First person account: Of the American Illustrated Quran art exhibit

Thanks to Chris C. in Los Angeles for this report. I’ll add my comments at the end.
Ronin

Dear Ronin Bulldog,

Here is my first-hand report on the American Illustrated Quran:

The “American Illustrated Quran” art exhibit of Sandow Birk opened today at the Koplin Del Rio Art Gallery in Culver City. The show will run through the end of October. Visitors are shown about 30 panels painted on paper with ink, acrylic and gouache. An additional 30 panels are being shown simultaneously in San Francisco. The entire Illustrated Quran project will consist of over 300 panels, and at some time in the future, they will be published in book form. Each panel contains 10 or so verses of the Quran surrounded by a contemporary scene somehow related to the text. For example. the scene of an airport waiting room filled with passengers is conjured up by the Quran verse 30:9 –”Have they, then, never journeyed about the earth and beheld what happened in the end to those deniers of the truth who lived before their time?” In a subsequent panel one sees the tourists at Palenque or some other Aztec ruin.

The artist has painstakingly hand-lettered the text from the Quran, and his attention to detail is commendable. The illustrations are imaginative, and his rendering of people and things is realistic. Mr. Birk has done an excellent job with the subject material he had to work with.

If one is looking for a theme that ties the panels together, it would be best described as “Quranic persuasion,” This was typified by William Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam as: a) a description of a calamity, b) who were the victims, c) what they did to deserve their doom, and d) why this was Allah’s punishment. The illustrated calamities included Hiroshima/Nagasaki, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, tornadoes in the Midwest, forest fires in the West, and, of course, the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City. The best outcome of this exhibit, from an Islamic point of view, would to be to scare the daylights out of non-believers.

On the other hand, the illustration for the promised paradise for the believers wasn’t exactly worth dying for: A bunch of middle-aged people are sitting across each other on a picnic bench having a barbeque with dishes of fruit and plastic bottles of water. (See the text in Surah 37:38) No sign of bashful, dark-eyed virgins or the immortal young men described in Surah 76:15. If someone is looking for uplifting inspiration from this exhibit, they will be disappointed.

When I visited the gallery around 4 pm on opening day, I was the only visitor.

Chris C, Los Angeles

Thank you Chris,

I do not mind the art exhibit as much as the hypocrisy. By your account, the exhibit shows all calamities manmade and natural were directly attributed to the mythical “allah”. Some sort of divine punishment. That works fine for Nagasaki, New Orleans and other things that affected the evil westerners but missing were calamities suffered by muslims. All islamic nations suffer from a lack of moral character, corrupt leadership, oppressed basic human rights, low standards of living, education and archaic legal systems. By using the logic of the event, the mythical “allah” is not only punishing the entire islamic world-he/she is kicking their collective asses.

Although I am not surprised by the low attendance, I have to ask you for one more favor. I expect to see high praise for this “art” in your local press accompanied by smiling local dignitaries and smiling local muslim community leaders. Please forward those accounts if you see them. I love to destroy silly propaganda pieces.

Thank you for the first-hand account.

Ronin.

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