THE STORY OF SACRED ISLAMIC ARTS
Our story
An authentic Prophetic tradition informs us that “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty,” and thus teaches us that the Islamic ideal of beauty is intimately connected to the Divine. Allah, His infinite beauty and majesty, and the values and ethos that manifest from His divine transcendence and will are the pathways to true beauty.
We live in a world of constant encroachment of the mundane. The modern world slowly and surely squeezes the sacred out of our lives. Sacred values, etiquette, communication, and interaction are increasingly replaced with nihilism and alienation; vulgarity and egoism; spin and deception; and crass materialistic competition.
Where do we look to re-anchor ourselves when sacred spaces are few and far between?
We have no choice. We must create a world of our own choices.
Islamic art has always aimed to represent what is sacred through sound and sense – from the art of reciting the Qur’an, to poetry, to architecture, to calligraphy.
Indeed, it is in Islamic calligraphy that we find a full expression of the conveyance of sacred meaning through the subtlety and grace of form. Islamic calligraphy is a fusion of letter and spirit, form and meaning, outer and inner.
Islamic calligraphy is the perfect expression of the soul, equilibrium and tranquility of Islam.
Sacred Islamic Arts is pleased to present its expansive range of sacred reminders in the form of Islamic wall decals, canvases, and 3D wooden art.
Glimpse into the beauty of the Divine. Revive your spirit through reflection. Set yourself free.
The story of islamic calligraphy
If art is the mirror of culture and of its world view, then the best of Islamic civilization can be reflected in the artistic splendor of Muslim art. Whereas many artists seek to express themselves through the medium of their craft, Muslim calligraphers were concerned with a higher form of expression: to reflect the beauty of the timeless and divine message of the Quran. And so it has been that for over 14 centuries, calligraphy has been considered one of the highest forms of Islamic artistic expression.
Arabic, the language of the Holy Qur’an, vibrates through the daily life of every Muslim. In the five daily prayers, in the daily litanies that a believer recites in an attempt to remember Allah and to connect with the Divine, Arabic is the language of spiritual expression. Through calligraphy, the sacred verses of the Quran and other prayers have been inscribed on the walls of buildings, applied to metalwork, pottery, glass and engraved in wood and metal. They adorn the friezes on the domes of mosques, circumscribe the mihrab where the imam stands for his lecture and appear on the walls of the palaces of kings. Through calligraphy, the sacredness of the Quran touches the surfaces that it adorns and through it, it reaches into the hearts of believers.
Although the fluid beauty of the Arabic script is within reach of anyone with a keen eye and a steady hand, the formal study of calligraphy has occupied apprentices for a minimum of five years of constant study and practice until they reach master calligrapher status.
Islamic calligraphy is more attainable than ever before. Using the contemporary mediums of vinyl decals, canvasses, and other such fine materials, the verses of the Quran, for example, can be hung or applied to almost any surface.
