A GEOMETRY OF ISLAM

The sense of geometrical proportion is everywhere in Islam. It is conspicuous in Islamic art but it is implicit in the very structure of the religion. Those who want a proper sense of Islam and who want to understand the religion in its formal integrity need to understand the notion of geometrical proportion. Finally, it is the measure of orthodoxy in Islam. All that is true to Islam has an innate harmony in relation to the whole, a harmony of geometrical proportion or ratio.

There is a fundamental set of proportions written into nature according to the innate Laws of God. In the Western tradition this set of proportions is associated with the name of the Italian mathematician Fibonacci but they were understood much earlier than him. The "Fibonacci Series" is the sequence of numbers beginning 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on, preceeding by adding together the last two numbers in the series (3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13) etc. This series can then be transposed to rectalinear or spiraloid geometry.

These proportions - the "golden ratio" - are found throughout nature. In the picture below we see the unfolding spiral sequence very clearly in the shell of a sea snail.

The same proportions are found in a pine cone, as below:

And the same set of proportions are built into the human body:

Long before Fibonacci this same geometry was integral to the pure forms of Islamic geometric art. Islamic art is an exploration of the geometrical order than underlies the diversity of natural phenomenon. It is an expression and celebration of the theme: UNITY IN MULTIPLICITY. The world of multiplicity emanates from Unity.

But this same order of geometrical ideas is reflected in the very internal structures of the Islamic revelation itself. Islam has a crystalline geometry. The revelation "unfolds" according to geometrical laws. It can be expanded by these proportions or it can be condensed by the same proportions.

The diagram below illustrates how the Muslim ummah - the worshipful community of Muslims - unfolds. At its centre is the heart of individual Muslims in remembrance of God (Dhikr). This then unfolds in the individual's (voluntary) salat. This is followed by the obligatory salat where two Muslims are gathered. Then the family unit. Then the wider local community at Friday prayers. Then the gathering of broader communities at the Eid. Then, finally, the gathering of the whole ummah, the whole human family, in the Hajj. These institutions are not arbitrary. They unfold logically and naturally in geometrical expansion. This is very typical of Islam. Its internal structures are the emanating geometry of nature. Islam is the natural religion of man, written into his flesh, inscribed into the very structure of Creation.

We find this mode of geometrical thought everywhere in Islam. It reveals an important principle of construction. We find it in the following formula, for example:

The whole of the Koran is contained within the Fatihah.
The whole of the Fatihah is contained within the Bismillah.
The whole of the Bismillah is contained in the Bah (the first letter).
The whole of the Bah is contained in the point below the Bah, the first drop of Divine Ink.

The whole is contained in the Principle. Similarly, the whole revelation of the Holy Koran was placed in the heart of the Prophet - peace be to him - on the very first night of the revelation, the Night of Power. It then gradually unfolded, expanding into the fullness of the revealed Koran. The mission of the Prophet expands and unfolds in stagse. On the Night of Power he was alone. Then he brought the revelation to his wife Khadijah, then to her family, then to his broader family, then to his tribesmen, then to a wider and wider community and finally to all men everywhere, expanding outwards in geometric progressions with the heart of the Prophet at its centre. The Meccan revelations reveal principles that are then "unfolded" in the more specific revelations of Medina. More generally, the Holy Koran is "unfolded" into the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet - peace be to him.

This geometrical order is the secret behind the gradual unravelling of the Islamic revelation and, most importantly, the point at which the revelation meets the natural order.

Islam can be expanded or condensed according to circumstances. The entire religion can be condensed, finally, into the perpetual prayer of Dhikr (Remembrance), the invocation of the Name of God. The Name is the whole of the Law. The Name is the great secret and the summum bonum, the elixir of life, the stone of the philosophers.

Equilibrium is a characteristic spiritual quality in Islam. Islam is, in cyclic terms, a return to a primal equilibrium, and its geometrical crystalization is a result of this equilibrium.

 

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 Unto Him is the real prayer! - Koran 13:14