abstract notion of
the Divine, mimesis becomes a problematic that is intractably associated
with abstractions that are less about mimetic representations than about
interpretation and presentation of the abstract notions of the Divine.
Indeed, this is what Hegel appears to be arguing (although not without
racist undertones) as he critiques an Islamic God whose physical, and unique
body cannot be represented. Art should be able to articulate in images
the “subjectivity and particularity” of an anthropomorphic God since the
purpose of art is “the sensuous presentation of the Absolute itself.”6 Instead,
the Muslim enunciation that there is No god but God is a dead abstraction of
a subrational Understanding, according to Hegel.7 As such, Hegel privileges
a God that materializes in the body – and therefore is visually capturable
and representable – contrasted with the God of “the Jews and the Turks”
that is abstracted and therefore short of verisimilitude:

Such a God, not apprehended himself in his concrete truth, will provide
no content for art, especially not for visual art. Therefore the Jews and
the Turks have not been able by art to represent their God, who does not
even amount to such an abstraction of the Understanding, in the positive
way that the Christians have.8

The Muslim artist, because of his arid religion that controls every aspect of
his life – in these perspectives – is thus thrown outside of nature, cursed
with iconophobia. He is incapable of representation, imprisoned by his

5 Holy Quran, Al-Baqarah, 2.115.

6 Hegel’s 1821 lectures on aesthetics and fine art, quoted by Flood, 49.
7 Ibid.
8 Quoted by Flood, ibid.

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own rigid faith, producing rigid art with no narrative, no verisimilitude,

no mimesis. Shut out of reality itself.
At the moment of the birth of Islam in Arabia in the seventh century
ce, most Arabs were polytheists worshipping a number of pagan idols, the
most common among them (at least for the Arabs of Mecca, we’re told)
being the three daughters of Hubal, the Syrian god of the moon. They
were: Allāt (goddess of the underworld), al-’Uzzá (goddess of fertility),
and Manāt (goddess of fate). Sculptures representing these idols were
prevalent and profuse. It is said that the Kaaba at the time of the Moham-
medan revelation had 360 idols and that every household in Arabia kept
a personal idol at home.9 Although some of these sculptures could have
been imported from Roman territories, it is also doubtless that there was a
thriving community of artists who were making these statues right there
in Arabia, Syria, and the whole region – as there had been for thousands
of years before that.
On the other hand, Christians who lived in the areas of Arabia, Syria, and
Palestine also had a long history of Hellenistic and Byzantine art-making.
One can still witness in Palmyra today (ISIS iconoclasm notwithstanding)
exquisite examples of Arabian and Syrian Roman and late antique art.
Coptic and Roman realistic artistic traditions in Egypt (stretching back
from the Fayoum portraits to the Sinai icon traditions) also extended in
some forms to the Islamic period. Before that, the Assyrians, Sumerians,
the ancient Egyptians, and others have all left the world with remarkable
traditions of monumental art, sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, and paintings.
This is the physical world that the Arabs knew and inhabited before and
after Islam.
So, what happened to all the artists and the craftsmen who for generations
produced all that art in the vast area of the nascent Islamic empire prior to
the prophetic moment? Did they all suddenly disappear overnight? Have
these traditions and professions suddenly ceased to exist along with the
people who created them?

Qusayr ‘Amra

About 80 kilometers outside of Amman in the vast and mostly barren

Jordanian desert lies an unexpected remnant of a large structure that used
to be a royal retreat of around 24 hectares, built sometime between ce 723

9 See Hoyland 2001.

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and 743 by Prince Walid Ibn Yazid in his frolicking years before his short
reign as Calif al-Walid II (743–44). The retreat is comprised of a larger area
that is mostly in ruins now, and a smaller section that used to function as
a reception hall and a bathhouse. What is captivating about this building is
that it breaks several myths surrounding what we commonly have come to
accept about Islamic culture, particularly about its iconophobia and Islam’s
interdictions against the representation of sentient beings in art forms.
The structure is a desert castle and hunting lodge called Qusayr ‘Amra.
It is one of many built by the Umayyads and represents a typical example of
early Islamic art and architecture. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage
site in 1985 “due to its extensive cycle of unique mural paintings.”10 Qusayr
‘Amra’s extraordinary frescoes cover the whole interior of the building
(456 square meters) and unveil, at full display, aspects of Islamic art that
remained unnoticed for a long time.
As you step inside the building, a flood of images lunges at you from all
directions, the walls, the ceiling, even the floors. A figurative image upon
a figurative image, upon another, in different themes and styles, telling
different stories, framed one next to the other – like a Manhattan apart-
ment of an art collector gone mad, or a veritable Warburgian Bilderatlas
Mnemosyne displayed panel after panel of different themes and styles.11
There are women dancing, acrobats jumping, musicians at play, people
with children bathing, people drinking wine, political delegates, the king
at court, Jonah goes in and out of the whale in three frames, the goddesses
Nike and Charis (with Greek captions), even a jovial lute-playing bear. In the
midst of all of that visual immersion, one cannot at the same time escape
the deafening chaotic sounds that come from all of these images, all these
vignettes, and all at once.
The walls at Qusayr ‘Amra echo the sights and sounds of the raucous
parties of al-Walid II. But one wonders if they also served as an inspiration for
the world of play and hedonism that would unfold within them for al-Walid
and his companions. Was the art of these frescoes a visual documentation
of life at the place? Or was it a foretelling of the pleasures to come. Was life
imitating art? or art documenting the physicality and temporality of the
life of the playful future caliph?

10 For more information, including photographs of Qusayr ‘Amra, you may check the World
Monuments Fund page, Qusayr ‘Amra, https://www.wmf.org/project/qusayr-amra (accessed
January 1, 2021).
11 The apparent disparate meanings of the many mural panels might easily make us think of
deploying Aby Warburg’s iconology of the intervals as a new way of reading Qusayr ‘Amra.

