The British Museum in London is one of the most visited museums in the world. While it holds the fourth position in terms of annual visitors (4 million in 2022), trailing behind the Louvre in Paris, the Vatican Museums, and the Natural History Museum (London), it is arguably the most significant and influential institution of its kind. The museum boasts a permanent collection that exceeds 8 million objects, making it the largest museum in the world, dwarfing all others. By comparison, the Louvre has only 490,000 in its collection. The British Museum also claims to be the first global ‘public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge’—a ‘universal museum’. To understand the significance of such numbers and claims, the question must be asked: why were museums established, and what purpose do they serve today?

According to UNESCO, there are an estimated 100,000 museums worldwide, 70% of which are located in Europe and North America, and 20% in the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region. Museums are considered to be an essential part of the preservation of historical heritage and local traditions. They are an invaluable cultural and historical resource, independent of politics and ideologies, and are deserving of an unquestionable place in our societies and imaginations. However, were museums created for this purpose?

When the British Museum first opened its doors in 1759, it had a collection of 71,000 items, all bequeathed by a man named Hans Sloane. Sloane’s career as a collector fortuitously began during his time in Jamaica, where he had been working as a doctor on the British Empire’s slave plantations. He later married an heiress to sugar plantations, amassing great wealth that allowed him to accrue even larger collections from around the British colonies. These included rare books, manuscripts, coins, medals, natural history, art, antiquities, and ethnographic materials. In his will, Sloane gifted his entire collection to the British government on the condition that it would be freely accessible to the general British public. His condition was partly met, as the poor were initially excluded, and the British Museum was born.

While what Hans Sloane collected was by no means unique (many rich European aristocrats had similar collections), he set a precedent for just how much one could easily acquire in such vastly different areas (‘all fields of knowledge’) from around the world for no apparent purpose. Sloane cemented the idea that he, as a European, could and would be the custodian of mankind’s knowledge and history, and whether or not he understood the value or purpose of his collections was irrelevant. Serious investigative work could be done later, if needed. In the 260 years since Sloane’s death, the British Museum collection has grown from 71,000 to a staggering 8 million objects through what the museum calls ‘difficult histories’. According to the museum, the acquisitions were made through ‘colonial acquisition and missionary activity’, ‘conflict’ [read: war and genocide], ‘purchase and commissions’, and ‘excavations and donations and bequests.’ While such honesty might surprise some, it shouldn’t. The British Museum is well aware of its dark colonial past and has strategies fine-tuned to deal with criticism. It writes: ‘The British Museum acknowledges the difficult histories of some of its collections, including the contested means by which some collections have been acquired, such as through military action and its consequences.’

The museum is well aware that old colonial tactics are no longer effective, and it has no choice but to at least acknowledge what had previously been denied. The question of returning collections will be dealt with later, or never, it hopes. The British were not unique in this. The French, Dutch, German, and Belgian governments followed the same practices in filling their ‘national’ museums (see: The Louvre in Paris or the Pergamon Museum in Berlin). It was in this period that certain other ‘oriental’ disciplines, such as Egyptology, were born out of a European obsession with the East and its people. The East, home to the oldest of human civilisations, suddenly became a mystery that needed to be investigated. According to Edward Said, the Western speculation of the East (and of itself) is such that the European adventurer, whether a collector, sociologist, artist, or writer, must represent the Orient. Only he, the enlightened man of reason, could illuminate the darkest parts of the world to discover what the irrational native could not bring himself to do. If the native wished to represent himself, ‘it is only credible after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work’ (Said). This practice and belief system formed part of a wide and deeply institutionalised European phenomenon that led to the pillage, exploitation, and an ultimately irreversible transformation of the East. Edward Said called this Orientalism.

‘On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things.’

By representing the Orient this way, the West was creating an equal and opposite impression of itself for itself. There is perhaps no single event that demonstrates this phenomenon better than the conquest of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798. Alongside his army, Napoleon took hundreds of academics, historians, and scientists to document the architecture, objects, and people of Egypt. The resulting studies were the first of their kind by a European colonial power and would pave the way for other Western powers to document the people of lands they would conquer in the same way. The native also began to appear in literature, i.e. Heart of Darkness by J. Conrad, The Jungle Book by R. Kipling, or in the Orientalist Art movement (see the works of John Frederick Lewis). But the physical manifestation of the colonial imagination was exhibited in museums. If one visited a European museum in the early nineteenth century, alongside displays and studies on the natural sciences (botany, etc.), one would find the native and his world on display in glass cabinets and museum halls—as if the Orient was no different than the natural and bestial world. Both were worthy of speculation and theory.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a rapid increase in private collections of objects from the East. While some collections were acquired by private collectors or fortune seekers, the majority of them were taken by government agents directly or by their armies as a result of war (see the Benin Bronzes). So what is the future of the British Museum?

British Museum Today

Though colonialism is long over, British imperialism lives on, and there is no better example of this than in the British Museum. The historical obsession of the British Museum with representing the ‘other’ in its collections has been revealed, but if we look at the museum today, it is evident that not much has changed. One must then ask the question: Has the need to represent the ‘other’ endured in the mind and imagination of the British (and by association, the European)? Furthermore, what tools of rationalisation are being employed to justify the parallel existence of what Said called ‘Orientalism’ and what the British Museum claims to be its ‘ideals and values of enlightenment’? In the language and lexicon used by the British Museum, it writes:

“Enlightenment ideals and values – critical scrutiny of all assumptions, open debate, scientific research, progress and tolerance – have marked the Museum since its foundation.”

The ‘About Us’ page of the museum states:

“The British Museum is unique in bringing together under one roof the cultures of the world, spanning continents and oceans. No other museum is responsible for collections of the same depth and breadth, beauty and significance.”

