Author of "Aisha's Cushion" on Representational Art in Islam

FIRST THOUGHTS
By Matthew Cantirino

Is the Islamic injunction against visual depiction of the sacred as thoroughgoing a taboo as many non-Muslims assume? Jamal J. Elias, plugging his new book "Aisha’s Cushion" at the Harvard University Press blog, says no: ". . .there is a common understanding that the only broadly acceptable forms of Islamic visual religious arts are architecture and calligraphy. With the notable exceptions of some illustrated books on the life of Muhammad, the tradition of pictorial representation of religious personages in the Persianate world, and the decoration of a few well-known mosques, such a view suggests that there is little pictorial religious art in the Islamic world. Nevertheless, even though Muslims would deny that the divine inheres in objects of human manufacture, visual religious arts (of which pictorial arts are a subset) remain widespread in Islamic society." [link]