Stifling creativity in any medium through the threat of force has far-reaching consequences for creativity and innovation in a society for every medium, whether artistic or technological. There is an undeniable correlation between the free exchange of ideas (with the accompanying possibility of errors), and progress in areas well beyond the arts. The process of inquiry, trial, and error that may crank out the "New Coke" of a particular discipline also yields material and intellectual advances we later wonder how we ever lived without. And as soon as that freedom of thought is stifled, great ideas, along with fair ones and lame ones, are shoved in a drawer or never materialize in the first place, and a society is poorer for it while others press forward.
"Poet accused of being enemy of Islam," by Suha Philip Ma’ayeh for The National, October 6
AMMAN // When Islam Samhan recited his poetry about love, loneliness and life in front of a crowd at a culture club four months ago, he was given a standing ovation. But now, Samhan, 27, who is also a journalist, has been accused of apostasy, a crime that can carry the death sentence in the Islamic world.
Last week, Jordan’s grand mufti, Noah Alqdah Samas, the kingdom’s highest religious authority, called Samhan an enemy of religion for his poetry, some of which included lines comparing his loneliness to that of the prophet Yusuf in the Quran.
Now there are calls for the poet to be detained, his collection of poetry banned and the publishing house penalised. He is even receiving threatening phone calls to his private mobile number.
All this comes as something of a surprise to Samhan, whose book, In a Slim Shadow, published eight months ago, is a collection of his best work over the past decade. The ministry of culture even bought 50 copies.
He dismisses claims that he defamed or insulted the prophet or religion with his poems, but acknowledges that some of his verses may sound similar to the Quran because they were in Arabic.
“The Quran is in Arabic and I am influenced by my language and its rich terminology. Where I grew up, the Quran was sung and its music is still playing in my ears. I have read the Quran, and the Arabic language is that of the Quran.”
Defaming religion in Jordan, as in many Arab and Muslim countries, is a line that cannot be crossed. Although citing Quranic verses in poetry or literature is not forbidden, how they are used is what can cause problems.
In one poem, Samhan has his beloved address God, which his critics say personifies God. In another the woman is talking to God while lying beneath a see-through sheet. Samhan said he was referring to the gods of Greek mythology.
The state-run Press and Publication Department has transferred Samhan’s case to court to decide if his book violates the law.
“I have taken a look at the book, and I found in it what is in violation of the law. I have transferred a copy to the court,” Nabil Momani, the PDD general directorate, said. Mr Momani also said that Samhan had failed to register his work with the department, which would mean he was not authorised to publish it. Samhan insists he registered with the department.
Eight years ago, Musa Hawamdeh was charged with apostasy because of a poem he wrote titled Joseph, which Islamists said contradicted the story as it was told in the Quran. His book was banned.
Although he was later acquitted on all charges in both sharia and civil courts, he has been sentenced to three months in prison for violating the press and publication law. His lawyer is appealing the case.
Abdul Hameed Qudah, deputy secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood, said the lines of Samhan’s poetry were harmful to Islam.
“Any delay in taking measures against the writer would be a reason for discord,” he said in a statement posted on ammonnews.net, a popular Jordanian news website.
The controversy has also brought to the forefront issues of freedom of expression in a country where the king has repeatedly said the ceiling is the sky.
It also shows the religious establishment’s intolerance for poets and writers who use religion metaphorically in literature.
Defending a writer’s right to creativity, Saud Qubeilat, head of the Jordanian Writers Association, warned: “One shouldn’t judge poetry based on literal terms, otherwise many of the poets would be declared apostates.
“And if anyone has a say in literature, it should be a literary critic and not anyone from a different field who doesn’t know anything about old or contemporary literature.” “These practices are only to silence the freedom of expression,” said Muwafaq Malkawi, editor of the culture section of Alghad newspaper.
"Methought I saw my late espoused saint"
Why, just think what would have happened to John Milton -- and every other important writer in English since Beowulf and The Exeter Book -- had the same kind of rule applied in Western Christendom, to writers in English. Why, there'd be practically no one left standing, save possibly Wallace Stevens and John Ashbery, and I'm not sure about them.
In fact, it is hard to imagine English literature without the influence of the Old and the New Testaments, an influence that can be seen in Shakespeare and Donne, Milton and Dickens. There are Biblical echoes all over the place, and even in the Hebraic parallelism that becomes so important in the prosody of Whitman and others, including the great sermon-composters.