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These paintings divulge certain seldom spoken secrets about the culture
that surrounded their production. Dominating the west wall at Qusayr ‘Amra
is an imposing figure of a tall and beautiful woman wearing nothing except
what seems to be a skimpy bikini bottom and readying herself for a dip in
the bathing pool. Other women are looking at her curiously from the side;
and a man to the other side likewise casts his gaze at the naked beauty.
In his work Qusayr ‘Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique
Syria, Garth Fowden cites the unexpected free display of nude art as one
of the striking features of this palace:

Among the features of Qusayr ‘Amra that has always caught the attention
of art historians is the abundance of naked, mainly female flesh displayed.
On the east wall of the apodyterium, for example, a nude man and a half
nude woman flank the window and look at each other, the woman seen
frontally, the man from behind […] In the tepidarium, heavy buttocked
women carrying buckets for drawing water bathe their children in what
are probably Qusayr ‘Amra’s best-known images […] while in the main
hall, in the middle of its west wall, a woman almost totally undressed
emerges from a pool and is gazed at by a crowd of onlookers. (Fowden
2004, 57)

Naturalistic, f igurative, and vibrantly mimetic with a good deal of the

imaginative, the murals of Qusair ‘Amra open up a secular space that seems
to defy Islam’s religious edicts, but in reality stands side by side with them.
The art of this palace discloses the lifestyle of its playboy patron as well as
the cultural mindset of the Muslim ruling elite little more than a century
after the birth of the religion. Al-Walid, an eloquent poet and possibly a
musician, was known as the playboy of the Umayyad dynasty, and he spent
his years pursuing carefree earthly pleasures while, as crown prince, he
waited for his uncle Caliph Hisham to die.
Fowden points to another figure: “on the corresponding soffit of the west
arch, a female dancer clad in bikini bottom, bracelets, armlets, anklets, a
necklace, and a body chain.” The chain stretches around the woman’s body in
a way that accentuates her breasts. Such chains are usually connected with
Greek goddesses, especially Aphrodite. According to Fowden, “Aphrodite
was commonly shown wearing one, as in various Roman pottery figurines
found in Jordan […] [These chains] also feature occasionally in Roman erotic
art” (Fowden 2004, 65–66).
The visual signature of Qusayr ‘Amra is a surprising effect that is not what
we expect to see from the Islamic Umayyad court culture, not only in that

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there is a sense of a confusing array of styles and techniques used in the

frescoes but also in the way that they all stack together inside a semi-official
early Islamic building. Fowden describes this sense of the unexpected:

[The frescoes] also present such a cornucopia of images that they are the
nearest we come to a synthesis of Umayyad court culture. They make us
vividly aware how late antique this milieu was. Studying them, I came to
see the Umayyads if not as late antiquity’s culmination, then at least as its
vigorous heirs – this much of the original project survived. (Fowden, xxii)

Indeed, Qusayr ‘Amra poses a question about what we have been led to
expect from Islamic art. At the time of the construction of Qusayr ‘Amra,
Islam was well over a century-strong religion and a flourishing empire
that by then was ruling a vast stretch from Persia to Andalusia. But this
Umayyad art seems confused and contradictory in its artistic disclosures
that are not quite influenced but directly taken from hereditary traces
that are late antique, Sassanid, Coptic, local Syrian, and Islamic Arab
(Fowden 2004, 73). One wonders about the aim of all this synthesis, this
visual anachronism.
One might argue that Muslim historians do not seem to frequently
mention Qusayr ‘Amra – probably in an attempt to elide this incongruent
aberration of Islamic iconography, if not Islamic life. At best, the view of
the rein of the Umayyads has been that it was already a corrupt and worldly
monarchy that invented an Islamic hereditary kingship system and is known
for its decadent opulence, hedonism, and all.12 But again, could this also be
fake news and just Abbasid propaganda?
On the other hand, one could claim that the figurative representations
found at Qusayr ‘Amra were the one black swan that proves – despite the
existence of endless white swans – that not all swans are white. Is this the
proof that Islamic art is not iconophobic?
The (relative) verisimilitude of the figurative images at al-Walid’s Qusayr
‘Amra palace is not the only cause for surprise. A simple scan of the images
found at the palace clearly reveals that the different panels use a cornucopia
of various artistic styles. For example, the bathing woman seems to have been
painted in late antique, Sassanid, Byzantine/Arab styles and what seems to
even harken to Renaissance art (her figure and pose is quite reminiscent of
a Botticellian Venus). Further, inscriptions on the walls are both in Arabic
and Greek, thus emphasizing the multicultural aspects of the design concept

12 For more on this, see Fowden’s preface, xx-xxvi.

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Fig. 6.1. Fresco of bathing woman at Qusayr Amra, Jordan. C. Vibert-Guigue (licensed under CC BY 2.0).

for the palace. Can we presume that the wall paintings at Qusayr ‘Amra
were created by local artists and artisans as a reflection of a multicultural
worldview that the Umayyads espoused and wanted to communicate as a
public statement? Probably there is no more emphatic representation of
this sense of the universal that the Umayyads espoused than the poem in
which al-Waleed II’s uncle Caliph Hisham boasts:13

I am the son of Khosrow;14 My father is Marwan

Cesar is my grandfather; my grandfather is Khagan.15

A contemporary observer might easily ignore the Umayyad palaces as

simply the product of a degenerate dynasty that barely lasted one century

13 Hisham here is boasting of his own multicultural familial lineage but clearly also with a
nod to his universal claim to the lands and diverse culture he rules.
14 Sasanian King of Kings of Iran.
15 Turkic emperor.

