بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,  “the First and the Last, the Outer and the Inner,”  who made his creation beautiful and without flaw, and inspired it (literally “blew into”) with His spirit.  And peace be upon his Messenger Muhammad, who took care, not only of the people around him, but the creatures and objects, naming them and showing them love and respect.

“There is an ancient saying in the East: the artist is the person who has chosen perfection inside reflected in the work beyond.” (Faig Ahmed, Azerbaijani artist, the carpet as cultural metaphor. )

Last night I saw a programme on the BBC, Handmade in Africa: Kora on an important aspect of tradition attitudes, one which Olson did not mention in his series, perhaps because it related to actions rather than to belief – his field is theology.  However, in Islam, beliefs and actions are very closely connected, which is why when Allah mentions belief in the Qur’an he links it with doing good deeds, “الذين آمنوا و عملوا الصالحاتthose who believe and do good deeds.” Actually, in life beliefs and deeds are connected – or they should be.

In the programme, the Senegalese craftsman showed us how to produce a musical instrument – the Kora, which is played by  musicians known as griots who inherit their profession, being born into music. The music and the production of the music is related to religious belief and practice.  He talked about how in order to produce a good Kora, one must have internal equilibrium and be balanced, and upon the straight path, (the siraat al mustaqeem of the Fatiha, the opening surah of the Qur’an).  He also said that he would put his joy into the production of the Kora, and he would sing in order to give him that energy which would go into the instrument. Listening to his singing, I could recognise dhikr, such as saying “La illaha ill Allah – there is no God but God” and other songs with Arabic vocabulary related to worship.

How often do we consider our inner being or whether or not we are on the right path when making something?  Should we not be doing this as believers, and in everything we do?  And if we are not doing so, why not? Is it something to do with modernity? And what is the remedy?

Marx too understood the creative process as enabling the fulfilment of an essential human nature, which is one reason why he was so concerned by the development of factories.

“Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have, in two ways, affirmed himself, and the other person. (i) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and, therefore, enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also, when looking at the object, I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses, and, hence, a power beyond all doubt. (ii) In your enjoyment, or use, of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man’s essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man’s essential nature … Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.^[1]”

Marx and Faig Ahmed agree that the product reflects the inner being.  Which begs the question of why modern products are often so ugly?  Even during the industrial revolution of which Marx was so critical, the machine was more beautiful than nowadays, as a comparison of a steam locomotive like the Flying Scotsman with a diesel locomotive bears testimony. Is it that our inner beings have become uglier, or is it because, as the machine age progressed, we increasingly surrendered our creativity to the machine process?

Marx saw modern production processes as tragic, because they alienated the worker from his product and destroyed his humanity, treating him as an instrument – a thing, a cog in a machine. The machine age has developed exponentially since Marx’s time, and  has caught nearly all humans, including believers, in its tentacles, unless they are blessed.

This is because the machine age and the differentiation of labour and the creation of production systems based upon process rather than skill, is turning humans into a line of code in an algorithm.  This has made it harder for us to embody our religious inheritance.  Early Muslims, in their definition of halal, did not just think about how meat was slaughtered, (and our mechanised methods are a travesty of what halal should be) but were very careful to eat food purchased with money earned from a halal occupation, and produced by someone who was of good character, and that person would further more says prayers and recite verses (dhikr) whilst producing the food.  With our huge production chains, how can we guarantee this nowadays when we do not even know all of the people involved in our food production, still less their characters?  Maybe we work in that production chain.  Can we still reflect our inner being on the thing we are helping to produce?  Is it possible to do this and to put our heart and soul into things in the machine age?

So this is where I am asking readers for feedback.  What is your opinion on this? Do you have any examples of how to do this, from your lives or the lives of people you know?