But Muslim poets are not to mimic, not to copy, not to make literary use of the Qur'an, or the Hadith? Haven't we always been told that while there may be no art, no music, no this and no that, at least there is the great Arabic language, and then come the references to Booksellers' Row, or Mutanabbi Street, in Baghdad, and then to Mutanabbi himself, and other early Arab poets whom, we are assured, are truly wonderful, and we would agree if only we knew Arabic (I'm not inclined to take this on faith).
So the craziness, that limits the outlets for artistic expression, also limits what the "native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can use to transcend the heritage in his own way" because that heritage to be used apparently excludes the very works that are most widely known, that are nearly universally known, and therefore cry out for artistic exploitation.
Nothing will come of nothing, Muslim clerics. Speak again.
Condi gives an annual jizya, from US Tax dollars, not from her pocket, of 2 bil to Jordan
Thank you, Condi.
Sing in me oh muse and let me recount the narrative of the clever marauding pirate Muhammad ibn Abdullah. Unlike Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helen's husband Menelaus, who led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years in a moral way seeking battle against the men in a mano to mano way, Muhammed had the brillant insight that because "the women and children were of them," so Muhammed could morally justify just burning down the entire city knowing that women and children will certainly be killed. Moreover, the clever Muhammed reasoned if the men stupidly surrendered believing his offer of peace, he personally would behead them and then offered the women and wifes for sexual pleasure to his followers and sold them and their daughters into slavery, all as allowed to him by allah his special god by special revelation.
"The Joseph of the heart
is in the pit of the body
and the Bedouin buys him
for eighteen coins."
-Rumi
Yusuf used symbolically and mystically as are all Quranic images in Rumi and with startling abandon. Rumi is at times tiresome but undoubtedly a great lyric poet and wrote in Farsi i.e. PERSIAN A Persian sensibility burrowed into Islam and survived in poetry, also in those Persian miniatures showing Muhammad which museums in the WEST aren't allowed to show anymore for fear of offending (guess who). The human spirit tries to make beauty for itself. Islam, real Islam is the enemy of poetry, beauty, truth.
I find it darkly amusing that this poet struggling to find beauty in his spiritual desert is being made to pay for it.
"There are Biblical echoes all over the place"
And what of George Herbert? And his poems of struggle with his faith, as in "The Collar," "The Search," and "Denial?" Replete, of course, with biblical allusions. Even though his final lines always reconcile himself to God, I don't believe the initial "struggle" stanzas would be permitted in Islam.
Whereas to me the beauty is found in the poet's grappling with the secular and the spiritual, as in my favorite poem of Herbert's, "The Collar," (with pun on Elizabethan "choler). The final two lines have often brought tears to my eyes as the poet discerns God's voice calling "Child!" (cease tormenting yourself!)
"To think of Herbert as the poet of a placid and comfortable easy piety is to misunderstand utterly the man and his poems." -- T.S. Eliot
“Any delay in taking measures against the writer would be a reason for discord..."
Substitute "excuse" for "reason", and you get a more accurate summation.
Embedded in the Qur'an are several challenges to poets and writers to produce something equal to or better than Qur'anic writing. As usual, Islam cannot allow a level playing field or it would quickly lose face.
Islam allows neither criticism nor competition because it couldn't survive either.
Embedded in the Qur'an are several challenges to poets and writers to produce something equal to or better than Qur'anic writing. As usual, Islam cannot allow a level playing field or it would quickly lose face.
Islam allows neither criticism nor competition because it couldn't survive either.
Posted by: former liberal WF at October 7, 2008 4:00 PM
You nailed it. Not only is there no fun in Islam, there are no poets after Mohammed.
All this comes as something of a surprise to Samhan, whose book, In a Slim Shadow, published eight months ago, is a collection of his best work over the past decade. The ministry of culture even bought 50 copies.
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Perhaps the most hideous aspect of Islam, after its brutality, is its utter arbitrariness.
Islam has always been hard on poets--recall Mohammed's having poet Asma bint Marwan murdered for having criticised his integrity, and having two slave girls killed for having chanted satirical verses at their master's behest.
How much better--how much *safer*--even in "modern" Jordan, simply to abstain from creating any sort of art, or even from thinking very much. After all, t might interfere with "holy ignorance".
Tanstaafl wrote:
Not only is there no fun in Islam, there are no poets after Mohammed.
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Actually, Muhammed vehemently denied being a poet, since that might imply that he had written the Qur'an himself. He always presented himself as just an illiterate conduit for the revelations offered by Gabriel--or, conversly, by Satan on that one unfortunate occasion...