The Light of the Prophets

For this project, I created a miniature star paper lamp meant to represent the light of god. In this lamp is a cutout of a “lamp” representative of the prophet Muhammad. The lamp and its cutout demonstrate how the light of the prophet and god are not meant to be viewed as equivalent, but like the cutout’s resemblance to a lamp, the prophet is viewed as one who aimed for a certain likeness to god’s qualities such as mercy, wise-ness, and patience. The other multiple openings in the lamp symbolize all of the other prophets and the idea that they all share the same light with Muhammad, a light which is often described as resting in the palm of god’s hand. What I find to be the most intriguing part of the idea of a shared nur between the prophets is the idea that Muhammad existed before Adam. This project helped me to conceptualize visually what this means in that each opening on the lamp may have been made at a different moment of “time” as we think of it, but the light that shines through the openings has always existed. The prophet’s representation is a cutout because he is not the light itself but the lens through which people on earth can understand god and have access to god. I took photos from multiple angles and had difficulty finding an angle from which the light shined through all of the openings in the lamp.