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Fig. 6.2. Bust of the standing caliph statue from Hisham’s Palace (Khirbat al-Mafjar) now at the
Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem (licensed under CC BY 2.0).

(out of Damascus),16 and which, from the beginning, was more worldly
and profane than sacred and sanctimonious. It could also be argued that
the Umayyads did not have the artistic mastery and innovation to create
a new Islamic art and therefore needed to borrow from the arts of the
Byzantines, the Christians, and the Sassanids. All of that could have made
a convincing argument until we realize that probably the most important
monuments of Islamic art, the prototypes of what we today still consider
to be among the best in sacred Islamic art throughout history also came
from the Umayyads: the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, the Dome of

16 The Umayyads continued to rule in Andalusia for about another 300 years with the disintegra-
tion of the caliphate of Hisham III of Córdoba in 1031 into what is known as the kingdoms of
al-Tawaif (Taifas).

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the Rock, and the Great Mosque of Córdoba. One can imagine that to the
Umayyads, there was a place and an art for the sacred, and a place and an
art for the secular.

Black Swans Everywhere

Islamic figurative representation is the worst-kept secret in art history:

“figural painting was common place,” asserts Marshal Hodgson (1964, 248)
in “Islâm and Image.” Historians have for long known of the existence of
such works at least in manuscript illustrations, murals, architecture, pottery,
mechanical devices, government-struck coins that bear the image of the
ruler, etc. Oleg Grabar, an authority on Islamic art, argues in correspondence
with Hodgson, “That Islamic iconoclasm was somewhat ‘marginal’ to Islam
must be repeated over and over” (Hodgson 1964, 260).
Grabar divides Islamic interest in figurative representations along the
lines of social classes. He finds that Islamic aristocracies developed a certain
artistic expression that could be found in Umayyad palaces, Fatimid treas-
ures, Ilkhanid or Timurid miniatures. These styles that were preferred by
the aristocratic elite, argues Grabar, set the tone of an artistic taste that he
says was rejected by the masses. Conversely, he explains, “[p]opulism and
commercialism developed their own art, namely, Maqamat illustrations
and Persian pottery” (Hodgson 1964, 260). In that sense, both classes seem
to have a favorite form of figurative art.
Syrian art historian Afif Bahnassi, who was a long-time general director
of antiquities and museums in Syria, catalogued a vast heritage of figurative
Islamic art that extends all the way back to Qusayr ‘Amra and before. In his
Arab Aesthetics (1979), Bahnassi notes that figurative art in Islam has a long
history and in many instances was state-sanctioned and commissioned by
the head of state, the caliph. Bahnassi provides examples of Umayyad desert
palaces from al-Heer palace in the Syrian desert, Khirbat al-Mafjar (Hisham’s
palace), Qasr Mshatta (Winter palace), and others. These palaces put on full
display amazing stone engravings of real and fantastical creatures as well
as sculptures, frescoes, and mosaics representing humans, animals, and
wildlife (Bahnassi 1979, 52). Caliph Hisham ben Abdel Malek is believed to
have commissioned at least two statues of his likeness, one at the western
al-Heer palace and the other at Khirbat al-Mafjar palace in Jericho. Al-
Mshatta palace, like the other Umayyad palaces, displayed both figurative
representations as well as abstract engravings, both inside and outside the
structures (ibid., 56) – thus underscoring the public aspect of these palaces

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(which functioned mostly as semi-governmental edifices combing private

and public interpretation of space). Bahnassi describes the exterior facade
of Khirbat al-Mafjar palace:

Atop the façade of the building is a row of statues, of which three are
topless females. On a different side, we see sculptures of various animals
including a leopard. By the right arch, we find the statue of a man resting
on his right side and a woman sitting next to him in a style reminiscent of
the funerary art of Palmyra. The Eastern wall facing inward was decorated
with a sculpture of a horse-mounted warrior armed with a bow and arrow,
next to it a man seated on a throne with his legs extended on a stool (only
the lower parts of the statue remain). On the same side is a sculpture of
an eagle with its extended wings. (Bahnassi 1979, 57)

Bahnassi mentions that among the sculptures was a statue showing a

voluptuous woman in mid-movement clothed only by a transparent cover
that seems closely fitting exposing her features. Another, among the many
human statues, is one that depicts a woman who is shown topless with the
head missing.
The facades of the Umayyad palaces present an enigmatic situation
to the observer. Usually, we tend to think of Islamic architecture as
mostly an interior affair, where exciting things usually happen on the
inside leaving the outside generally foreboding and uneventful. These
facades are striking in that they fuse/ con-fuse the interior with the
exterior and the public with the private. Can we speak of a new artistic
vocabulary that is being constructed by princes who have come to
Syria from the Arabian desert and managed to incorporate the arts and
practices of their new subjects with a synthesis that expresses both their
(multicultural) worldview as well as the passions of their new religion?
Although the Umayyad aristocratic styles continued to keep their most
precious treasures (and pleasures) on the inside, Umayyad princes were
not shy nor embarrassed to put on full public display their artistic taste
and their worldview. This dual private/public operation of state palaces
is something that we will not see in Europe well until the Renaissance
or even after.
The public display of f igurative images of humans was a casual
expression of taste for public art that seems completely ambivalent to
the presumed religious general discomfort with images. But then – the
Umayyads were quite notorious for being lax with religion and rather
more worldly than devout. What about the Abbasids? They are surely