It is bizarre that a ‘modern’ institution in the twenty-first century can use such lofty imperial-era claims of self-importance which are easily contradicted through a basic reading of history. To the British Museum, it appears that the centuries of British colonial rule, with all its barbarity, violence, and exploitation, are merely an inconvenient footnote. While the rest of the world might have moved on from such brazen public self-righteous rhetoric, the museum is somehow excused and can carry on believing that for it, the age of enlightenment never ended. As a single institution in an increasingly isolated and irrelevant country in European and global politics, it possesses a ‘uniqueness’ and a mission to bring together all the ‘cultures of the world’ that span ‘continents and oceans’—the ‘universal museum’. The audacity of the British Museum to plead ignorance and then celebrate the violent and genocidal history (see the Bengal famine of 1943) that led to it acquiring some of its most spectacular collections could only be understood, not justified, by Orientalism.

“To say simply that Orientalism was a rationalisation of colonial rule is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact.” — Edward Said (Orientalism)

Orientalism as Self-Identification

According to Said, the Orientalist assumes some sort of ownership, precedent, or prior knowledge of the Orient (the ‘other’) to which he refers and on which he relies, not to understand the Orient but to understand himself. The British Museum’s past and recent history indicate that it is going through a self-identity crisis. It is unable to accept that its future can be based on anything other than its colonial-era collections. Acknowledging its ‘difficult history’ is one thing, but taking action based on it is another. The museum and the British government have been so afraid of returning collections that in 1963 the British parliament passed a law that prohibits the museum from returning objects, followed by another in 1983. Without repatriations, the museum will remain under permanent scrutiny. But this is a uniquely British Museum position. In recent years, some European museums have begun to return some of their many contested collections, signalling their acceptance to change with the times. But the British Museum has doubled down. In response to the creation of some unofficial tours by its critics that take visitors through the contested collections, the British Museum followed the trend and created its own tour of twenty-one contested items, naming it a ‘Collecting and Empire Trail’. It appears as if the museum not only accepts the controversy, it wants to be part of it. Such self-awareness confirms that the museum is actively paying attention to what is being said and is choosing to embrace the criticism rather than fight it. Each collection is an intimate part of the museum’s identity, and the controversy says more about the museum than it does about the collection. Losing one object, it seems, would further magnify the crisis.

At present, there are around nine official requests for reparations from foreign governments — all of which have been denied. The Benin Bronzes, a group of sculptures from the historic Kingdom of Benin; the Rosetta Stone from Egypt; and the Parthenon Marbles (Ancient Greek sculptures) are among the most requested. The museum’s refusal represents an exchange of moral power (what the British believe they ‘can do’ and ‘can understand’ vs. what the Orient ‘can’t’), which Edward Said argues is one of the many facets of Orientalism. The British establishment, and to a similar degree, other European governments, view requests from these countries as unimportant because the Orient is seen as the unequal half, and they simply can’t be trusted with custodianship. The arguments for refusal to repatriate are as follows: a) the claimant country lacks the proper facilities for preservation and display, or b) the claimant country is unstable or unsafe, thereby putting the collection at risk. The Greek government, standing as an uncomfortable anomaly being a European state, responded by constructing a dedicated museum with state-of-the-art facilities to welcome back the Parthenon Marbles. The current stance of the British Museum is that by keeping the marbles, ‘the widest possible public’ has access to them, and that because the collection is part of a wider ‘shared humanity’, the British have as much right as anyone else, and arguably even more so because their museum is a ‘universal museum’. Unfortunately for them, in August 2023, it was revealed that several thousand artefacts (the exact number is unknown) had been stolen from the British Museum’s storeroom and resold on the private market. This revelation renewed calls for reparations and exposed the hypocritical position of this antiquated institution.

It is time for the British Museum to reinvent itself. If it truly believes in the ideals of tolerance, diversity, and ‘shared humanity’, it needs to right the wrongs of the past. Only half of its 8 million objects have been fully documented and made available online, and only 1% of its total collection is ever on display in its halls. This idea of the British Museum being a ‘universal museum’, accessible to all, is a myth. Western cities — whether London, Paris, or Berlin — are out of reach for many of the people whose heritage is housed in the museum’s collections. However, a change is underway that could potentially balance the equation.

While the expression of power politics once demonstrated an uneven exchange, a continuation of old-world imperial Orientalism, a number of museums and galleries are opening in the East that are not only challenging ownership but possibly rewriting narratives. The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art in Istanbul have opened up avenues for a new audience to explore art and history. Millions of visitors who might not be able to visit Europe or North America can for the first time see ‘their’ collective history in institutions that carry none of the burden of old European museums. These museums have heavy pockets and are able to ‘loan’ back objects once taken from the East. However, a danger looms that few are giving much thought to: Are these new museums simply mimicking the behaviour of the old European ‘universal’ museums, or are they re-imagining themselves outside of the framework of Edward Said’s Orientalism?

The post The Problem with the British Museum appeared first on Zirrar.

The story of the East is written by the West, and no one else must write or document it without their blessing. The global travel photography industry is monoplised by a few Western institutions, and none more prestigious than National Geographic. An American organization founded in 1888, it runs annual photography competitions that are at par with the Oscars, and over the past half-century, National Geographic has created a homogenised standard and feel of ‘travel photography’. The editorial board have chosen, despite repeated criticisms, a practice of rewarding photographers who depict the ‘poor world’ in a way that attracts the attention of its readers and helps shift millions of its printed magazines.

So, what does National Geographic want?

