For its architectural quality and its revival of tradition, the work of Mohamed Saleh Makiya stands as a prototype for Iraq and for new developments in the third world in general. Like Hassan Fathy in Egypt, Makiya analyzed Iraq’s past in his architectural work, in his role as an influential teacher, and in his scholarly publications. His ideas can be found in his writings: The Arab Village, sponsored by UNESCO and published in Cairo in 1951, and The Architecture of Baghdad, published in 1969 with the assistance of the Gulbenkian Foundation. In both books the fundamental insights that he established led to a reappraisal of the Iraqi architectural past.
This paper discusses the notion of God as the only Creator, exploring its main implications for conceptualizing the identity and purpose of Islamic architecture. The paper concludes that the concept of God as the Creator represents the core of the Islamic doctrine of tawhid (God’s Oneness and Uniqueness) which, in turn, presents Islamic architecture with its identity impressing it by its own mould. Buildings in Islam are conceived and erected only to serve God and the noble purpose of creation instituted by the Creator. Ascribing the terms ‘creation’ and ‘creators’ to human beings should always be conditional and metaphorical, not authentic or unqualified. Just as the Creator cannot become creation, similarly a creation cannot become a creator. Only against this backdrop, the role and objective of man on earth, and all his civilizational undertakings, including architecture, are to be viewed and assessed. The implications of this central Islamic tenet for Islamic architecture are studied under the sub-topics of the identity of Islamic architecture and the role of Islamic decorative arts.
The best solution for Islamic architecture is to be traditional, but without just blindly imitating and repeating the past, and modern, albeit without rejecting tradition and constantly seeking to break with the past. Tradition and modernity in Islamic architecture must be at peace, rather than at loggerheads, with each other. Traditional and modern architecture in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The Popularity of the Theme
Undoubtedly, the subjects of tradition and modernity and how Muslims responded to them in late nineteenth and twentieth centuries are some of the most important topics that still preoccupy a great many scholars and researches, both Muslims and non-Muslims. A large corpus of literature, as a result, has emerged towards the end of twentieth and in early twenty-first centuries that addressed the subject matter. The studies and books carried different, but in essence very similar, titles such as – for instance – Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, edited by Sharifah Shifa al-Attas and published in 1996 by International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Islam: Motor or Challenge of Modernity, edited by Georg Stauth and published in 1998 by LIT Verlag in Hamburg, Germany; Muslims and Modernity, an Introduction to the Issues and Debates by Clinton Bennett, published in 2005 by Continuum in London, UK; Legitimizing Modernity in Islam by Husain Kassim, published in 2005 by the Edwin Mellen Press in Lewiston, New York, US; Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality and Modernity by Samira Haj, published in 2009 by Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, US; Islam, Modernity and the Human Sciences by Ali Zaidi, published in 2011 by Palgrave, Macmillan, US; Tradition, Modernity and Islam, edited by A. Rahman Tang Abdullah and published in 2011 by the International Islamic University Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur; Islam between Tradition and Modernity, an Australian Perspective by Mehmet Ozalp, published in 2012 by Barton Books in Canberra, Australia, and many others. Continue reading Tradition versus Modernity: Islam’s or Muslims’ Dilemma→