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more serious and reverent and would not engage in the monkey business
of topless statues and public display of eroticism. The Abbasid’s claim
to the caliphate was, after all, that they were direct descendants of the
Prophet and as such more worthy of protecting the religion, delivering
the faith, and leading the faithful.
Nevertheless, the Abbasids too led massive architectural projects,
especially after moving the capital of the caliphate from Baghdad to
Samarra. According to Bahnassi, the Abassids built many grand palaces
with exquisite architecture demonstrating examples of their own sense
of Islamic art. One of these palaces was Beit al-Khilafa (state house), also
known as Jawsaq al-Khaqani palace which was built by al-Mu’tasim in
836 and completed by his half-brother al-Mutawakkil (822–862), who was
known to be a particularly pious ruler. Al-Mutawakkil also oversaw other
large architectural projects in Samarra including the wonderful Samarra
mosque with its famous swirling minaret.
Jawsaq al-Khaqani palace is considered among the largest of its kind in
Islamic history. Almost a small city, it extended for 700 meters along the
Tigris river with large gardens, running water pathways, vast courtyards with
a famed pond, a small garrison, a number of mosques, residential quarters,
and possibly a prison. German archaeologist Ernst Emil Herzfeld (1879–1948)
is credited with excavating much of Samarra’s Abbasid architecture (initially
in 1911–13). Herzfeld was meticulous in preparing maps and floor plans
for much of the site and provided copious records and photographs of the
various artistic treasures of the palace.
Jawsaq al-Khaqani included a number of administrative facilities and
fulfilled a number of functions including being a public/private space.
Al-Mutawakkil would hold court in the Throne Hall with the general public,
who would enter through what is called Bab al-‘Amma (people’s gate) on a
weekly basis. The Throne Hall (reception court) was a vast rectangular room
covered by a domed ceiling. There were doors on each side of the room: one
led to the caliph’s private oratory, another to a bathhouse, and another to
the calif’s personal private quarters (harem).
The Throne Hall, the harem, and the bath house all contained frescoes
with nude female figures and hunting scenes. Other parts of the palace
(publicly accessible) also had figurative frescoes, human statues, and paint-
ings of birds, animals, dancing girls along with Arabic inscriptions, and
Arabesques. In fact, the existence of figurative art was widespread and
common enough that archaeologists would frequently find examples of
murals, ceramics, and other works that casually show human representations
in private citizens’ homes (Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin).

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The Body’s Disclosures

One can only confront images from the standpoint of the present. An image
constructed in a precise moment in time at a precise place is nevertheless
born out of the sedimentation of the visual memories of its pasts and the
spaces that extend it visually to all the geographies and chronologies lead-
ing to its reception today. Georges Didi-Huberman in Confronting Images
observes that art historians fail to engage with the underside of images
which harbors limits and contradictions. He calls for “an archaeology of
things forgotten or unnoticed in works of art since their creation” (2005, 1).
One might even call this a state of disclosure. And as an Umayyad mural or
a sculpture discloses itself in the present, it becomes impossible to extricate
the totality of the histories of art, of politics, and the geographies that
strongly emanate from that work – defused, and certainly not a secret
any longer. The figurative in Umayyad art not only confronts what the eye
refuses to see about the history of Islamic art but violently pulls us deep
into a complex and complicated visual memory that reaches the brims of
historical self-doubt.
The political move in 634 in Syria from Roman to Islamic rule did not
create wholesale cultural identity shifts overnight. In fact, the area remained
multi-ethnic and multireligious for hundreds of years thereafter (and
continues to be so to this day, in fact). And, as the Muslims were inventing
a new civilization, the creative, technical, and professional skills of the
indigenous population did not suddenly morph into whole new modalities.
Quite to the contrary, the artistic reverberations of the region’s multicultural
sedimentations seem to have never stopped reverberating even as the radical
new message from Arabia was taking hold.
In anthropology, Edward Burnett Tylor coined the term “survivals” to
refer to cultural phenomena that outlive the set of conditions under which
they initially developed. Tylor describes survivals as

processes, customs, and opinions, and so forth, which have been carried
on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in
which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and
examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been
evolved. (Tylor 1920, 16)

In linguistics, the term refers to words that exist in a certain language

but have no corresponding referent in their current geography and thus
indicate that the language was born in a different geography, climate, etc.

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Survivals use the inconsistencies of language, geography, and culture to

make disclosures about hidden narratives that otherwise lie out in the
open – totally unnoticed.
The problem of the nudes of Qusayr ‘Amra, of the human statues of
Hisham’s palace, and of the lifelike representations of Samarra is not that
they conflict with a visual narrative that we want to maintain about the
cultural and visual life of Islam. It is not that Muslim clerics were happy to
see frescoes with nude women all over public (Samarra) and semi-public
buildings (western al-Heer, Khirbat al-Mafjar, etc.), nor is it that figurative
paintings were allowed inside houses of worship. But what the presence of
this figurative iconography discloses clearly is that there was an acceptance
of a secular art practice alongside sacred arts. Hidden in plain sight, Islamic
figurative wall art functioned like survivals in their disclosure of a pluralistic
Islamic culture capable of creating a separation between the sacred and the
secular, and hosting (not without a great deal of unease and strife) recurring
manifestations of both the orthodox and the heterodox in art, philosophy,
religion, and the sciences.
However, Islamic figurative images cannot be easily described as surviv-
als in an anthropological sense because they never departed, they never
physically left “their original home,” as Tylor would say – except by force of
ideological and political omission. They remain as iconographic evidence
right inside the field of vision, albeit unintelligible, often molested but never
fully erased.17 Not acknowledging Islam’s figurative art may be seen as an
act of public active forgetting in which a culture hides its shame.18 But what
happens when the (figurative) image is locked into a visual amnesia, in a
form of dissociation or visual elision of sorts in which a culture becomes
unable to acknowledge certain elements within its own history.
The murals of Qusayr ‘Amra surface in the form of an afterlife, or nachleben.
Aby Warburg theorized the afterlife of antiquity (Nachleben der Antike) as
a way “to make sense of the survival of archaic practices into the present”
(discussed in Georges Didi-Huberman2002, “The Surviving Image”).19 We can
read the Islamic figurative representation of the Umayyads both as a survival of
pre-Islamic cultural practices into the Islamic period, but also as an afterlife of
these images in the aftermath of their elision by cultural historians thereafter.

