Music, Joy & Islam

[August1991]

We all know of Mozart and Tchaikovski. Does the Islamic world have such composers?

Could a Buddhist create music as Beethoven did?

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In Saudi Arabia and Iran, there are no cinemas, no concert halls. There is no public music. There are no Broadway musical theatres. There is no West End.

In Iran and Saudi, no one kisses anyone in public.

Edited June 29, 2014 by August1991

[bush_cheney2004]

No cinema in Iran ? Tehran is actually preferable to Cannes for film festivals...no celebs to hog the screenings. Iran's film production has grown by leaps and bounds, if only for the propaganda value. But internationally acclaimed work is also being created.

[Shady]

It's no doubt the fault of America and the West!!!!!!

[August1991]

No cinema in Iran ? Tehran is actually preferable to Cannes for film festivals...no celebs to hog the screenings. Iran's film production has grown by leaps and bounds, if only for the propaganda value. But internationally acclaimed work is also being created.

There is no cinema in Saudi Arabia. And no public kissing, touching, in Tehran - between women and men.

I stand corrected. But in Tehran, the cinemas have separate seating sections.

(Yet, unrelated, unmarried men can hold hands in the streets of Riyad while unrelated men and women cannot.)

Edited June 29, 2014 by August1991

[bush_cheney2004]

But in Tehran, the cinemas have separate seating sections.

That's OK....in Canada and the U.S.A., they have separate rest rooms !

[Remiel]

Do you not ever get tired of baiting? Try Tanburi Buyuk Osman Bey, an Ottoman composer. Hammamizade Ismail Dede Efendi is another. Buhurizade Mustafa Itri might be the top classical Ottoman-Turkish composer. Good or important enough for UNESCO to recognize him in 2012.

Try YouTube.

[Michael Hardner]

The best art films come from socialist Scandanavia - what of it ?

[The_Squid]

There is no public music.

Quite possibly the stupidest and most easily refuted statement ever made on MLW forums.

No one says living under religious dictators is all fun and games and that it doesn't have serious impacts on their culture and freedom of expression in those countries... but to say that because they have dictatorships today that there has never been any music from Islamic parts of the world is extremely dumb.

Did you even spend 30 seconds thinking about what you posted prior to posting it? It's nonsense!

Edited June 30, 2014 by The_Squid

[-1=e^ipi]

Islam has the most beautiful music ever, the Islamic call to prayer:

Clearly, it puts all those kaffir western composers to shame. *sarcasm*

[Bonam]

This reminds me of the thread where Argus was saying that Russians had made no significant/noteworthy contributions to science. Ridiculous, and of course easily refuted. We can criticize other cultures and countries all we want, often with good reason, but trying to dehumanize the people that live there by not recognizing their basic achievements, pretending that they lack basic positive human emotions like "joy" or expressions thereof (like music) is not productive. As to whether the music is "as good as" that produced by some of the greatest western composers of all time... I would say that music is a highly culturally subjective form of expression, and even if by some objective measure it's not as good... so what?

Those familiar with my posting history will know that I'm not often one to jump to the defense of Islam (in fact, probably never before), but this line of critique seems very dehumanizing.

[monty16]

This reminds me of the thread where Argus was saying that Russians had made no significant/noteworthy contributions to science. Ridiculous, and of course easily refuted. We can criticize other cultures and countries all we want, often with good reason, but trying to dehumanize the people that live there by not recognizing their basic achievements, pretending that they lack basic positive human emotions like "joy" or expressions thereof (like music) is not productive. As to whether the music is "as good as" that produced by some of the greatest western composers of all time... I would say that music is a highly culturally subjective form of expression, and even if by some objective measure it's not as good... so what?

Those familiar with my posting history will know that I'm not often one to jump to the defense of Islam (in fact, probably never before), but this line of critique seems very dehumanizing.

Now that's a post worth commenting on! You've struck back right directly at the evil attempt to demonize Muslims of the world and we need not ask what the purpose really is. but unfortunately, the ugly responses of the haters are going to far outnumber any good that can come out of it.

And no, there's no need to refute ridiculous hate against Russia that has no real purpose..

[-1=e^ipi]

I'll be honest... the call to prayer is pretty catchy... I've listened to it like 5 times since posting it.

[Argus]

This reminds me of the thread where Argus was saying that Russians had made no significant/noteworthy contributions to science. Ridiculous, and of course easily refuted.

What I believe I said (I believe) was that given the size of their population, they had very few Nobels compared to many others.

As for music and images, the more severe Islamic clerics don't tolerate it.

The Iranians are weird, being Iranians. They sometimes show concerts, though only featuring traditional music, but won't show the instruments.

[GostHacked]

They may have few nobles today, but much of our alphabet and numerals are Arabic. Islam was a center of enlightenment and progress in sciences back in the day. That was until fundamentalists hijacked the religion/philosophy and over the eons have devolved into what we see in Islam today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra

Etymology

The word algebra comes from the Arabic language (الجبر al-jabr "restoration") from the title of the book Ilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala by al-Khwarizmi. The word entered the English language during Late Middle English from either Spanish, Italian, or Medieval Latin. Algebra originally referred to a surgical procedure, and still is used in that sense in Spanish, while the mathematical meaning was a later development.[6]

Overall this is part of the problem with religion. One will stop looking for answers if the answer is always 'God did it'. The way we progress is to question those notions in order to discover something new.

I fear that some Christian nations are going that way too. We are not educating or challenging our youth mentally. This is detrimental to our society when fundamentalist religious views are held. IF we are not creating intelligent people, then we won't be progressing much further.

But as for art in Islam, I have not really been exposed to it aside from singing you can find online. The call to prayer is a nice piece (and that is from an atheist), and the use of harmonics is heavily used.

It also has made it's way into western pop culture and pop music, even if one does not realize it. It has been very influential.

Sting's Desert Rose with Cheb Mami. Lots of arabic undertones in the structure of the tracks instrumentation.

It's even inspired me. I'll post the track later, Soundcloud is being problematic.

https://soundcloud.com/openheartmachine-ohm/across-the-sand

cant get rid of this spot  arg/

Edited July 3, 2014 by GostHacked