If you’re a photographer who wants to grab the attention of National Geographic and dream of being shortlisted for one of its many competitions, then you must adhere to the following list of unspoken, yet widely practiced, methods of photographing the non-Western hemisphere:

• Travel to any spot in the world, the more remote, the better. For you, no borders exist, no stories too wild, no pain or tragedy too painful. However, if you’re a photographer from certain Eastern countries, you may not enter any of its competitions to show your land. However, a Western photographer can enter your country (as they usually do) and snatch awards by photographing your land and your people. This manipulation of the rules allows certain places to remain less known, maintaining the allure and mystery for a Western audience.
• Know your audience. National Geographic’s audience prefer the unfamiliar and as long as the native is photographed, no boundaries exist. The native can be naked (entirely), in extreme pain (dying or dead) or practicing their religious rituals, but whatever you do, do not show the ordinary. The East is a zoo. Its inhabitants’ beasts and we must at all costs focus on their unfamiliar existence.
• Ethics are optional. If you’re a photojournalist and you want to stretch the truth, do it. If you’re caught, say you’re a ‘visual storyteller’. Consent forms and privacy? Rubbish. The Eastern world is unchartered territory, consent forms aren’t needed.

Creating the ‘Native’

• The native must remain the ‘other’. They key to successfully creating the native is to demonstrate without doubt the stark differences between the native and us. The native found in remote spots of the planet is different in every way. It is through these differences that identities are created, of the native and of us (the Western audience).

‘poor and in suffering’, ‘zealous and colourful’, ‘observable and spectacle’

• To create opposite identities the travel photographer must create the native (an existing or a new). The lens of the camera will be used to identify and exaggerate the natives attributes: race, skin colour, environment, cultural practices, economic and social condition. Any similarities between the native and the photographer are overlooked or wiped, and if a story needs to be told, the photography will also become the writer, social commentator, journalist and/or historian.

• The native is an ‘observable entity’. The native can be observed, tabulated and exhibited. The same way Darwin mapped and organised species, the travel photographer can and must plot the native into a story, a journey, an event. An important exercise that will allow the photographer to claim the natives as his unique own.

• The native is in a state of permanent wait. The native awaits the travel photographer to be finally photographed, his story remains untold. When the outsider enters his home, village or rural society, his voice and life, which had remained inconsequential suddenly take form. And if the native is chosen to be photographed, his story might or might not be heard. The photographer owns not only the photograph but also the story that will be associated with it. Accuracy and integrity are secondary, for what is truly important is that the native is magnificently captured in his strange and bizarre world for a faraway audience.

• The native is not an individual.  Whether in Kenya or Cambodia, India or Chile, the native resembles any another. Often is hard to tell where the photography is taken, for the location takes backseat to the visual appetite the photographer has prepared for the viewer: the native is dark and naked, exotic and mysterious, either very jubilant or extremely depressed, either the backdrop is the Amazonian jungles, the Ganges or the shoddy and decrepit surroundings in a nameless urban neighborhood.

• The native is always suffering. The old Catholic belief that poverty and disease is a curse for the wretched holds true in photography. The native is either facing a dire famine, or drowning in a flood, either he is unemployed and weak, or overworked and broken, he is either on the move as a nomad, or he in a state of permanent homelessness. In any case, he is helpless and at mercy of those who might care to pay attention. Often the photographer will take it to himself to turn his photography into a ‘awareness campaign’ or to become the self-appointed ambassador for a whole people.

• The native is truly unlike us. The native is rarely shown completing daily rituals that might normalize his existence. The native is usually a nomad, or if stationery, in a mud or straw hut, for organization and society is reserved for the Western people. The native lives exposed to the natural elements; whose existence is as versatile as the natural world.

• The native lives in extremes. The native sits on the heavy ends of every measurable scale. He is very religious, his rituals and traditions rich in superstition, his colours a rainbow of mixture, his sounds loud and unfamiliar, his tattoos and piercings unlike anything we know, he is either entirely naked or fully cloaked. To be moderate is not characteristic of the native.

• The native lives a remote life. To be fully immersed into the life and otherly world of the native, we must see them in their natural settings. No urban high-rises, no book shops or cafes or photos of traffic, the native can only be truly captured in their true authentic environment. The Hindu bathes in the Ganges, that is dirty and unsanitary (albeit holy to the naïve native), this is his identity, the Arab rides his camel in sand dunes and is always angry, it’s the only thing he knows, the African is but another animal on the Safari, that’s his natural habitat, the Peruvian hides in the Amazon, for he’s a wild and undiscovered beast. If the native is shown in an urban environment, he is the megalomaniac oil rich Sheikh, or the modern native who yearns to escape his native land for the dreams of rich Europe.

• The native cannot tell his own story and therefore it must be told for him. His illiterate and limited grasp of the world beyond his village and hut disqualifies him from commenting on his condition, and if he wants to he or she can only discuss on a finite set of topics: his poverty, his large family, poor education and infrastructure and his perpetually broken dreams and hopes for a future. Which is clear, from the way the native is photographed, an unlikely reality. Rarely is the native shown to be genuinely smiling, to be a human interacting and living a life with which the outsider can relate.

• The native needs constant re-discovering. The story of the native can be written and re-written, with often the same details, recycled for an audience who might have already forgotten the wretched native from the previous publication. The natives existence is one that, over a century, has yet to be fully exposed, for the native is mysterious and his culture marred in secrecy. Iran, for example, has been ‘de-mystified’, ‘un-veiled’, its ‘hidden secrets’ exposed, it’s ‘cloaked culture’ unhooded. Yet after a century, Iran remains a deliciously unknown fruit that the Western reader loves to bite into whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Why does this all matter?