17 Historians frequently speak of occasional effacement of f igurative art – but that would
have been an exception more than the rule.
18 Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals (1996 [1887]) argued for active forgetting
as a way of “preserving mental order, calm and decorum” (39–40).
19 See Didi-Huberman 2002.

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From a wholly different perspective, one could observe that the thing
about Islamic figurative art is that it strongly contradicts the philosophical,
theological, and ontological underpinnings of Islam’s abstract art. But this
contradiction might be precisely the point of being able to refer to Islamic art
as a coherent concept. This bringing-to-the-present becomes an anachronism
not only with the present but also with other art forms of the time of their
creation, namely the sacred arts of Islam seen in calligraphy, arabesque,
and geometrical designs.
Figurative representation in Islamic cultures throughout their history
articulate a certain dialectics of past and present, of the sacred and the
secular, and a collision of cultural memories that are yet to be acknowledged.
To acknowledge these collisions requires that we think of Islamic art as a
constellation of multiple modes and forms that are rich and diverse enough
that they are not necessarily consistent or generalizable. The Abstract in
Islamic art history should be considered only in its conjunction with the
figurative – not as a contradiction, but rather as a singular appearance, a
cultural gesture that is in communion with the ontology of Islamic culture
itself.
Representation of sentient beings in the history of Islam goes well beyond
painting of course. We see sculptures of humans and animal forms that go as
far back as the Umayyad and Abbasid palaces, through the magnificent lions
in Alhambra’s Court of the Lions (Patio de los Leones) in fourteenth-century
al-Andalus to a whole consistent variety of objects of metal arts, wooden
arts, textile art, even ivory arts. These so-called minor arts were engaged
in producing usable daily art that was part of the daily lives of ordinary
Muslims whether it was a water pitcher, a pencil box, or an incense burner,
thus enveloping the Muslim in a vast repertoire of figural and beautiful
objects that occasionally take the shape of a bird, a lion, a horse, and at
times the shape of human and fantastical figures as well.
It becomes doubtless that this missing body of Islamic art is not missing
at all. Hasn’t it been there all the time? At different times and different
geographies? and in different modes? If iconophobia is not a true factor
here, then what is the cause of the claim that Islamic art is incapable of
mimesis? Why has Islamic art not followed in the Renaissance tradition
of the emphasis on natural representation? On the other hand, one might
wonder even now – now that we have excavated the body in Islamic art
– whether it is also true that this body is far from naturalistic, short of the
verisimilitude and linear perspective bequeathed to us by the Renaissance?
Why does Islamic art – even in its figurative forms – still seem stylized,
caricatured, purposefully unnaturalized. Even at the point of mimesis,

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Islamic art seems more concerned with creating inspiring and abstract
allusions than convincing and realistic illusions?

Geometry of the Soul

In the avoidance of direct representations of the Divine, Islamic artists

sought to create an alternative aniconic vocabulary that rejects the whole
system of mimetic representation as the only form of visual expression.
In discovering the power of non-representation to communicate complex
and abstract ideas and ideals, Islamic art begins to free itself from the
falsehoods of the imitation of nature (as a singular mode), and instead
creates new non-mimetic, non-narrative, non-analog forms of visual
expression that do not deceive the viewer by appearing to imitate reality.
After all, all realistic art is a form of trompe l’oeil. Islamic art will draw
upon intuition instead of recognition as a mode perception and will use
geometry, mathematics, and calligraphy as fundamental components of
a new art.
Immanuel Kant considered the prohibitions against visual representations
in Judaism and (presumably) Islam in his Critique of Judgment (1790). But,
contrary to Hegel, Kant seemed to agree that the concrete representation
of reality limited the artist’s ability to communicate “the experience of
the sublime,” and considered “material images as childish devices that
inhibit and limit the imagination.” To Kant, aniconism in Judaism and Islam
typifies an abstraction that “manifests rather than impedes or frustrates
the experience of the sublime.”20
Abstract art is based on the idea of the acceptance of the failure of percep-
tion – that what we see is not always what we get. There is a whole host
of literature on the metaphysics of seeing, but generally, we often have to
accept that we cannot rely purely on vision to determine meaning.21 Hence
resorting to abstract creative expression, versus verisimilitude, liberates the
concrete referent of representation altogether and goes straight to what lies
beyond the outer appearance of the organic.
Islamic art begins to develop new forms of expression rooted in the outer
manifestations of language, in the written word (as a visual sign-vehicle
that is used to signify Islam’s unseeable sacred truths and the eternal mes-
sage of the Quran, a literary text), in mathematics, in geometry, and in the

20 See Flood 2017, 48.

21 See Akil 2016.

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construction of sacred spaces. This clothing of Islam’s spiritual truths in

