Keys to the Kingdom
I was struck by Professor Asani’s story of someone knocking on a door and proclaiming “it’s me” and being turned away several times by the inhabitant of the house before knocking again and proclaiming “it’s you” and being let inside. This story underscores one of the core tenants of Islam- complete submission to God above the self.
This theme has been universal throughout the course: the idea of creation being brought into existence to worship God, the entire earth as a mosque, the penetration of Islamic law into daily life in predominantly Muslim countries, etc. I feel, however, that it is reflected particularly beautifully in the “The Miracle Play of Hasan and Hussein.” All of the characters in the Imam’s family are poised to undergo terrible suffering as the Imam is about to be killed by his enemies, yet their chief concerns are for others in the family, and their underlying mission is complete submission to God’s ultimate plan, however difficult that might be. This is a paradigm for Muslims across cultures and time- to shape oneself in the likeness of such role models so as to
I chose a coat hanger as a medium to demonstrate the arduous process of molding and shaping something that serves a mundane, worldly purpose into something more beautiful that serves a much higher purpose (i.e. the transition from self-centrism to God-centrism).
Playing on the pictogram theme of earlier lectures, this piece consists of two keys, one created out of the Arabic word for “you” and one similarly created for the word “me”
One can imagine a lock that only opens with the “you” key, and similarly, the void in the lock that can only be filled by God.