So what are the real world implications of photographing through the oriental lens:

• Permission is rarely, if ever sought. Although street photography and the question of consent is open for debate, given the nature of outdoor photography, photographers rarely think consent to be integral part of the practice when it comes to photographing portraits or personal spaces. The East is known for its hospitality to guests, especially foreigners, and this kindness is easily exploitable.

• Boundaries do not exist. And if there is one, it does not apply to the Western Photographer. The mysterious happenings behind a door, a curtain or a bedroom wall are to be explored and captured. It’s as if the photographer owes it to himself to shine light on the unknown at any cost, and he will keep crossing boundaries until something dark and alluring will appear, and if nothing is found, photographing the native in his most personal intimate space will do. For example, the photographer Yasmin Mund photographed a set of families asleep on their rooftops. Ms Mund, without seeking and consent, photographed and then had her photo published on multiple global outlets. The photo includes fully and partially naked children and women. Ms Mund’s photo won multiple accolades, including one by National Geographic in 2016. The caption to the original photo was so racially insensitive, it was heavily trimmed after I pushed National Geographic to withdraw the award and remove the photo.

• The narrative to be written. The photograph is often accompanied with a backstory, and it is very difficult to verify the details of what led to the photo to be taken and what exactly is happening in the photo. This is especially true when the person or place being photographed is considered ‘remote’, and names are either not asked or not included in photo essays. Steve McCury’s infamous photo of Sharbat Gula (the ‘Green eyed girl’) is relevant here, as Steve neither had the girls name (it’s doubtful he even asked), nor did he accurately reflect the situation in which the photo was taken. The photo was later accompanied by text that vilified with Russian’s invasion of Afghanistan, implying the intense gaze in the eyes of Sharbat Gula was from the fear of war. Simply not true. This is a common practice in photo journalism and modern storytelling, where one photo will be used to tell a different narrative.

• The natives are all the same. A global non-Western population are categorised into a small subset of buckets. The richness and complexity of people is removed, until an entire continent (e.g. Africa) can be described with a single visual adjective.

• Stereotypes and themes are reinforced. The world today is smaller than it once was, and it is clear we in the wider human family are not all that different despite our incredible diversity. Positioning certain people and societies in a light that reinforces old stereotypes is harmful and creates further divisions. The veil of the conservative ‘Muslim World’ remains a popular visual choice for any photographer in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan when showing women, naked worshippers in the Ganges or Buddhists in their temples are repeatedly shown. Immigrants, climate refugees and victims of drug cartel violence are perhaps the most popular ways South and Central Americans are shown. It’s as if the East, or the native, has not moved on, stuck in their quagmire of superstition and turbulent existence.

• Previous research, imaginings and work done by the native can be discarded or ignored due to their natural irrelevance and inevitable “bias”. The native cannot tell his story, so it must be told for him. This is perhaps the most common and destructive way to re-frame an already framed people and is often delivered by parachuting in Western photographers to cover local events in a country which could easily be captured by native photographers.

At the editorial board level, the same orientalist lens that has proved so profitable is rewarded and celebrated and encourages more of the same behaviour in new photographers.  Pain sells, tragedy gets clicks and if a ‘feel good’ story is needed, then a bland story about a non-event in the West is used to deliver that. This recycled approach of covering the ‘native’ and ‘us’ is deeply ingrained in almost every Western newspaper and photography publication.

Further Reading

Challenging Orientalism (Articles, Essays and Podcasts) at Sacred Foosteps

Orientalism by Edward Said

Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

The post De-constructing Orientalism in Photography appeared first on Zirrar.

The author will borrow certain Islamic traditions, philosophies and figures to suit a narrative and conveniently discard of the serious and the boring orthodox Islam that might come with the story. In any case, religion is bad at worst, or irrelevant at best –  but the intrinsic egotistic desires of the individual that yearn for freedom are without doubt good and must not be questioned.

This phenomenon is nothing new. At least for the past two centuries, European Orientalists have been active participants in this practise. The mysterious East with its harems and magic carpets, the one thousand and one nights and the endless horizon of sand dunes has become a particular delicacy for the Western reader. Modern authorship from writers who themselves trace their roots to the East have simply continued the same reductionist model, though with varying degrees of success. Before Elif Shafak, the author of the imaginary ‘Forty Rules of Love’ came along, the famous British Orientalist Edward Fitzgerald had already introduced a very loose translation of poetry attributed to the Persian mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam. Khayyam was only received with open arms in Europe because his poetry was seen as ‘liberating’, liberating not only the poor English reader, who was tied down by puritan Christian doctrines of Europe, but also free of any serious Islamic influence that might have creeped up in Khayyams work. Later Coleman Barks and others would strip Islam from any and all works of Rumi, Hafez and Saadi.

Orientalist authors like Kipling and Conrad are long gone, and today’s reader is ever more aware of the old trappings of the past. Furthermore, never before in history have millions upon of Muslims called the West their home. With second, third and in some case fourth generation Muslims of immigrant ancestry, identifying themselves as quintessentially ‘Western’, there is a certain appetite and nostalgia to read something about their ancestral homelands, ideally from one of their ‘own’. This untapped demand has been met, quite successfully, by Elif Shafak, Khaled Hosseini and to a degree Orhan Pamuk. All three authors born in the East, but left the East to make the West their permanent home. With little to no fictional literature available in Western bookstores on what life is like in Afghanistan, India, Turkey or Iran, novels fictionalised in Kabul, Tehran, Istanbul or Delhi offer a rare insight into life, love and pain in a far away land. Though none of these authors pretend to write non-fiction, there are certain assumptions and liberties taken by the author and their publisher when a story set in a far away city is published. Yes, the story is fictional, but are the backdrops entirely imaginary? If actual religious or historical characters and events are used to set a story, can the reader really tell what is real and what is pure fabrication? I would argue not. An unaware reader who picks up a copy of the world best-seller ‘Kite-Runner’ with the name Khaled Hossein printed below at an airport bookstore, will almost certainly assume the author is genuine, qualified and the story no matter how fictional is based on real events.