artistic abstraction becomes a form of veiling that unveils. It becomes the
covering that enables us to see the contours of the non-observable, and as
such, makes the unseeable visible. As the Muslim artist engages in a form of
translation from the realm of the invisible to the visible realm, he actually
engages in something like a digital pixilation that translates truths without
getting stuck in naturalistic analogous copying.
Islamic art’s use of abstract lines, calligraphy and geometric shapes has
been repeatedly accused of being merely ornamental or decorative and that it
only serves the excesses of empty visual intrigue. When Claude Levi-Strauss
bemoaned in Triste Tropique “why did Moslem art collapse so completely […]?”
his immediate response was not only that “[t]his must have been the result
of the rejection of images,” and that Islamic art was “deprived of all contact
with reality.” But his most contemptuous protestation was that Islamic
abstractions were devoid of meaning, incapable of symbolism, and obsessed
with gold. He says of the Muslim artist: “the artist perpetuates a convention
which is so anaemic that it can be neither rejuvenated nor refertilized. Either
it is sustained by gold or it collapses completely” (2012, 400).
To Levi-Strauss, Islamic art in architecture was mere ornamentation that
is abstract and unsatisfying – the structure itself reflects a spatial void and
depends on disjointed abstractions. He says of his experience of the tomb
of the Mughal emperor Nasir-ud-Din Muḥammad (1508–1556), known as
Humayun, that the tomb “produced in the visitor the uneasy feeling that
some essential element was lacking. The whole edifice created an impressive
mass, every detail was exquisite, but it was impossible to discover any organic
link between the parts and the whole” (2012, 397–398).
Repeatedly, it seems that Levi-Strauss’s problem is not with Islamic art
per se, but with Islam itself. He describes Islamic mausoleum architecture
as a “niggardly abode” (401), and instead of accepting that Islamic art reveals
the sacred truths of Islam (as Seyyd Hussein Nasr argues repeatedly),22 Levi-
Strauss believes that Islamic art conceals Islam’s moral and religious failings:

This seems to be symbolic of Moslem culture which accumulates in the

most subtle refinements – palaces made of precious stones, fountains of
rose-water, dishes of food coated with gold leaf and tobacco mixed with
pounded pearls – and uses them as a veneer to conceal rustic customs
and the bigotry permeating Islamic moral and religious thought. (Levi-
Strauss 2012, 401)

22 See Nasr 1987.

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Levi-Strauss is not alone in his disparaging views of Islam as a religion

incapable of modernizing its “rustic customs,” or of Islamic art as inca-
pable of realism and iconographic representation. But could it be true
that all these geometric designs, all the calligraphy, the patterns, are no
more than an escape from mimesis, mere ornamentation, a sign with
no signif ication except as an expression of the aridity and the void that
Islam brings?
French artist and theoretician, Albert Gleizes (1881–1953), uses Islamic art
as an example of empty and pointless ornamentation. While also making
indirect connections between Islamic art and modernist art, Gleizes cau-
tioned cubist artists to “avoid reducing the picture merely to the ornamental
value of an arabesque on an oriental carpet” (Flood 2017, 54).
Lines of connection between Islam’s aniconic arts and modernist abstract
art have been made frequently. This is not a new discovery. Kandinsky
commented on the antinaturalism of Persian art, making “inevitable”
comparisons between his work and “Muhammadan carpets.”23 But it was
Le Corbusier who loathingly described cubism as no more than “revalorizing
a nonrepresentational ornamental aesthetic, an antique mode of art-making
common to ‘Mycenaeans, Orientals, and Negros.’”24
However, as modernists were discovering the failure of naturalistic
representation as a form of meaningful expression, attempts were also
being made to rediscover the meaning of Islamic aniconic art beyond
ornamentation. In his essay on the subject, F. B. Flood states that “[t]he
perceived flight from mimesis in Islamic art might still be condemned by
some, but for others the abstraction of Islamic art now paved the way for
its enthusiastic comparison with the burgeoning products of twentieth
century Euro-American art” (53).
Leading Islamic art historian Oleg Grabar argues in The Formation of
Islamic Art that it is crucial to stress that Islamic art should never be thought
of as mere ornamentation. He says that the mosaics we witness whether at
the Umayyad palaces, the Grand Mosque of Damascus, or the Dome of the
Rock, in effect represent abstract forms or expression even as they depict
floral or geometric patterns (Grabar 1987, 189–90).
It is true that many observers of art history have for long considered that
Islam brought a halt to late antique art and that Islam’s supposed bilderverbot

23 F. B. Flood mentions further details of the comments by Franz Marc about comparisons
between Kandinsky’s work and Persian carpet designs and colors upon his visit to the Masterpieces
of Islamic Art exhibition in Munich in 1910 (Flood 2017, 53).
24 Ibid.

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emptied Islam of its ability to create adequate representational art. But on

the opposite side, we also find assertions that Islamic art actually gives us
new forms of representation. Austrian art historian Alois Riegl (1858–1905)
finds that only a vibrant continuation and development by Islamic art
could produce arabesque as an art form “in which the antinaturalistic and
abstract quality of all early Islamic art emerges so perfectly.”25 Flood, who
draws upon the work of Riegl in analyzing the development of art in Islamic
cultures, finds that the Islamic ban on images “mitigated the triumph of
the ornamental over the figurative” (Flood, 49).
The modern classifying mind wants to comfortably allocate Islamic art
to easy and consistent categories but the frequent lapses between anicon-
ism and iconic representation seem to challenge the art historian. The
birth of Islamic art, under the Umayyads, from the synthesis of existing
local traditions with a new revolutionary pluralistic worldview was not
an unattended transformation. We clearly see a continuation of mimetic
representations in the art of the early Islam’s Umayyad palaces but at the
same time cannot ignore the theoretical and aesthetic burgeoning of an
aniconic abstractionism that was forming more complex vocabularies in
arabesques, calligraphy, architecture, book arts, etc. The new visual aesthet-
ics of Islam was bifurcated between a tenuous non-abandonment of mimetic
iconography and a novel experimentation with abstract conceptualization
as artistic expression, a type of expression that we will not get to see in full
display until the rise of modernism in the twentieth century – abstract
modernism, avant la lettre. Flood mentions that “Picasso and Pollock were
and remain the most common points of comparison for the abstract qualities
of medieval Islamic art” (58).

