Tradition and Tolerance
In Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia, Iftikhar Dadi demonstrates how Pakistani artists draw on a range of traditional and contemporary aesthetic practices and intellectual currents. Consistent with Finbarr Barry Flood’s criticism of the post-9/11 mobilization of “Islamic art” against neo-fu...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Brill
2016
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In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2016, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 336-354 |
Further subjects: | B
Pakistani writing in English
Nadeem Aslam
The Wasted Vigil
Bihzad
Persianate miniature
Sufism
neo-fundamentalism
secularism
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Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
Summary: | In Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia, Iftikhar Dadi demonstrates how Pakistani artists draw on a range of traditional and contemporary aesthetic practices and intellectual currents. Consistent with Finbarr Barry Flood’s criticism of the post-9/11 mobilization of “Islamic art” against neo-fundamentalism, Dadi argues that Pakistani artistic works cannot be reduced to performing an anti-hegemonic function. Here, I use Dadi and Flood’s claims to analyze the Pakistani-British author Nadeem Aslam’s mediation of the Persianate miniaturist Bihzad (1465–1535) in his novel The Wasted Vigil (2008). While Aslam reconfigures Bihzad to affirm and interrogate Buddhist and Islamic practices in Afghanistan, he nonetheless privileges a secular, aesthetic critique of neo-fundamentalism. Moreover, athough the scriptures are a source of creativity for Aslam, when decoupled from the arts they mostly inspire violence. This creates a binary between artistic and textual forms of Islam, essentializing art as an embodiment of tolerance. |
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ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
Contains: | In: Religion and the arts
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02003004 |