Many such authors are not representatives of the land they write about. For example, Khaled Hosseini after the age of 9 left his homeland of Afghanistan for the West and never returned. His privilege upbringing afforded him the safety and comforts most Afghan’s know not. Then how qualified is Hosseini to tell a story about tribal-ethnic tensions, the social, political and human crisis under the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s or the pain and tragedy that befell the entire nation over the course of his books?

Though some would argue, and many do, that any voice is better than no voice. Let’s be clear, there are many native authors who either still live in the East and do continuously write fiction and non-fiction work about their homeland and many who have moved to the West, and chose to not play the Orientalist game of robbing their lands of its richness by playing the old and tired tunes of ‘there is nothing but pain, oppression and tragedy, and only escape to the West is a remedy’.

Elif Shafk (Forty Rules of Love)

Elif Shafak, the author ‘Forty Rules of Love’, ‘The Architect’s Apprentice’ and ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ has gained worldwide fame for her English novels that are framed in a pseudo spiritual/Sufi ‘Islamic’ cloak. Originally from Turkey, Shafak now lives in London. But the works of Elif Shafak are not without their many controversies.

When reviewing Shafak’s work, we must me mindful that unlike the critique that is often put-on poor translations of Eastern literature (Rumi or Hafez), there is no issue of translation with Shafak. She is one of the few ‘Eastern’ authors who writes directly in English (alongside Khaled Hosseini), though her work ironically enough is translated back into Eastern languages for local audiences to digest.

Shafak is a self-described atheist:

“I am not a religious person at all. But I am interested in spirituality and mysticism and inner-oriented spiritual journeys all around the world”

From the offset, Shafak distances herself from Islam immediately when interviewed by international publications or reporters, because to be even a ‘Cultural Muslim author’ carries baggage that is not only unnecessary but also harmful to book sales. Especially when is selling a ‘feel-good’ religion that has no set doctrine. Shafak is strategic and cherry-picked history, events and ideas from Turkey’s Islamic heritage (the Ottoman’s) that suits her stories, and thrown away the medium (Islam) without which the characters, events and philosophies in her story form could not exist.

For Shafak, “spirituality”, “mysticism” and the “inner-oriented spiritual journeys all around the world” (whatever that might mean) are all beautiful ornaments to be inserted in stories and characters, but when describing Sufism in its entirety, it suits her to not mention Islam and the orthodoxy that comes with being a Sufi.

For example, in the book ‘Forty Rules of Love’, Ella the protagonist, relies heavily on some form of Sufism and an ostensible overlay of Islamic theology to engage in an adulterous affair. Very far from the abandonment of self, advocated by Sufism, Shafak’s lead protagonist glorifies self-indulgence rather than the love of God. Entirely in conflict with traditional Sufism. Is the average reader able to understand and decipher where Shafak’s imagination takes over, and where actual practises of Sufism (from any of its schools) exist? Or is Shafak creating her own cocktail of religion, and the reader must accept that this is pure fiction?

However, to ensure the reader does not become too disoriented in her own fantastical imagination, pulls the read back with certain hooks with symbolic gestures to Sufism. For example, each chapter of Forty Rules of Love starts with letter ‘b’ she claims. Why? She claims because the secrets of the Quran lay in ‘Surah Al-Fatiha’ (the opening verse of the Quran) and its spirit is contained in the phrase Bismillah hir Rehman nir Rahim (In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent and Merciful). The first Arabic letter that forms the word ‘Bismillah’  – b – (ب) has a dot below it that symbolises the Universe, an idea she borrows from Sufi thought.

Forty Rules of Love also has a side story that is based around the love between two men (the love between the student and the teacher or master). Rumi and Shams. Both figures are heavily revered Muslim theologians, poets and philosophers in their own right, with Jalal ad-Din Muhammad (the light of the faith) Rumi considered to be the most read poet in the world (in any language). Shams Tabrizi was said to be the spiritual teacher of Rumi, who early on in the life of Rumi, left on a journey and never returned. Though this ancient story has been around for almost a millennium, Shafak took many of the orientalist readings of this legend, and filled the holes with her own imagination, often with grotesque and disturbing concepts. The love that existed between Rumi and Shams is universally considered amongst Sufi’s to be purely platonic, and the relationship of student and master in Sufism is one that perhaps might be odd and hard to understand for many outsiders, yet Shafak implies throughout the book (without adding any nuance) that such love, though spiritual, is also physical and sexual. In other instances, Shafak also takes poorly translated verses from Rumi’s Mathnavi and goes as far as to even imply that bestiality was practised.

So, what about the famous ’40 Rules of Love’?

They do not exist, not in the way Shafak presents them and not in any way that come across in the book. Most if not all of the work completed by Rumi and Shams was in Persian. Shafak does not speak nor read Persian, so how was she able to find a set of rules (not one, two or even ten but forty!) from amongst the writings of Tabriz and Rumi in Persian?

In the references for her book, Shafak notes she owes credit to the following authors and their works for her research:

• The Mathnawi (translation by R. A. Nicholson, an English orientalist who completed the first literal translation of Rumi)
• Autobiography of Shams Tabrizi by William Chittick (an early archaic copy), Coleman Barks (based on the translation of Nicholson and almost entirely fictional, Idris Shah (there is question on how accurate his work is), Kabir and Camile Helmeniski (A good and accurate translation), Refik Algan and Franklin D (I am not familiar with their work)
• Poems of Rumi by William Chittwick and Coleman Barks (Both unreliable and poor)
• Poems by Omar Khayyam by Richard Le Gaillienne (Incomplete and riddled with countless errors).