Modernism and Islamic Art

The anticipation of modernist abstract art is also underlined by Marshall

G. S. Hodgson in his 1964 study “Islâm and Image.” He says “[y]et I think
there were some instructive anticipations of certain aspects of Modernity
in Medieval Islamic society, and that Islamic iconophobia and its associ-
ated phenomena have some relation to those anticipations” (Hodgson
1964, 221).
Whereas most scholars seem to either ignore Islamic f igurative art
altogether or simply disregard its significance as heterodoxy, Hodgson

25 Cited in Flood 2017, 49.

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makes a remarkable observation about early Islamic art as a precursor to

socialist realism:

I suppose that if Modern populist factualism has its proper art, it is

“socialist realism”– a sort of debasement of that already disemboweled
art called “Academic” – which true artists will produce only if paid to do
so, precisely because it has no symbolic nuance, whatever gross symbolism
it may depend on. “Socialist realism” represents a kind of iconophobia just
as much as does non-objective art, in its own painfully populist way. In
its literalism it even answers to some elements of the Medieval Muslim
artistic consciousness. (Hodgson, 251)

Hodgson’s point about socialist realism becomes clear only when we start
realizing that even at its most representational form, Islamic art exhibits
artistic stylizations that alter the image’s verisimilitude. What the Muslim
artist gives us – both in abstraction and in figurative representative is the
world, not as it is, but the world as God intended it to be; not the world as
we see it, but the world beyond what we see. The realm of presence is only
an icon for the realm of thereafter.
Even with the evident (albeit unexpected) existence of figurative art
throughout the history of Islam, one is inclined to agree with Hodgson
that “Islamic iconophobia, if in some ways a marginal phenomenon, does
represent a significant feature in Islamic culture: a matter of the tone of
the culture, perhaps, rather than of the substance altogether” (Hodgson,
253–54). But what is that “tone of culture”? What does it tell us about the
overall cultural economy that hosts contradictory forms of expression?
Can one still speak of an Islamic iconophobia in a culture that does not shy
away from the occasional iconic representation? Plus, how do we account
for the overwhelming success of Islamic abstract art in its different modes
alongside the presence of figurative representations? Those who are looking
for a coherent and consistent answer that can abbreviate Islam’s 1,400-
year history across vast geographies and varied cultural and theological
experimentations are clearly up for a disappointment.

The Sacred and the Secular

One might argue that a fuller understanding of Islamic art in its totality
must acknowledge the presence of Islamic abstract art only in as far as it is
positioned alongside the continuous existence of figurative representation in

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Islamic art history. It might be argued further that Islamic art can therefore
be understood through consideration of its two modes: a sacred mode
that we have witnessed in the form of abstract representations, geometry,
arabesque, calligraphy, and non-sentient figural representations in houses
of worship and other sacred places; and a second mode that could easily
be described as secular. This secular mode is found in private spaces (like
bathhouse frescoes), in various manuscript illuminations and miniatures,
in the design of everyday objects, and even in public art in state buildings
with functions that are not exclusively religious.26
Some may be perturbed (or at least shocked) at the (obvious) idea of the
existence of an Islamic secular life at all. Some may argue that an Islamic
secular art is a contradiction in terms, at best. A prominent case in point
is the amazing work by Seyed Hossein Nasr (1987) who constantly argues
that Islamic art by definition is sacred art because it can only express the
Islamic doctrine of Tawheed, which means that everything in the world
is an aya (sign) of God’s immanent Truth. While Nasr acknowledges the
presence of figurative representation in miniature art, he considers these
arts as non-central.
The purpose of this chapter is to argue that throughout the history of
Islam, regardless of its temporal geography, Islamic culture has never been
exclusively religious, and that despite popular assumptions, it is difficult to
claim convincingly that Islam has controlled every aspect of life under its
political control. Quite to the contrary, it is easier to prove that lived Islam
has frequently fostered heterodox theories and practices, both religious and
agnostic. This claim is clearly too large for this current article, and should
be argued in further detail elsewhere, but even the most casual glance at
Islamic history will record the various movements that developed in various
degrees of popularity and dominance leading to a historical landscape
that includes scores and scores of doctrines and creeds that grew since the
birth of Islam. These movements would not have existed had it not been
for a certain room for secularity within what we deem as Islamic society. In
today’s terms, we could describe this presence of secular aspects of Islamic
life in terms of plurality and diversity within the public understanding of
the religion itself.

26 Examples of figurative art in state buildings include various semi-public Umayyad palaces,
the Abbasid Caliphate House in Samarra, and Mogul state palaces. Nevertheless, there are those,
like Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1987), who might argue that all Islamic space is a sacred space since
in Islam any space could be used for prayers and is thus sanctified by its constant susceptibility
of being a place for connection with the divine.

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However, for the purposes of this study, we are not too concerned with
the diversity of religious movements that have sprung up throughout the
history of Islam. Rather, the focus of this article remains on the existence
of secular visual practices in Islamic life. These practices may be religiously
ambivalent but are not to be viewed necessarily as anti-religious. In other
words, the murals of Qusayr ‘Amra could not be argued to be decidedly
anti-religious simply because they represent human figures or because some
of the images are of nude women. As a matter of fact, it might be interesting
to note the casual nature of the nude figurations at Qusayr ‘Amra, and that
in the majority of these images, the visual tone is not erotic at all. In the nude
fresco in the west hall, the painting casually represents a family of naked
women with their children in a presentation that is so very matter-of-fact
that it is even reminiscent of an innocent snapshot of a family bathroom.
In that sense, the term Islamic culture is used in this article to denote the
diverse types of art forms – both religious and secular – that have developed
under political ruling systems that are self-described as Islamic. The point
here is to emphasize that not all of what we consider today as cultural
practices in the history of Islam are necessarily Islamic (relating to the
doctrine per se). In other words, we can describe something as Islamic (or
Islamicate) even though it does not communicate religious ideas by relating
it to lived (or embodied) Islam: the cultural context of its inception. Hence, it
can be claimed that Islamic culture tolerated, even fostered, many cultural
manifestations that could be described as secular (ambivalent about Islam)
or heterodox (critical or dismissive of religious doctrine or popular religious
beliefs). This chapter is an attempt to highlight the practices of Islamic
iconography as evidence of these practices in the visual arts. However, one
can easily find similar practices in the music, fiction, philosophy, and most
notably poetry of Islamic traditions.
But what discernments can be made in the fissures between Islam’s
public perception as a way of life where every aspect of its citizenry’s life is
governed by laws of Sharia on the one hand, and the unexpected plurality
and inclusivity of a secular Islamic culture?
It is commonly accepted these days, especially among young Muslims,
to think of Islam as a “way of life” that calls for a fatwa for every single daily
practice of one’s life that may not be directly connected with rites or rituals:
from what foot to use when entering a restroom to how long should a man
keep his beard, to the length of one’s thobe, to what prayers to say when
getting into an Uber, or whether it is permitted to send nude pictures on
Facebook, etc.

