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Much of what we know sacred is mostly abstract, incomprehensible, and abrupt. As humans, we operate on binary ordering; for things to be categorized, organized to be fathomed. We even organized love beginning from Uns (Attachment), Dilkashi (Admiration), Muhabbat (Love), Aqeedat (Loyalty), Ibadat (Worship), and Maut (Death/Meeting the divine).

I believe that the Love that we understand is not Love at all, or is not sacred. Sacred itself, from what we’ve understood so far, is unfathomable, something that the mind can not comprehend, it is the language of the heart that can not be understood by mere meat bag beings gliding through the galaxy on a debatably large rock.

When we speak of Sacred, we must understand that anything sacred we know has been in an unrecognizable order. Somewhat as a heartbeat, incessant but consistent, until neither. Its rise and decline in pace perhaps say something that we don’t understand because we can’t.

ACT I. Dadaism

If I ask you to think of ‘Good Art’ you may think of ‘The Starry Night’ by Vincent van Gogh or ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Sandro Botticelli. But what precisely constitutes good art, and who judges whether art is good? furthermore, who gets to decide if something is an art to begin with?

The image you see above is a submission by Marcel Duchamp who titled it ‘Fountain’ and submitted an upside-down urinal to an art exhibition that claimed they wouldn’t reject any piece of art — this, by the way, was the newly established Society of Independent Artists that Duchamp himself had helped found and promote on the lines of the Parisian Salon des Indépendants — And even though the piece wasn’t rejected, it wasn’t placed in the show area either. They didn’t consider it art.

When we speak of Sacred, we must understand that anything sacred we know has been in an unrecognizable order.

If something isn’t deemed art or isn’t deemed ‘good art’ it is considered worthless. And that’s exactly what Dadaism critiques. Dadaism is one of the most revolutionary movements of the twentieth century created to question the entire concept of art itself. It emerged in World War I and was deemed as anti-authority, anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-establishment, anti-museums, and most importantly, anti-art.

Originally a colloquial French term for a hobby horse, Dada, as a word, is nonsense. As a movement, however, Dadaism proved to be a response to the modern age.

During the First World War, countless artists, writers, and intellectuals who opposed the war sought refuge in Switzerland. Zurich, in particular, was a hub for people in exile, and it was here that Hugo Ball and Emmy Hemmings opened the Cabaret Voltaire on February 5, 1916. The Cabaret was a meeting spot for the more radical avant-garde artists. A cross between a nightclub and an arts centre, artists could exhibit their work there among cutting-edge poetry, music, and dance. Hans (Jean) Arp, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco and Richard Huelsenbeck were among the original contributors to the Cabaret Voltaire. As the war raged on, their art and performances became increasingly experimental, dissident and anarchic. Together, they protested against the pointlessness and horrors of the war under the battle cry of DADA. Reacting against the rise of capitalist culture, the war, and the concurrent degradation of art, artists in the early 1910s began to explore new art, or “anti-art”, as described by Marcel Duchamp. They wanted to contemplate the definition of art, and to do so they experimented with the laws of chance and with the found object. Theirs was an art form underpinned by humour and clever turns, but at its very foundation, the Dadaists were asking a very serious question about the role of art in the modern age. This question became even more pertinent as the reach of Dada art spread — by 1915, its ideals had been adopted by artists in New York, Paris, and beyond — and as the world was plunged into the atrocities of World War I.

Beyond these artistic media, the Dadaists also probed the literary and performance arts. Hugo Ball, for instance, the man who penned the unifying manifesto of Dadaism in 1916, investigated the liberation of the written word. Freeing text from the conventional constraints of a published page, Ball played with the power of nonsensical syllables presented as a new form of poetry. These Dadaist poems were often transformed into performances, allowing this network of artists to move easily between media.

Ball wrote this poem “Karawane,” a poem consisting of nonsensical words. The meaning, however, resides in its meaninglessness, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism. What Dadaism failed to eradicate was the meaning behind these absurd and abrupt creations. But created perhaps the most sacred artwork humanity had ever seen.

Hugo Ball is who fascinates me the most, how he took something sacred and crafted sacrilegious verses that were not sacred but became sacred once crafted. Now let me blow your mind a bit. The latest Spiderman’s opening scene is where his identity gets exposed and he takes MJ and runs around the city trying to hide, there is a sound in the background whilst he’s running. But here’s the catch, it isn’t a sound it’s a song. It’s gibberish. It’s Dadaism. The songwriter of that background song is Hugo Ball. His poem, ‘Karawane’ were the lyrics, they weren’t just random sounds.

Dadaism was meaningless for the ignorant, but meaningful for the conscious.

ACT II. Sacred

Now as much as we explore religion we find various holy scriptures, The Qur’an and the Bible being the most popular and prominent ones. Christianity and Islam are the most dominant religions in the world. Both with similar faith in a holy book sent from one God. Now we know that the bible has been fabricated in more ways than one, don’t take it from me take it from this pastor’s article.

So for the argument’s sake of disorderly understanding let’s take the Qur’an since it hasn’t been fabricated nor has it been changed in any way. It is the most protected and sacred scripture you may find as you explore religion in general, there’s a consensus amongst all sects of Muslims that the Qur’an has remained the same since its arrival. It is claimed that it hasn’t been conveyed through scripture, it has been conveyed through the heart.

Every month over 1500 Hafiz-e-Quran complete their memorization of the Qur’an, in Pakistan. Whether they understand what they memorize or not is a different debate. But let’s for a moment establish that the Qur’an is the word of God and is sacred and divine.

As we examine and study the Qur’an, in the second surah, Al-Baqarah. We observe that there is an inconsistent mention of various topics. Upon my first notice of this, I found it strange and irregular. How can God speak on one topic and then abandon it completely until the end? I started making connections, with the influence of a book by Nouman Ali Khan and Sharif Randhawa, ‘Divine Speech.’

What I realized was that these topics were not in order, they were incessant and disjointed, the first topic would be partially spoken on in the beginning of Baqarah and then would be concluded in the end. Similarly the second with the second last, and the third with the third last and so on. All this would happen with the common theme of the Surah still staying intact. As a writer, this was absurd to me. It defied every law of writing I knew. In writing, when writing a story like this, various topics cannot be introduced because it deviates from the theme. Overlaying connection to plots cannot be introduced because it deviates from the plot. Interconnecting plots can also be not introduced because it deviates from the grand plot of the story. Even if I would go with Khaled Husseini on writing, then too, the plot left behind should connect to the plot being introduced, it cannot be abandoned.

For me, this was one of the evidences of the divinity of speech in the Qur’an. Because what should’ve been gibberish and irregular was closely intact and intricately crafted although it was incessant and irregular. Brings us back to Dadaism. Divinity is irregular and improper and disorganized because it is free. But it is also crafted closely. So this experience with Baqarah was to understand a quixotic concept of writing literature.

But what blew my mind was that on further exploration I realized that this wasn’t just the span of one Surah, this was instead, the pattern spread all over the Qur’an. Each ayah and each Surah connected in some way with the other. This could not have been possible for a middle eastern man in his 40s, living in a desert to create. The literary brilliance was unfathomable. It could not have possibly come from man. A psychological study confirmed that incessant correlation in speech is unachievable for a human. This was the way of the divine speech. This had to be something else. This had to be God.

Meaningless for the ignorant, but meaningful for the conscious.

To be Continued

The writer can be reached at ammaarwrites@gmail.com