It can be argued that Shafak has created an amalgamation of ideas and philosophies from the various writings of at least three Muslim poets which she transformed into her own 40 rules. Her own imagination determined which verses, which lines and which words spoke to her and nothing more. By relying only on others translations (majority of which are quite poor in accuracy), it should be assumed almost all of the rules has created are fabrications, if not in meaning, then in spirit from the original work of the author.

But Shafak has found success not only in the minds and hearts of non-Muslim readers, but also amongst Muslims. She has masterfully crafted her image as an ‘authentic’ Eastern author, who borrows from her own Turkish culture and history, to pen stories that has full right and privilege to. Her own atheistic values do not, and should not, disqualify her from writing about Islam, but her decision to conflate Sufism with new-age spiritualism that is agnostic at best, is highly dubious. Shafak also holds no theological qualifications, her ability to decipher and interpret religious doctrines of Rumi and Shams in her own mind hold no weight in even a generous academic test. The love that Shafak constantly refers to in her book is human love, often masked as spiritual and higher, forgetting (perhaps by purpose) that the love Rumi and Shams spoke of was usually for God, the very religious idea of God in Islam. Not a cosmic spiritual force that many pseudo-Sufi interpretations apply today to Rumi.

The global rise of interest in Sufism has created a multi-million industry in yoga, spirituality, poetry and literature. Much of the ‘Sufi’ industry is filled with imitators who openly reject any faith, but borrow and decorate empty spiritual concepts with the label of Sufism. The void left by religion in the West clearly needs a filler, and the need to belong to something, without belonging to the whole religion, is a popular decision made by many. This ‘Sufism-Lite’ which has no clear God, no Prophets, no hell, no strict doctrine is allusive and yet alluring. Shafak has masterfully captured the hearts of many who seek meaning in the meaningless.

In summary, Shafak is a very successful writer. She writes fiction, pure and simple. Her work is marketed as such, so we must ask, why is it not consumed as such? To her credit, she is honest about her personal beliefs, so we must be honest with what we take away from her works. So when we read, for example, the Forty Rules of Love, we must remember the following points:

• It is fiction not based on Islam or Sufism. At best, it is loosely inspired by some generic tenets found in Sufism.
• The book does not instill any real Islamic values. Its protagonist is a woman who justifies her own affair through fabricated values and rules attributed to Rumi or Tabriz.
• There are no such ’40 Rules of Love’ anywhere in the works of Rumi, Shams or Khayyam.
• Shafak is not a scholar of Islam, but instead a novelist. She shows no signs of understanding even the basic tenets of Sufism. Although she touches upon the concept of shedding the ego in the book, the story clearly leans towards a worldly love, not one of God. It glorifies (and sanctions using religious doctrine) of one’s lower desires without regard to the consequence to others.

An atheist secular Turkish novelist should not be the start, middle or the end point for any students of Sufism or spirituality that stems from Islam. Any serious readers or curious minds should head instead to the topic of ‘Tasawwuf’ (the actual concept of Sufism found in Islam). In closing we must remember who Rumi was and for whom his breath exhaled, and for whom his heart beat. On his death bed, he was asked by his wife: “Oh Rumi, plead with God to let you stay here longer”, to which he replied: “Am I a thief? have I stolen someone’s goods? is this why you would confine me here and keep me from being re-joined with my Love?”

This Love is Allah. The night is known as Seb-I Arus – The Wedding Day. The day Rumi joined his Creator. The Almighty God. The very Muslim God.

The post Reading Elif Shafak (40 Rules of Love and Pseudo-Sufism) appeared first on Zirrar.

Who was Muhammad Rumi? A Poet, a Faqih (Jurist), an Islamic Scholar, a Theologian and Sufi Mystic and above all a lover of our beloved Muhammad ﷺ.

Born in greater Khorasan, Balkh (now Afghanistan), Mawlana Rumi today is arguably the most popular and most read poet in the world. His name and the English translations of his poems are on the tongue of all new age spiritualists who have tapped into the sacred light that emits from the words of Rumi, and who have then kept Islam out of any understanding they might absorb incidentally. Rumi then is a meme poet, one who deserves no more space than a twitter word limit or the place below an Instagram photo.

The name Rumi comes from the Arabic word for ‘Roman’. Rumi lived most of his life in Anatolia (modern day Turkey), a land that had been only relatively recently been conquered by the Muslims from the hands of the Romans when Rumi was born, his title then was his incidental connection to this land. But for clarity, there is nothing roman about Rumi, his roots and his faith all point to Khorosan, and unlike the near eastern Romans, Rumi was an migrant to what is now known as Turkey.

Why is Rumi so popular?

Poetry is dead, at least in the West. The Poetry genre barely moves any books each year but one man is an exception – Rumi. Mawlana Rumi has been popularised in the west mostly due to the efforts of a single man, Coleman Barks, an American who with the help of other Persian speakers translated the works into English. Barks himself speaks no Persian, has had no regular or reliable access to Persian translations, but has worked to re-interpret Rumi into a language, style that appeals to his world view without being true to the original author – Rumi. The view Barks presents is one absent of God, the Muslim God, of Islam, of the beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, of any orthodox Islam that is part of Sufism. Rumi then is identified as a ‘mystic’, ‘saint’ or enlightened man but never as a Muslim from reading any of Barks works.

“Of course, as I work on these poems, I don’t have the Persian to consult. I literally have nothing to be faithful to, except what the scholars give.” – Coleman Barks

The modern spiritual cauldron that non-Muslims grasp onto has defined the image of Muhammad Rumi. The problem transcends unfortunately into the Muslim readership, notably the non-Persian speakers who rely heavily on popular translations provided to them for digesting the works of a saint and in turn read and understand a body of work entirely different to how the author had intended.

