ISTANBUL (TRT World) -- From the moment Napoleon set foot in Egypt in 1798, the Arab, and thus Muslim, world took centre stage in the European imagination. In trying to understand their own place in the history of the world, the Europeans began to construct negative archetypes of the Muslims. This phenomenon, which later came to be known as Orientalism, set in motion several movements, and the collecting and exhibiting of objects from the Muslim world became a key strategy in the shaping and re-shaping of the Western imagination.
The army of social scientists, historians and surveyors that joined Napoleon on his mission came, for the most part, to the same conclusion: these dark desert nomads and poverty-stricken dwellers found in the mazes of ancient cities were not the same people that once ruled the known world and pioneered the fields of science and astronomy — and they were to be treated accordingly.
Today, the Louvre, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library in London, and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin house significant collections of rare and valuable objects collected from across the vast Muslim world.
These collections — and the museums’ attempts to consolidate over a thousand years of culture and art in a few rooms — provide great insight into how these institutions still view and present Islam and the wider ‘Muslim world.’ Whereas the objects on display signify sophistication and historical brilliance, there is no narrative that connects the past with the present. And this is no coincidence.
Muslims have always struggled to be fairly and accurately represented in the European imagination, but it’s not for lack of trying. In recent years, exhibitions funded — and in part, narrated — by organizations from within the Muslim world have attempted to ‘correct’ old historical misunderstandings.
In 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum partnered with Art Jameel, a private Saudi philanthropy group, to launch ‘The Jameel Prize competition.’ In 2021, it awarded first prize to Saudi artist Ajlan Gharem for his widely-praised piece, ‘Paradise Has Many Gates.’ According to the artist, the title of the piece refers to the different paths to Paradise described in the Qur’an. The artwork replicates the design of a traditional mosque, but is made of the cage-like chicken wire used for border fences and detention centers.
“The mosque’s material provokes anxiety, but it also renders its interior visible and open to the elements… The installation also seeks to demystify Islamic prayer for non-Muslims, tackling the fear of the other at the heart of Islamophobia,” the artist says on his website.
Is the artist attempting to explain the suffocating socio-religious norms of some Muslim societies that force people into mosques? Or is he trying to ‘demystify’ Islam in an attempt at ‘tackling the fear … at the heart of Islamphophobia?’ If paradise has many gates, what do these gates look like and what do they lead to? Is paradise a cage? And are the adherents to this faith prisoners?
With rising rates of anti-Muslim hatred in the UK and Europe, one would hope that such institutions would pay special attention to prevent misunderstandings about Islam and stereotypes that portray its adherents as intolerant and dangerous.
In early 2020, The British Museum held an exhibition titled ‘Inspired by the East: How the Islamic world influenced Western art.’ The exhibition, however, would have been better off being called, ‘Orientalist art: How the West viewed the East.’
With careful narration, the display of the works of some of the most famous orientalist artists in Europe — from Jean-Leon Gerome and Antoni Fabres to Ludwig Deutsch and Frederick Arthur Bridgman — could have been a learning experience aimed at re-educating audiences and correcting pervasive falsehoods. But this was not the case.
Instead, the exhibition was an audacious display and celebration of the European imagination, of an ‘East’ that merely existed in the artists’ minds as something that could be molded as they saw fit.
There was no commentary on the social and cultural damage that resulted from the reductionist, and often inaccurate fantasies. The exhibition also failed to highlight that these celebrated pieces were almost always entirely contrived, based on racist and offensive stereotypes