“How can we bring out the diverse voices of Islam?” It’s an important question– one Dr. Ali Asani addresses on an August afternoon at the Ismaili Jamatkhana in Decatur, Georgia, during his guest lecture for graduate-level students from the Emory School of Theology.
Dr. Asani serves on the Board of Governors for the Institute of Ismaili Studies and is the Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern studies and Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures at Harvard University.
Pic 2
The students he is addressing, many of whom are training to become pastors and church leaders, are enrolled in a course titled History and Practice of Christian-Muslim Relations, taught by Rev. Dr. Deanna Womack, Associate Professor of History of Religions and Interfaith Studies and Director of the Master of Religions Leadership Program at Emory. The partnership between the university and Dr. Asani is of notable importance, as they share an ongoing relationship of several years and arise from mutual reverence, open-mindedness, and a yearning for theological enlightenment.
“The visit to the Jamatkhana and Dr. Asani’s lecture are wonderful opportunities for the students to get out of the classroom and become more familiar with a Muslim place of worship,” shares Rev. Dr. Womack.
In this lecture, as in previous ones, Dr. Asani starts by painting a picture for the university's students. He discusses commonalities between religions and the importance of recognizing that concepts of any religion are diverse, dynamic, and cumulative. Islam, much like Christianity, is a faith with many communities of interpretation. “You see with the heart,” Dr. Asani says, explaining the need for multiple lenses to truly understand religion, including through art, music, and aesthetics.
To the students, Dr. Asani recalls visiting Houston, where he attended the Islamic Arts Festival–a vibrant event– alongside thousands of Muslims. “You’d be astonished at the kinds of works being produced and how people were bringing traditions together,” says Dr. Asani. “But these experiences and events fail to make the media. They’re not something we normally associate with Islam..”
The Taj Mahal is inspired by Qur’anic verses of paradise, Dr Asani explains. “For many people, experiences of Islam are embedded in the arts. Religion is multi-sensory and it is through the physical and sensory that one is led to the spiritual.”
Tracing back centuries, Dr. Asani talks about how, when Islam was revealed in the seventh century, the Prophet did not believe it to be a new religion–it was seen as just another distinction between monotheism and polytheism.
Dr. Asani states that the message of Islam was not spread through war but through an aesthetic voice. Listening to the Qur’an was a form of communication with the Divine. “Theology is expressed orally and visually,” Dr. Asani affirms. “The Qur’an is a text that is theopoetic. There is an aesthetic and intellectual component to it. The text was meant to be experienced.”
As the students stay engaged, Dr. Asani emphasizes that we all have to be careful and sensitive to the idea of different voices and different notions. As a community, we need to focus on what brings faiths together and understand Islam as a monolithic religion with a great amount of diversity within it.
Pic 7
“Instead of listening to the loudest voice, we can focus on our face-to-face interactions with other community members,” explains Dr. Asani. “In our obsession with the loud Islam, the voices of the majority have become silenced.”
After an insightful Q&A, the session concluded, and the participants shared their thoughts.
“Dr. Asani’s lecture highlighted the central importance of beauty in Islam,” says Christopher Ray, a student from Rev. Dr. Womack’s class. “…and it showed how the unity that joins faith with obedience to God is itself also beautiful. Dr. Asani presented a more representative and more beautiful face of an Islam that both allows for and demands thoughtful consideration, loving coexistence, and a form of ethical and aesthetic life that weds the joy of upright living and humane community with the elegance of human creations and the divine work of the Creator. His magisterial exploration of religious architecture also served as a reminder of the silent voices of faith that continue to ground Islamic practice in a world where the loudest voices often distort what is best in our faith traditions.”
Dr. Womack noted the value the university’s relationship with the Ismaili community has added throughout the years. “Through the lecture, they [the students] also gained a new approach to understanding Islam through art which expanded the ways that students tend to think about studying a religious tradition. I am so grateful to the Ismaili community in Atlanta for being generous hosts and interfaith partners for my classes over the years and earlier for collaborating in the Leadership and Multifaith Program. This has been such an important way for young Christian leaders at Candler to get to know their Muslim neighbors.”
