{"id":3856,"date":"2011-04-02T00:49:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T00:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2011-04-02T00:58:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T00:58:19","slug":"of-the-mahdi-and-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3856","title":{"rendered":"Of the Mahdi and the Matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> ]<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

There’s a book by Douglas Harding<\/strong> that I very much doubt Samir Khan<\/strong> has read, which may still be relevant to the ad in Inspire #4<\/em> that Jarret Brachman<\/strong> pointed to in this piece on Cronus Global<\/a> — in which he notes the parallel between Inspire<\/strong>‘s ad featuring the choice between paradise and hell, and the choice featured in The Matrix<\/strong> between the blue and red pills…<\/p>\n

\"jarret.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That image, with its headless figure, put me in mind of another image that greatly interests me — a portrayal of the Imam Mahdi<\/strong> by Mahmud Farshchian<\/strong> — so I rescued it from my files to see if it was a good enough match with the ad for me to suggest a possible second graphic influence to Jarret:<\/p>\n

\"16_imam-zaman2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not surprisingly perhaps — considering that Samir Khan’s work is, putting it crudely, an advertising graphic, whereas Farshchian’s is a work of devotional art, and that furthermore Inspire<\/em> is a Salafi-jihadist journal while Farshchian is a pious Shi’ite — the match isn’t close enough for me to argue influence…<\/p>\n

But it did set me thinking.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The title of the Harding book to which I referred above is On Having no Head<\/strong><\/a>, and although it now carries the subtitle Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious<\/em> it actually draws on Islamic traditions quite a bit, quoting Rumi:<\/p>\n

Behead yourself! … Dissolve your whole body into Vision: become seeing, seeing, seeing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and Attar:<\/p>\n

Cover your breast with nothingness, and draw over your head the robe of non-existence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and proposing — I’m putting this into my own words, now — the notion that the physical form of a human face is in some sense no more than a mask, veil or hijab over that light “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1.9) — a light too profound for the conventional gaze.<\/p>\n

And it is this profundity, attributed in Islam to the prophets in general and superlatively to Muhammad<\/strong>, which makes their literal portrayal a matter of some controversy…<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Farshchian’s Imam Mahdi<\/strong>, like Khan’s Islamist Morpheus<\/strong>, is headless, I’m suggesting, because, to speak figuratively, radiance has taken the place of the face.<\/p>\n

Which is also why, in this image of what must be for Muslims one of the holiest nights in the history of the world, the Night of the Mi’raj<\/strong>, the Prophet is portrayed without a face — or veiled — in this Persian miniature:<\/p>\n

\"miraj_by_sultan_muhammad.jpg\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and transfigured by his own fiery “halo” of illumination in this one:<\/p>\n

\"muhammad_miraj1.jpeg\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron ] * There’s a book by Douglas Harding that I very much doubt Samir Khan has read, which may still be relevant to the ad in Inspire #4 that Jarret Brachman pointed to in this piece on Cronus Global — in which he notes the parallel between Inspire‘s ad featuring the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205,12,385,321,526,215,25,23,93,499,69,562,533,383,523,1,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-al-qaida","category-analogy","category-art-history","category-blogosphere","category-charles-cameron","category-culture","category-horizontal-thinking","category-insight","category-iran","category-islamic-world","category-matrix","category-perception","category-religion","category-symmetry","category-theology","category-uncategorized","category-visualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}