A Reflection

 

By Shahera Nassar

"The taking of one innocent life is like taking all of Mankind... and the saving of one life is like saving all of Mankind" - Holy Qur'an, 5:33.  I’m an Arab Muslim that has lived all her life in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE. I have interacted with people of different cultures than my own. Not just people form the Middle East but also from around the world. Thus, I believe that I have a good understanding and admiration of people of different backgrounds than mine. Although I have always lived peacefully with people of different culture and religion, that doesn’t seem to be the reality in the Middle East. Being a Muslim in the 21^st century is adjacent to being a terrorist that is always angry and blood hungry. But isn’t this our reality in most of the Middle Eastern nations? The greatest controversy in my opinion is the clash between what Islam is and how its portrayed weather by Muslims or westerners. Islam like all other religions is the epitome of peace and forgiveness. It speaks of growth not destruction, love instead of hate, and truthfulness instead of betrayal. But in our world all we see is the contradiction between what Islam should look like and how “Muslims” are acting. We know that in theory Muslims should live as a brotherhood, but all we see is destruction and burning ashes. Although there are many reasons as to why a lot of the Arab world is burning down, like the interference of some western nations and their greed for our lands, but a huge reason for our destruction is in our own selves.  My artwork explains the contradiction between what we should live by and in reality what we are living.

My artwork is called Reflection and is portrayed through a painting done on a rounded glass mirror. I used the top part of the mirror to write a verse from the Quran in Arabic that states “we sent thee not, but as a mercy for all creatures”-Holy Qur’an, 21:107. The downward part I have used the style of drip painting that was an inspiration from the great American artist Jackson Pollock. I used dark colors and red for the lower part, and used the brighter color, which is yellow, to paint the words of the Quran. My goal is to show the contradiction between what Islam really stands for and how it is showed in the Middle East in reality. I used drip painting in the lower part because after researching I have found a discernible similarity between destruction after war images and the way drip painting is portrayed. Both show chaos and unsettled emotions. You can see motion and anger with the way the lines of color clash and how in real life destruction you can see pieces of homes and humans clashing too. I wanted to show the despair of our lowest stages as Arabs thus painting the sadder part on the lower part. And by painting the words of God on top to show that this is what we should aspire to. I used my main platform to show the painting on a mirror. This platform also describes the title of my work. Reflection stands as medium for me specifically and generally us Arabs to reflect and draw conclusions on how our reality looks like and how we can solve it. As I stated above, our real problem isn’t just the intruding nations into our lands, but it’s our attitudes that have caused our real destruction.

One of the main tactics westerners have used to increase their power was by the tactic “divide and conquer”. We have divided ourselves in the first place and built the cracks between ourselves. We failed our selves when we believed that there is difference between a Jew, Christian, and Muslim. We are murdering our nations by causing turmoil over who is more right “Sunni or Shiite.” So the first people to fix the damaged perception of Islam are Muslims. Even though the western media has done its fair share of portraying us as terrorists, we have to work on understanding our religion in its real form so we can live peacefully. It this contradiction that is breaking us apart, judging Muslims by appearance and not content of character is what’s dividing us. As Muslims its our duty to work on what our religion needs us to be so we can shift our nations from a destructed wasteland to heaven on earth. 

SHAHERA NASSAR - June 9, 2015, Dubai