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It is possible to also ask the elementary but essential question about

the connections between Islamic art and Islam. Do we have to assume
that all Islamic art is by definition Islamic? Or is it possible to posit the
existence of a secular art within what we otherwise classify as Islamic or
Islamicate? The desacralization of art that we eventually begin to witness
with the European Renaissance, one might argue, has been predated by
an art that came about in Islamic culture and that could be described as
purposefully secular. In fact, there is a commonly accepted notion among
Muslims that Islam’s bidlerverbot is only applicable (if at all) to the use of
specific sacred iconography and only inside houses of worship. The purpose,
naturally, is to avoid the worship of idols, or “shirk.” The Umayyad and
Abbasid (as well as Mughal and Ottoman) rulers felt comfortable enough
to commission all kinds of figurative works – while remaining the leaders
of the faithful – simply because they, as well as their audiences, understood
that this type of art had no religious purposes or connotations whatsoever.
It was a secular art that was intended for secular purposes – unlike the art
displayed in mosques, mausoleums, and other sacred spaces.
Therefore, it cannot be ignored that there has always been – along with
Islamic religious art forms – a rich, long-lasting, and unstoppable secular
Islamic visual culture. Examples abound and can be evidenced in the fresco
paintings of Umayyad palaces in the seventh century, the life-size human
sculptures of Umayyad and Abbasid palaces of the seventh through the
eighth century, the mechanical and industrial inventions and scientific
manuscripts of the ninth through the thirteenth century, figurative repre-
sentations in miniatures from the thirteenth century through the modern
period, daily and architectural objects from door handles to water pitchers
to the lions at Alhambra.
In these cultures, there remained an occasional diversity of thought and
practice that did not necessarily account for an effective role for religion.
That Islam controlled every aspect of the daily lives of its citizens (which
many rulers frequently attempted but not always successfully and never
for long) is a belief that many in the Islamic world and outside hold strongly
these days. But the majority of people under Islam carried on in their lives
with practices that were either only indirectly influenced by religion, or
not influenced at all. Although these heterodox or ambivalent practices are
observed most clearly in poetry, which is Islam’s dominant art form, they
can also be detected in a vibrant visual culture that went on using figurative
representations along with abstract figurations with a true ambivalence
towards true or assumed bilderverbot.

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One of the most captivating images at Qusayr ‘Amra is the mural entitled
Six Kings. The painting depicts all the world leaders of the time having
gathered to give respect to and to acknowledge the preeminence of Caliph
Walid II as the first among kings. This is an almost Davos-like photo op
featuring Caesar, the Byzantine emperor, the Visigothic King Roderic of
Hispania, the Sasanian emperor, Khosrow, and the Negus of Aksum. We
know these are the represented characters because their names have been
inscribed in both Arabic and Greek on the mural. The remaining two kings
are not clearly named, but have been hypothesized to be the rulers of China,
India, or a Turkic leader.
Although it is undeniable that the historical world of Islam has created a
general worldview, we should also remember that historical Islam included
multiple cultural, ethnic, and religious identities and extended from Spain to
India through Africa, Central Asia, India, and occasionally parts of Europe.
The Six Kings fresco shows the major kings of the known world showing
allegiance to al-Walid II, who as a caliph would rule over not only a Muslim
population but a world empire. There is no doubt that although the Umayy-
ads ruled over an Islamic empire, their citizenry remained multi-ethnic,
multilingual, and multifaith. The concept of the Ummah (or Nation) was
understood and codified under the Prophet in the Medina Constitution
specifically in ways that acknowledged the citizenry of both Muslims and
non-Muslims under Islamic rule.
The connection between Islam’s figurative art (as an indicator of the
secular) and its abstract/geometric art (as an indicator of the sacred) should
not be seen as a contradiction. To the contrary, this connection might easily
be taken as evidence of a cultural simultaneity that reflects the diversity of
cultures, languages, and traditions, even theological beliefs that constitute
lived Islam, which has always been both religious and secular at the same
time.

References

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ibility of Imru al Qays’ Mu’allaqa through the Lens of Critical Discourse Analysis.”
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Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2002. “The Surviving Image: Aby Warburg and Tylorian
Anthropology.” Oxford Art Journal 25, no. 1: 59–69. doi:10.2307/3600420.

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———. 2005. Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art.
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Hodgson, Marshal G. S. 1964. “Islâm and Image.” History of Religions 3, no. 2: 220–60.
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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996 (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic, translated
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Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 2012. John Weightman, Doreen Weightman, and Patrick
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About the Author

Hatem N. Akil (Valencia College) is a visual culture researcher who is

interested primarily in the perception and representation of Arabs and
Muslims. He earned his PhD in Texts and Technology from the University
of Central FL. Among his publications “Cinematic Terrorism,” “The Martyr’s
Vision,” and the monograph The Visual Divide between Islam and the West
(Palgrave, 2016).
h.akil@snhu.edu

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