There is no God but He
To represent the week 8 readings and lectures, I decided to create a symbol that I felt captured Sufism as a whole. One of the most important elements of Sufism is dhikr which means remembrance. When Sufis practice dhikr, they often repeat a certain phrase over and over again while doing a repetitive action, such as repeating “There is no God but God” while using prayer beads. I decided to use the medium of knitting because it is also a repetitive task and when you focus just on knitting, it is easy to let go of all thoughts and just focus on the task, and because of this, I think that Sufis would approve of it. I decided to create this symbol particularly for a number of reasons. The first reason is because of Surah 3, verse 2, which states, “allah la ilh ila huwa” or “there is no God but he”. This phrase is called the shahada, where the reciter bares witness to the fact that there is only one God. Usually the phrase reads, “la ilaha ila allah” but occasionally it is substituted for a pronoun. I decided to represent the pronoun because I feel that it demonstrates a closeness and familiarity with God that all Sufis strive for. I chose to have the wow continue to wrap around the word because it reminded me of the skirt of a whirling dervish, moving around endlessly in a circle. The circles around the “huwa” also symbolize the layers of understanding about God. As it was stated in our week 8 readings, “Those who focus on the exterior manifestation of music to the exclusion of its interior form are deluded” (The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, 183). Here, God is the interior manifestation, and one has to go through many layers to get to him. This journey to achieve knowledge and understanding of God is very important to Sufis and one cannot understand music and dance fully until one understands Him.
