miscellaneous

The word for 'Man' , insan, is derived (I think) from 'uns' (familiarity, intimacy). As if to say: to be human is to get in the inside, to connect, to be at the centre. I always find it remarkable that people cannot see any beauty in Islam-just as it is a constant source of wonder that some can see none in 'the west'.

"Arabic evolved as a dialect of nomadic herdsmen in the desert, developed into one of the great languages of the world, flexible enough to translate every shade of Greek thought and pass it back to the west...the resulting muslim civilisation was profoundly influenced by Greek thought, but while it assimilated much it was never merely imitative."

--Thesiger.

"The parable of the bee is instructive. As a matter of habit, this insect draws from a diverse variety of sources-pollen and nectar-in order to produce a synthetic product that reflects all the colors and fruits of its immediate habitat. While the honey produced is in some way aggregate of many diverse types of nectar, it is simultaneously something very new and unparalleled. In the end, the bee not only produces a delectable substance but also furthers reproduction through cross-pollination that in turn generates new flowers and restarts the cycle for the future production of honey.

Similarly, in the reconstruction of ideas from fragments, it is often the case that ideas that were once the end products of a constellation of thoughts are now deployed in the reconstructive process as means for different ends."

---Ebrahim Moosa.

Must try and dig up those passages by Burckhardt on the similarities between Celtic art and certain Islamic forms. Firstly, because of its intrinsic interest, and secondly, because it is important that idiots who keep on harping on about Said and the staging of 'the east' think about the possibility that 'the west' has actually had a genuine interest in cultures beyond its own boundaries-an interest that cannot always be reduced to the political.

Of course, you realize that this will grate on the nerves of the polemicists and puritans, for whom synctreticism implies bastardization and impurity. And yet it is worth recalling that there have been times when the East and the West have been open to one another (see Briffault's wonderful 'Making of Humanity')

Peter Brown (from 'Society and the Holy' and 'A Life of Learning')...

"Since the 18th century, we westerners have taken pleasure, and even thought to derive wisdom, from a persistent attempt to project ourselves into the thoughts and feelings of men and women whose claim to our respect was precisely that they were sensed to be profoundly different from ourselves...

[b]ut I had also been challenged by more ordinary things. I was intrigued by distinctive forms taken by the communication of learning among the Muslim 'ulema', by the tenacity of moral codes designed to embrace entire communities...and by the very real poise and decorum which is so striking a feature of so many Muslim in their relationships among themselves and to others."

In the breadth of his sympathies, the depth of his human impulses, Peter Brown offers us here a stark contrast to the nihilism of the fundamentalists and extremists, to those who are by temperament or inclination tempted to believe in only 'one book', and read it in only one way.

And here's Meyer Schapiro, from his wonderful essay, 'On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art':

"..[t]he frequent practice of western artists-in stone, wood, enamel, and paint-to reproduce bits of Arabic writing as an ornament on the borders of their own works...The same admiration for the Muslim's art obtained among the Byzantines, who also reproduced as ornament the forms of Cufic writing...

Yet there is in western art from the 7th to the 13th century an immense receptivity matched in few cultures before that time or even later; early Christian, Byzantine, Sassanian, Coptic, Syrian, Roman, Muslim,Celtic and pagan Germanic forms were borrowed then, often without regard to their context and meaning."