THE PRAYER RUG

The prayer rug is an essential part of the Islamic religious heritage. The traditional rug is fashioned to be a Muslim's place of daily worship. It is his church and synagogue and his private mosque, his refuge and his oasis, his Garden of Eden. It is a prolongation of nomadic culture. As a symbol it speaks of Islam's remarkable flexibility and its global reach. A Muslim may pick up his prayer rug and move to anywhere he pleases, anywhere in the world, and make that his place of worship. He carries his place of worship with him anywhere he goes. In this way the prayer rug is a symbol of the ability of Islam to move into new lands and to adapt to new circumstances. Islam is not burdened with huge cathedrals, high altars and complex liturgies. It is a simple faith that sanctifies every inch of the Earth. Wherever a Muslim can lay his prayer rug, there is sacred space!

The proper symbolism of a prayer rug is the abstract illustration of the Garden of Paradise and the Tree of Life in the midst thereof, such as in the following design:

This design may be very ornate and floral or it may be stylized towards geometrical abstraction. In either case, the essential symbolism is Edenic. The prayer rug should remind us of the Garden, of Paradise. It is a Muslim's spiritual oasis in the midst of the desert of the world. It is symbolically quite incorrect for a prayer rug to depict the Kaaba in Mecca just because that is to where the Muslim faces during his prayers. The Qibla is not under his feet! It is God's Earth that is under his feet, the earth over which man tends as God's khalifah. The Tree of Life with birds, stylized, is another traditional theme along these lines, alluding to the "language of the birds."

An Islamic theme that is akin to remembrance (dhikr) is HOMESICKNESS FOR PARADISE. The Muslim soul is homesick for Paradise. There is a mood of deep meloncholy typical of Muslim spirituality; it is a spirit, a feeling, that can be heard and felt in the haunting Call to Prayer (Adzhan) and in the beautiful verses of the Noble Recitation (Koran). The Muslim soul yearns for Paradise, longs to return to the Garden. This life of forgetfulness is an exile. When one retires to a prayer rug it is of PARADISE that one should be reminded.

Traditional rug designs are geometrical in nature or are based on the arabesque. All forms of naturalistic representation (images) should be avoided. They are distracting and inappropriate. As a minimum standard, the pattern on the rug should be calming and not distracting to the eye.

Modern prayer rugs, mass produced in synthetic fibres, tend to be ugly, offensive or embarassingly kitch. Catholic and Christian devotionalism in modern times often shows startling bad taste, but it often seems that Muslims show the worst taste of all.

The following type of design is more common in the Sunni world:

The design above is an example of the type of garish 3D, perspectival designs - in truly abominable colours - that are now extremely common. Not only are they representational and distracting, and they give the impression that the Qibla is below one's feet, they create the disconcerting illusion of a three-dimensional space receding into the floor! These mats are profoundly untraditional and in fact un-Islamic - in violation of the whole spirit of Islam - by any proper measure. The entire artistic tradition of Islam has always rejected such illusionism, but now in the modern era it is hardly noticed. The Prophet - upon whom be peace - shunned images and their illusions, but today his Ummah are so insensitive to the corruptions of images that they print illusionistic pictures on the very mats upon which they pray! Nothing speaks so dramatically of the decline of Muslims. It is not just the craft of rugmaking that has fallen into decadence, it is the ritual of salat and the whole of Muslim devotion as well.

These are not unimportant matters. According to a famous Hadith "Allah is beautiful and He loves beauty!" So, conversely, He shuns ugliness. It is a religious duty to render the worship of Allah beautiful. We do not snort and grunt during the recitation of the Noble Koran - on the contrary, we try to make the recitation as eloquent and as moving as possible. Why then do we pay so little attention to the aesthetics of other aspects of worship? The degeneration of the prayer rug in modern times is a conspicuous instance of our failure to preserve even a basic sense of traditional craftsmanship and its intimate relation to the Divine beauty in this age of tawdry consumerism and lifeless machines. Our worship has become tawdry and sentimental. Our hearts have become hardened to mass-produced ugliness.

The design above combines both modern and traditional designs into another common modern monstrosity. The upper half presents a perspectival view of the Kaaba while in the bottom half we see the stylized Tree of Life, a remnant of a traditional pattern.

Let us remove ugliness and cheap commercialism from our homes and mosques and recover our sense of the beauty of God and in this celebrate the true splendour of Islam! Let us insist on well-made prayer rugs with beautiful designs and subtle colours that enhance rather than detract from our worship of Allah.

 

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