With its geographic spread and long history, 1400 years, Islamic art was subject to a wide range of regional and even national styles and influences as well as changes within the various periods of its development, the principles of Islam were applied to local culture to produce unique works, each region of the world flourishing at various periods in Islam’s history.

Even under these circumstances and influences of varying world cultures, Islamic art has always retained its intrinsic quality and unique identity, whether the artisan was African, Arabian, Persian or Indian in origin. Islam embodies a way of life people throughout its lands are committed to, historically it served as a cohesive force among ethnically and culturally diverse peoples among the many nations it was found in, Islam was the common language and the art produced by and for Muslim societies had basic identifying and unifying characteristics. Perhaps the most salient of these is all-over surface decoration. The four basic components of Islamic ornament are calligraphy, vegetal patterns, geometric patterns, and figural representation.

Surface patterns on works of art created in the Islamic world have been prized for centuries for their beauty, refinement, harmony, intricacy, and complexity.

Geometric motifs were popular with Islamic artists and designers in all parts of the world, for decorating almost every surface, whether walls or floors, pots or lamps, book covers or textiles. Islamic artists combined geometry with existing local traditions, creating a new and distinctive Islamic art that expressed the logic and order of the universe.

The study of geometry fed an ardent preoccupation with the stars celestial bodies and astronomy. All this in turn nourished the Arabic passion for creating infinite, decorative patterns. The cultivation of mathematical analysis, in particular, had a harmonizing effect. Islam cultivated the abstract study of the universe and the environment, this combined with its related doctrine of harmony with the universe and its creator (Tawhid), allowed Muslim intellectuals to recognize in geometry the unifying intermediary between the material and the spiritual world.

The development of this new distinctive art, in part may have been due to the discouragement of portraying animate objects in Art on the basis that it leads to idolatry and the psychological sicknesses in society associated with it. The Heart of man was created to embody noble attributes and in this way man through his qualities and individual personality will know his creator.

Tawhid in its perfected form is the harmony of man with his environment, if man’s self is not in harmony with his surroundings and at peace then he is blind to his creator who manifests himself through his creation, man’s otherwise turbulent nature would blind his perception and he would be dominated by emotions such as anger, hate and lust.

How can man recognize the value of peace if he thirsts to satisfy his desire, in this way and because of the effect of idols in their many forms have on society, whether movie stars or pop idols, the prophet (saws) said in relation to animate objects in art “Those who make pictures (of them) will be punished on the day of judgment. It will be said to them: Bring to life what you have created!”

This is because they have challenged God’s place within man’s heart, so on that day they will be challenged in turn because of the false nature of the idol and its effects of stopping man from ennobling himself.

Muslims held the belief that the Heart of Man is the throne of the Merciful (“Qalb al Insan Arsh al Rahman”), because of the heart’s role to acquire noble qualities by which man perceives the world and its creator and then shapes it according to his vision.

For Muslims this is the reality of the fundamental formula of Islam “There is no divinity other than God” (“La ilaha illah Llah”), meaning there should not be in mans heart anything greater than God. Muslims “see in figurative art, a fundamental error or illusion in projecting the nature of the absolute into the relative, by attributing to the relative an autonomy that does not belong to it. In this way, Islamic artists did not seek to express themselves as such, but rather aimed to ennoble matter and its natural order”.

In relation to this Allah said to man “Have you seen him who chooses, for his god his own lust? (25:43), “For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow blind” (22:46).

This inner blindness about which the prophet Muhammad (saws) explained, “Indeed Allah does not look at your appearance or form, but rather Allah looks at your Heart”, Allah judges man by the quality of his heart whether it embodies beautiful attributes or wretched ones. These teachings served to direct mans energy and capacity towards the things which would spiritually and materially benefit him in life through the creation of a balanced society.

Instead of covering buildings and other surfaces with human figures, Muslim artists developed complex geometric decorative designs, as well as intricate patterns of vegetal ornament (such as arabesque), with which to adorn palaces and mosques and other public places.

The development of infinitely repeating patterns was used to represent the unchanging laws God placed in nature, as He said “AND [remember:] We have not created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them without [an inner] truth” (15:85). In this way the rules of construction of geometric patterns provide a visual analogy to religious rules of behavior.

Both the contemplation of and the creative skill in making patterns lead in their own way to an understanding of the perfection found in Nature as it moves the elements, either a mathematical representation of nature or the moon in its orbit. Islamic patterns, unique as an art form, were unitary in its aim and function, the symbols inherent in Islamic patterns and geometry express the connection between the material and spiritual world, the world of Angels and the world of Man, they bring to life what is expressed in metaphors and allegory and are directed towards that undifferentiated unity between the two worlds.

“We have explained in detail in this Qur’an, for the benefit of mankind, every kind of similitude: but man is, in most things, contentious (18:54)

The biggest flaw in modern education is their reduction of knowledge and wisdom into facts and lists of points on a piece of paper, a person through life tries to gain wisdom about everything in it, and wisdom on any topic is only gained by acquiring much knowledge about it, yet modern education stops teaching matters at points, facts and lists.

When knowledge is reduced to facts it quickly becomes a list of points to be memorized and the wisdom behind anything you do is lost, so all the acts we do in the religion become a hollow mindless shell of what they used to be because a person doesn’t know why he is doing anything, how can you cure the heart of sickness if you can’t involve your heart in what you are doing by motivating it with the wisdom behind the act, and for this you need to know why you are doing it.

It is for this reason the book is structured this way, we can teach our children lists of points on a piece of paper which we can read from any other book, but with this book we will be able to explain to them why we do everything in Islam.

The Book has three parts, the first explains the wisdom behind different things in the religion and this is based on my work in “The Islamic Journal”, which you can find at my website Ghayb.com, then it talks about raising children and this is based on others’ work and the last section deals with the Pillars of Islam, why we follow them and what we try to achieve with them, they are from the work of Imam al Ghazali found in the book “Inner Dimensions Of Islamic Worship” and cover Prayer, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj, the Night prayer and other acts of Ibadah (worship), they are very deep and the sum of Islam’s wisdom. After all this we will be able to teach children the most important things in Islam when they get older or even just give them this book, wisdom is more important than anything else we can give them and Allah said about it in the Quran:

“He granteth wisdom to whom He pleaseth; and he to whom wisdom is granted receiveth indeed a benefit overflowing; but none will grasp the Message but men of understanding.”(2:269)

Social development establishes how people are treated in a society and how that society views and treats those different from them, moral development drives social development because it defines the framework for how that society should live and spend its time and energy, this is very important when the backdrop in the ancient world was either living as hunter gatherers or a nomadic life.

As the world at large moved away from this Islam was instrumental in shaping the development of the entire world, it was a trade empire whose borders stretched from west Africa and southern Europe to China, its scientific advancements which surpassed the rest of the world were a direct result of changing communities and societies around the world and encouraging them to study nature and the world, this global effort would spread around the world from Europe to Asia to the Americas.

This book looks at what it is in Islam that encouraged this change in so many communities, it discusses the spirituality that shaped so many lives. 

Some of these societies were among the most primitive people on earth but in a short period of time they would set up large empires spanning multiple continents, this process was seen numerous times in Islam’s history in different regions of the earth.

From the Ummayids who first invaded Europe, to the African Mali Empire whose most famous ruler was the richest person in History, to the Ottomans who had one of the largest Empires on earth and one of the longest lasting family dynasties, all had simple beginnings but one thing in common that changed their societies in a short period of time.