Today, I contacted my Arabic calligraphy teacher, after quite a long silence. As my plan is to go to Morocco for a forthnight, I thought I’d like to ask him on things calligraphy in Marrakech. The last time I saw him, when I attended a calligraphy workshop sometimes in winter. I still keep on calling him my teacher, though he no longer teaches me calligraphy. This is not only out of respect but, mainly because we still maintain a teacher – student relationship. Whenever I have questions on Arabic scripts, I still refer to him for advice.
Believe it or not he has no Middle Eastern roots, neither has he lived very long in the Near East – he is born and bred Swiss. Being a trained graphic artist and an illustrator, he was in the position to auto-didactically learn Arabic calligraphy to the point that he was given a scholarship to formally be trained in Egypt. I guess, Muslims among us would ask whether he has any relation with Islam whatsoever, e.g. whether he’s converted or doing a Islam / Arab studies or so. No, no. He is not a Muslim, neither did he take up Arabic or Islamic studies as a student, though his knowledge of written and spoken Arabic is fairly good.
I must say, I admire much of his efforts to go into the unknown and be successful in his endeavour. Imagine the difficulties he faced in finding the learning materials. His sheer will must have helped him through. There was no proper books on calligraphy neither there was anyone in Switzerland suitable enough to show him how to write. He is truly a learning by doing type. My appreciation is much more when he is willing to share and pass on his hard- won know-how.
Due to my calling him “teacher” some calligraphy big shots might ask whether he has received any “ijazet” (a somewhat medieval equivalent of certificate of proficiency in the subject which “allows” him to sign with his own name of the works he completed – meaning the holder has the right to teach too). As far as I know the answer is no, he has none because it will take years upon years, practice upon practice to earn this “ijazet”. That does not make me worry a bit, in fact none at all. I take him to be primarily as a teacher who can satisfy my learning quest. All I need is to learn how to write regardless whether he holds a degree or not.
He does undertake writing projects and teaches adults and kids. Naturally, I have heard of murmurs in the Muslim community of letting their children to be taught by someone non-Muslim. He does undertake certain calligraphic assignments. They are concern about his knowledge of Islam and religion too, thinking that he might be ignorant about the religion. This rather childish idea, that Arabic calligraphy can only be attributed to Muslims is absolutely erroneous. In fact I disagree when some who prefer to call Arabic calligraphy “Islamic” instead. This would imply that the language itself refers to Muslim Arabs. Certainly Lebanese Maronites would not agree. Neither would all the other Christian Arabs communities would. The language certainly came much earlier than Islam, so was the scripts. True, the Muslim Arabs has undertaken the most effort to develop and disseminate the art but, does this mean the script and language is Islamic?
The argument goes further, in a related issue in far off countries like Malaysia, which does not even have a significant number of Arabic speakers. I mean speakers are the habitual user of this language. And, yet there were a lot of consternations (even by the government – which suppose to be multiracial and multi-religious) when the word “God” was translated into “Allah” for the Malay bible circulated in Malaysia. Perhaps it’s best described by Farish Noor comment on his Other Malaysia at : http://www.othermalaysia.org/content/view/144/52/
Back to the subject, my Arabic calligraphy teacher. He assured me that he will collate info and contacts details that he has and will give this to me some times at the end of the month. Apparently he has not much time in between, as he has a lot of training and lessons to prepare. I heard, even calligraphy students as far as the eastern part of Germany is trying to get expertise.
Sometimes, I find this is a strange world, they are quite fair number of people of Middle-eastern origin who are not able to write in their own scripts. I mean this people are not 4 or 5 generations away from their immigrant ancestors that came to Europe. Much less, many of them are the 2nd. generation of these immigrants. And, yet they show very little interest in the scripts their fathers and mothers learned (or not learned) to read (or not able to read) and to write (or not able to write). Instead these interested Europeans (many of them in their 60’s) are much more into this nearly forgotten art. The scripts share very little in common with theirs and yet the interest among them is so high that I find it to be a positively perplexing. Positive, because of it’s contribution to the understanding the middle-eastern culture as well as its arts, which I find is much ignored in the minds of the average people here in Europe. It seems to have been in the realms of the specialists and the connoisseurs.
Friday, June 20, 2008
To blog or not to blog
Hi world,
I discovered blogs fairly naturally from the internet itself, i.e. no one actually told me anything about it and neither have I read this from the press. Being sub- average surfer, I discovered it very late. Initially I thought to myself, these to be average personal web pages of private persons, introducing her/himself to the wired (or weird) world. You know, everyone like to be felt present in this world. Internet provides one with the mean. One need not be a Michael Jackson, or a Michael Ballack or a Michael Moore anymore, to be seen and heard. Never mind, the audience need to search you in the maze of the net, unless you keep on informing them where your pages are.
Then, I realised to my surprise that some include comments on current, future and yet to come issues and some have active participations of the wider internet audience in forms of discussions and posts. Wow, I thought. This is something interesting. This platform is not only to have one presence in the web world felt but most importantly, this is a media to express oneself in electronic prints with some means to design the layouts as well putting images. It costs nothing to publish. Fantastic! You are more or less your own journalist, your own graphic designer, your own art director - of a journal. Albeit, an electronic one. What else, some bloggers indirectly earn part of their living writing blogs, i.e. by receiving fees for adverts appearing on their blogs. Okay, these are the big shots of blogs but, then I’m simply trying to illustrate the possibilities these offer. No, no, I am not trying to find out ways to make money out of these.
Naturally I have subjects that I feel like writing about but, with no audience to address to, it’s not much of a fun. Subjects keep coming and going in my head but, it’s of no value if it simply flies through the ether. My blog is going to be an open one, open to all issues; current, past and future. It will be kind of as it comes principle. All I need is to write it down. I desperately need to. Not to blog would mean a danger to me.
As Charles Bukowski, the beat generation poet puts it:
“These words I write keeps me from total madness”.
Thus, I begin to blog,......................
I discovered blogs fairly naturally from the internet itself, i.e. no one actually told me anything about it and neither have I read this from the press. Being sub- average surfer, I discovered it very late. Initially I thought to myself, these to be average personal web pages of private persons, introducing her/himself to the wired (or weird) world. You know, everyone like to be felt present in this world. Internet provides one with the mean. One need not be a Michael Jackson, or a Michael Ballack or a Michael Moore anymore, to be seen and heard. Never mind, the audience need to search you in the maze of the net, unless you keep on informing them where your pages are.
Then, I realised to my surprise that some include comments on current, future and yet to come issues and some have active participations of the wider internet audience in forms of discussions and posts. Wow, I thought. This is something interesting. This platform is not only to have one presence in the web world felt but most importantly, this is a media to express oneself in electronic prints with some means to design the layouts as well putting images. It costs nothing to publish. Fantastic! You are more or less your own journalist, your own graphic designer, your own art director - of a journal. Albeit, an electronic one. What else, some bloggers indirectly earn part of their living writing blogs, i.e. by receiving fees for adverts appearing on their blogs. Okay, these are the big shots of blogs but, then I’m simply trying to illustrate the possibilities these offer. No, no, I am not trying to find out ways to make money out of these.
Naturally I have subjects that I feel like writing about but, with no audience to address to, it’s not much of a fun. Subjects keep coming and going in my head but, it’s of no value if it simply flies through the ether. My blog is going to be an open one, open to all issues; current, past and future. It will be kind of as it comes principle. All I need is to write it down. I desperately need to. Not to blog would mean a danger to me.
As Charles Bukowski, the beat generation poet puts it:
“These words I write keeps me from total madness”.
Thus, I begin to blog,......................
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