The Ka'aba: The Beginning and the End
حَسْبِيَ اللَّهُ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ هُوَ عَلَيْهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ وَهُوَ رَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِيمِ
“Allah is sufficient for me. There is none worthy of worship but Him. I have placed my trust in Him. He is the Lord of the Majestic throne.”
It was narrated by Ibn ