The Qur'an: Deconstructing Literary Structure and Power

At the core of the Islamic faith is their most renowned holy text, the Qur’an, which all Muslims believe to be the revelation from God. Divided into 114 chapters, or suras, which are each made up of several verses, or ayahs, the Qur’an has significant literary power. The structure of the text, including the interplay of diction, phonology, syntax, rhythm, rhetoric, composition, imagery, symbolism, and point of view, contributes a great deal to the attitudes of Muslims towards their Scripture.

Issa J. Boullata, a Palestinian writer, scholar, and Arabic translator had much to say on this subject in his book, “Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur’an” (link). Citing the opinion of literary history Taha Husayn, Boullata highlighted the point that the style of the Qur’an is neither prose nor verse, but some sort of hybrid that does not exist in any other piece of Arabic writing. Husayn calls the “bonds” with which the Qur’an binds itself to be two-fold: “rhyming and assonant ends of its verses, and the peculiar musical sound of its wording”. This is important to not because it perfectly in line with how the Qur’an is intended to be understood-- through recitation. Reading the suras out loud, often over a city-wide speaker system, as if performing a long, sacred song is a vital part of the daily lives of Muslims. This practice not only brings Muslims together, but also helps each one of them memorize lines and doctrines more easily, which is also highly emphasized in the religion. This literary structure of the Qu’ran contrasts starkly with that of the Bible, which reads in a much more paragraph-bound narrative style, for the most part.

In addition, one of the most important literary design aspects of the Qur’an is that it is always in Arabic. This has many implications. Not only does this foster a deep sense of community between Muslims in several different countries who are thus able to speak a common language, but also preserves much of the original meanings of the Qu’ran, and preserving the legitimacy of the claim that it is the “pure” word of God. The potential for important religious doctrines to be “lost in translation” is averted (though, admittedly, the potential for doctrines to be lost in context is just as high as with any other religious scripture written centuries ago).

The language, word choice and rhyming structure of the Qu’ran are just a few of the literary devices the holy scripture has been designed with, but they are some of the most influential ones. In order to fully understand any religion, especially one the prizes their text as highly as Islam does with the Qu’ran, it is important to deconstruct and analyze that very text and how it maintains its immense power.

The Structure of Clutter

Ever since I was very little, I have had a very interesting relationship with organization. The majority of the time, the mere thought of the task conjures up one strong emotion: blah. Categorizing, stacking, filing, labeling… it’s all very dull. Mundane at best. I’ve found that the only time when I actually enjoy organizing is when it involves items which hold some of my interest, like music or art supplies. So, for this assignment, I chose to challenge myself and organize my desk in all its overflowing glory.

After a little mental prep-talk, I decided to work top down. I carefully picked up all my writing utensils and sorted them into different containers according to type. The most tedious job was next, as I filed away all the loose papers into various folders and binders by subject, and threw away all the old and irrelevant ones. I finally hauled all my textbooks onto a nearby shelf. To my surprise, there was a whole host of tidbits and leftover who-knows-what’s that were hiding beneath all those books, so after that was all swept off into the garbage bin, the wood of my desk was visible at last.

The effect of this seemingly obvious discovery that I could in fact see and feel the surface of my desk was shocking. I felt as though an enormous burden was lifted off my shoulders because I realized that all the clutter on this small table had actually been an obstacle in my way—I was always trying to work around it. Before I had gotten started on the daunting task of organizing, I thought very little about what all I carelessly cast to the side, and how those little things can build up into a mountain of stress in no time. With every pen I sorted, every used-up scratch paper I discarded, my outlook on my workload became much clearer and more confident.

I became very curious about the psychological links between the structure and organization of physical objects around me and my mental organization. According to a scientific study (which I was referred to by this blog) by the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.” This provides neurological evidence for the feeling I felt of clutter in my mind after staring at the physical clutter around me for so many days.

I will definitely be incorporating this useful and therapeutic exercise into my life more often, so that my burdens, physical and mental, never become too heavy.

One Dollar Social Experiment

I recently stumbled upon a video about the work of Mark Wagner, known to some as the “greatest living collage artist”. Although Wagner has pursued several different mediums of art such as drawing and bookmaking, he is most well known for his intricately cut and assembled currency collages composed entirely out of American one dollar bills, which can be seen with this link. I was incredibly intrigued.

Mark Wagner - Money is Material from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

As much as I was in awe at the meticulousness with which he creates his pieces and the unfathomable complexity of detail he includes, I was also confused and uncomfortable when I first watched this video. Questions kept flowing into my mind. At first they were heavy political and economic ones: Is this even legal? Why would you waste so much money like that? Slowly, they became more abstract art and design-oriented ones: Are there really that many shapes and colors one one dollar bill? Who or what does George Washington represent in all these collages? I soon realized that there is a fascinating relationship between these two sets of questions. I would not have been able to ask the second set if Mark Wagner hadn’t taken the risk of leaving the first set unanswered. In other words, by breaking political and economic norms, Wagner allowed viewers to use a art/design/structure lens to analyze the currency in their pockets and the message he was creating out of them.

While I was scouring the web trying to find out the laws governing the destruction of money, I couldn’t help but notice how many times it was mentioned that people mostly do such a thing to send a message. That message is usually protesting capitalism or the United States government. However, Wagner’s message is not so clear. He is not simply burning dollar bills into oblivion… he is making them into something new. Considering this fact as well as the fact that even the legality of currency destruction is unbelievably ambiguous leaves the judgement of the ethicality and merit of Wagner’s artistic choice of medium almost entirely up to the viewer. Through his collages, Wagner is testing the very values Americans hold dear.

Reading Wagner’s artistic statement, I was suddenly reminded of our discussion of the role of museums in English class:

The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it--reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers--striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable... the foreign in the familiar.

Wagner's design choice of using dollar bills in his collages is akin to him simply taking a dollar bill and sealing it in a display case for viewers to ponder. By breaking the connections we viewers have to that piece of money, he is allowing us to not only analyze the story his assemblages narrate, but also analyze the relationship we have with the most basic unit of wealth in the world. In a day and age where the Internet is the largest and most well-stocked museum ever, I hope more people will stop and take a look at the social experiments Mark Wagner has ingeniously cut and glued together.

Media on Africa: Local vs. Global

Africa. Why is it that the mere thought of the continent wipes the smile off of most people’s faces and elicits a sigh of hopelessness? Why is it that when given a blank map of Africa and told to fill in all that we think we know about its regions through small illustrations, tiny sketches of guns, knives, pirates, hunger and some natural features are what most people draw? There must be a reason why the commonly held image of Africa is so depressing, and I found that it is most likely hidden within the information and media we receive about it.

When scrolling through the front page of the BBC’s news section on Africa, I was struck hard by how unhidden the culprit was.

All the headlines were hard-hitting, with the buzzwords, “conflict”, “military”, “mourning”, and “pirates” all making appearances multiple times. The two biggest images on the page were of a military personnel in Mali, and homeless Ethiopian people lying on the street dejectedly. With the structure, design and content of most of the media we receive about Africa being like this, it is no wonder that most people think of the continent as a basket case.

I then became interested on what the local news scene within Africa looks like. In my search, I stumbled upon an interesting article published in the Times of Zambia just a couple weeks ago about this very subject (link). The author describes how the Broadcasting Services Permanent Secretary of Zambia, Emmanuel Mwamba, is putting a great deal of effort into spreading positive news about Africa and how it is in fact experiencing a development revolution, but people don’t seem to realize or believe it. Immediately, a stark contrast between Africa and the United States became clear to me. In the United States, it tends to be the national news that is more holistic and optimistic about certain aspects of the country’s health and progress, while the local news is plagued with stories of murders in the inner city or vaccinations that may be making people dumber.

The implications of the different tones of news people receive on the regional and national/international level could be startlingly important. Regional news tends to hit closer to home for readers within that region, and shapes their perceptions of their own radii of influence. National/international news is more hard-hitting, though, as it encompasses more people and reaches more people, and shapes the perceptions of people outside the radii of importance. We should perhaps consider beginning to receive a smart balance of local and national/international media about Africa because the tone of the information we hear about a place has a direct correlation with how willing we are to help.

Stories vs. Statistics: The Structure of our Worldview

In class this past week, we discussed the kinds of stories that Americans tell about themselves. By realizing just how off we were in predicting statistics about demographics, health expenditure and mortality, money, and government mandated vacation days in the United States, as well as its rank in those categories as compared to other countries, it became clear to everyone that the picture we have painted of our country is far from accurate. Overall, it is much too rosy.

As our entire conversation focused around hard-hitting statistics and mathematical ranks, I started thinking about actual framework with which people construct their views of themselves and the groups they belong to. I believe the reason so many of us were so off in our estimations is that we have gradually come to believe anecdotal stories which permeate throughout our society, about our society, that would seemingly contradict the reality described by the statistics. For example, because Muslim immigrants are so prevalent in the media, we subconsciously make the assumption that they make up a much larger percentage of our total population than they actually do (we guessed around 5% when they actually make up less than 1%). What a perfect conflict of psychological structure. Traversing the maze of metacognition, I stumbled upon the thoughts of John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, on the fundamental tension between stories and statistics. His opinions were published in The New York Times “Opinions” section and can be found with this link:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/stories-vs-statistics/?_r=0

Paulos asserts that the difference between stories and statistics is the mindset with which we approach them. Specifically, he states, “In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.” Paulos goes on to make the fascinating extension that an individual person’s or society’s prefered structure of information tells a great deal about their intellectual personality type and whether committing a Type I Error or Type II Error scares them more (described in more detail in the article).

However, not only does the structure of how information is relayed influence how different people receive and interpret it, but the structure of how information is understood can also influence how different people use it. Speaking from personal experience, when I saw just how far below other countries the United States is in terms of basic provisions to its people, and having been given the “American exceptionalism” silent spiel throughout my life, I automatically became very competitive. America was the hero in my story of the world, and whatever country was besting us (often some Scandinavian country) was just acting like the Mycroft Holmes to our Sherlock… we just had to improve and become #1 again*. But such a point of view often has the effect of belittling the context of these issues and how several factors can influence how different countries deal with them. On the other hand, solely shaping one’s worldview by using word-of-mouth stories and societal myths while providing a nation with a shared narrative and sense of pride and identity, also shifts their focus away from reality. What we need is a happy medium, and this can only come when we understand how these two conflicting structures really impact how we think and what we do, thus allowing us to make them cooperate, not conflict.

*"Always Someone Better" TV Trope referenced (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysSomeoneBetter)

How? over What?

Whoever said, “Never judge a book by its cover,” was wrong.

True, one should not base his/her entire judgment of anything on the way it is presented, but it is impossible to just ignore presentation altogether. Authors, artists, architects, speakers, businesspeople and advertisers are just a few of the types of people who consciously think about the way they are crafting their product and how it will influence their audience. We all do to some degree.

For example, I could introduce myself in two very different ways:

1.     Hello. My name is Anya Agrawal, and I am a high school senior in the Midwest with interests in painting, biology and tennis.

2.     Namaste! My name is Anya Agrawal and I am finally finishing my time in the 4-year pressure cooker most people call “high school”. Life in the Midwest, or the “Land of Flatness”, is not always the most exciting time, but I have found that by immersing myself in art, squinting behind a microscope or nailing a good backhand down the line, I can keep my mind and body whirring.

Both introductions had the exact same content, so what was the difference? Of course, the second one was much longer, but it was what made it longer that really matters. While the first introduction was fragmented and dry, the second was fresh and vibrant with a single thread of my personal voice running through it from beginning to end. And, no doubt, it is the second introduction that will make readers more inclined to stay interested in what I have to say.

This is what fascinates me. How the things most of us do with the least amount of thought, like how we phrase an introduction, where we put paragraph breaks, how many pronouns we include, or how we make use of text font and graphics can say the most about us. Transitively, the small things an audience subconsciously notices about a product says a lot about that audience.

So, it is the study of this very interplay—the mutualistic relationship between the human mind and the structure and design of the things it creates—that will be the subject of my blog. I will dig and dig and dig through literature, furniture and housing catalogues, media snippets and much more to try to answer the essential questions: Just how does this relationship work? How deep does it go? And in what ways has it impacted us and the world we live in?

Instead of thinking inside or outside of the box, let's examine the box itself.