As mentioned, the largest culprit is Coleman Barks. His translations or versions of Rumi have sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. In a world where poetry rarely sells, this is a master achievement.

Let’s examine some examples of the mis-translations or interpretations.

Poor and Accurate Translations

Example One

Consider the famous poem “Like This.”

“Whoever asks you about the Houris, show (your) face (and say) ‘Like this.’”

Houris are virgins promised in Paradise in Islam. Barks avoids even the literal translation of that word; in his version, the line becomes, “If anyone asks you how the perfect satisfaction of all our sexual wanting will look, lift your face and say, Like this.”

The religious context is gone. And yet, elsewhere in the same poem, Barks keeps references to Jesus and Joseph. When he was asked him about this, he said he couldn’t recall if he had made a deliberate choice to remove Islamic references. “I was brought up Presbyterian,” he said. “I used to memorize Bible verses, and I know the New Testament more than I know the Koran.” He added, “The Koran is hard to read.”

Other interpretations that need an honorary mention, for they too are guilty are those by Shahram Shiva, John Moyne, Andrew Harvey and Deepak Chopra. These authors have all made a name for themselves as modern spiritualists, and have had a degree of commercial success in profiting from Muhammad Rumi.

Example Two

“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system.”

This is not an authentic Rumi poem. This version was based on Nicholson’s translation: “What is to be done, O Moslems? for I do not recognise myself. I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Gabr, nor Moslem.”

Example Three

“You say you have no sexual longing any more. You’re one with the one you love.”

An accurate translation: “You say, ‘With the body, I am far and with the heart, with the Beloved'”

Example Four

“Love puts away the instruments and takes off the silk robes. Our nakedness together changes me completely”

Accurate translation: “He put harp and (strings of) silk on (his) lap, (and) kept playing this song: ‘I am happy and ecstatic'”

Example Five

“They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual? They wonder about Solomon and all his wives”

An accurate Translation: “O Love, you are known by the fairies and humans. You are more known than the seal-ring of Solomon”

Example Six

“This night . . . is not a night but a marriage, a couple whispering in bed in unison the same words. Darkness simply lets down a curtain for that”

An accurate translation: “Tonight . . . is not a ‘night,’ Rather, it is a wedding (festival) for those who seek God. It is an elegant companion for those who testify to (God’s) Unity. Tonight is a lovely veil of happiness for those with beautiful faces”.

Example Seven

“If you don’t have a woman that lives with you, why aren’t you looking? If you have one, why aren’t you satisfied?” 

An accurate translation: “If you have no beloved, why do you not seek one. And if you have attained the Beloved, why do you not rejoice?”

There are hundreds of examples, perhaps thousands where Rumi’s words have been mis-translated and changed entirely. To either suit a particular ‘spiritual path’ or journey the author wanted, or to purposely steer the reader away from the true message behind the words of a very Muslim scholar and saint. Coleman Barks, who continues to take focus in this study, even includes entirely new words and phrases that Rumi never uses. In one example Rumi is quoted to have used the word Hindu, Buddhist and Zen in one of his poems but these are all false. There is no evidence at all that Rumi was familiar with these religions other than what was mentioned in the Quran. But for the purpose of mass appeal Barks has applied a false translation to say ‘look Rumi wasn’t a Muslim, if you’re a Hindu or Buddhist, he is equally relevant to your spiritual path’.

The criminality behind modern interpretations

The most troubling aspect of the translations is how some words, phrases and then the intended message behind the words are changed so much that Rumi himself is misunderstood entirely from being a very pious Muslim to a highly charged ‘modern sexually liberated’ man. 

When Barks was asked why his interpretations of Rumi are so popular, Barks is quoted as claiming his work is closer to the true ‘essence’ of Rumi. One has to perform incredible mental gymnastics to understand how a white man that speaks absolutely no Persian, nor understands even basic principles of Islam can make such a big claim.

Barks translations are guilty of many things, while some claim that certain Persian words have double meanings or there is ambiguity, there are far greater cases where the essence of a poem has been slanted towards a very sexual direction. In these cases it is hard to believe this an innocent mistake, but rather a purposeful direction taken by the interpreter Barks.

Rumi was a mystic; he remained a pious devout Muslim inclined towards ascetism. Adultery, participating in orgies, and full nudity – all indicated in these translations are forbidden in Islam and appear nowhere in original Rumi works.

Rumi in meme culture

With the mass adoption of social media and the rise of the meme culture surrounding us, we must absolutely disassociate ourselves from placing the sacred text of our scholars and saints on these platforms. While the temptation is high, lets accept that Rumi is not a new age pop psychologist who can address our specific or general issues of love, self-identity and low self-esteem. For Rumi the Qur’an was his blueprint, the Prophet ﷺ was his beloved, and God was his final union.

The spiritual gap or hunger that is present in the west is where the appetite for these interpretations arise. As the western obsession with selective eastern religions and traditions grows, we must be prepared for our literature, music, and wider culture to be adopted in selective terms, where what the west considers ‘acceptable’ or interesting is picked with the ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ part discarded. We must be aware of our own education and how we digest what is presented to us.

Example Eight

“Listen and obey the hushed language. Go naked”

An accurate translation: “So runs his whispered tale, ‘Go not without the veil’”

When Coleman Barks was asked to explain his method of translation, he said: ‘Yeah, the fundamentalists or people who think there is one particular revelation scold me for this.'” 

Example Nine

“All my mysteries are images of you — Night, be long! He and I are lost in Love.”

The translation is over-sexualised. The intended meaning of the lines suggests for one to stay awake and long for the beloved, for more worshipping is required. Again, there is no way for one to know this line is about God.

Example Ten

In other places the spiritual elevation placed in the words of Rumi has been reduced to pop-psychology.

“All my life I tried to please others, Pleasing myself he is wishing me.”

The original meaning has to do with the tendency of the spiritual seeker to become attached to “spiritual stations” (maqamat), or levels of spiritual attainment- which can be a barrier to seeking God directly. 

The Masnavi, the masterpiece produced by Rumi over 13 years has been termed as the ‘Persian Quran’.  Rumi himself described the “Masnavi” as “the roots of the roots of the roots of religion”—meaning Islam—“and the explainer of the Koran.” And yet little traces of religion remain his translations.

Translators and theologians of our time have had to reconcile with widely accepted Islamophobia of our time with the mass appeal of certain Islamic cultures. Including poetry (Hafez, Saadi, Omar Khayyum) and Islamic Art and Architecture (almost all major museums in the west include exhibitions on Islam), so what is the result? How do you balance an appreciation for one aspect of a medieval religion and then at the same time promote the flowers that blossomed in its bosom?

You do it like this:

• Mistranslate and interpret the literary works to such a degree that even Muslims use your sources for referencing their culture. If Islam is taken out, who can claim and who can reinstate? With Rumi now so popular globally, it is too late for new translations to become the standard when Rumi is already a meme poet.
• You exhibit the richness of a culture as a by-product of a civilisation, not of its faith. Persian Art, Indian art, Moor and Mamluk architecture – there is no Islam necessary.
• When all fails and it is not possible to de-tangle Islam from the poets or scholars, you recognise the connection but ensure its either seen as a one-off period in an other-wise dark period of backwardness and intolerance. Finally, you ensure that no Muslim today can claim heritage to the rich civilisations of their ancestors. The exhibitions in the British Museum or Louvre that present for all to see the marvel of Islam art are narrated as one that belonged to a period that is long over. The native today is a dumb, stupid and weak by-product of a wealthy ancestry.

Religion for many western translators of Rumi, or Hafez or Avicenna, or Ibn Rush is purely an obstacle. The view is that these people are mystical, geniuses and achieved not because of Islam but in spite of it.

Was Rumi really a pious Muslim?

Rumi writes:

“The Light of Muhammad has become a thousand branches (of knowledge), a thousand, so that both this world and the next have been seized from end to end. If Muhammad rips the veil open from a single such branch, thousands of monks and priests will tear the string of false belief from around their waists.”

and

“I am the servant of the Qur’an as long as I have life.
I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen one.
If anyone quotes anything except this from my sayings,
I am quit of him and outraged by these words. “

Why has this happened?

[ the following are extracts from an article by the New Yorker linked at the end]

“Discussing these New Age “translations,” Omid Safi said, “I see a type of ‘spiritual colonialism’ at work here: bypassing, erasing, and occupying a spiritual landscape that has been lived and breathed and internalized by Muslims from Bosnia and Istanbul to Konya and Iran to Central and South Asia.” Extracting the spiritual from the religious context has deep reverberations. Islam is regularly diagnosed as a “cancer,” including by General Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national-security adviser, and, even today, policymakers suggest that non-Western and nonwhite groups have not contributed to civilization.”

“For his part, Barks sees religion as secondary to the essence of Rumi. “Religion is such a point of contention for the world,” he told me. “I got my truth and you got your truth—this is just absurd. We’re all in this together and I’m trying to open my heart, and Rumi’s poetry helps with that.” One might detect in this philosophy something of Rumi’s own approach to poetry: Rumi often amended texts from the Koran so that they would fit the lyrical rhyme and meter of the Persian verse. But while Rumi’s Persian readers would recognize the tactic, most American readers are unaware of the Islamic blueprint. Safi has compared reading Rumi without the Koran to reading Milton without the Bible: even if Rumi was heterodox, it’s important to recognize that he was heterodox in a Muslim context—and that Islamic culture, centuries ago, had room for such heterodoxy. Rumi’s works are not just layered with religion; they represent the historical dynamism within Islamic scholarship.”

“Rumi used the Koran, Hadiths, and religion in an explorative way, often challenging conventional readings. One of Barks’s popular renditions goes like this: “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. / I will meet you there.” The original version makes no mention of “rightdoing” or “wrongdoing.” The words Rumi wrote were iman (“religion”) and kufr (“infidelity”). Imagine, then, a Muslim scholar saying that the basis of faith lies not in religious code but in an elevated space of compassion and love. What we, and perhaps many Muslim clerics, might consider radical today is an interpretation that Rumi put forward more than seven hundred years ago.”

Where do we go from here?

There is a clear shortage of criticisms of popular Rumi translations (or as we have been saying, interpretations), so this must continue. We must place literature boycotts on these loose interpretations, on these or any texts that claim to represent the sacredness of entirely Muslim authors. The colonisation of our literature might grow in the west, but as Muslims or people of the east, we must recognise the dangers that we face when we make non-Muslims our teachers, especially those that actively work to remove Islam from inextricable.  

What translations to avoid?

• Anything by Coleman Barks
• Other interpretations that need an honorary mention, for they too are guilty are those by Shahram Shiva, John Moyne, Andrew Harvey and Deepak Chopra. These authors have all made a name for themselves as modern spiritualists, and have had a degree of commercial success in profiting from Muhammad Rumi.

Recommended Accurate Translations

Jawid Mojaddedi, who has aspired to translate all six books of the Masnavi into English. Four of them are completed and available on Amazon.

References and further reading:

http://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi

https://ajammc.com/2015/03/09/rumi-for-the-new-age-soul/

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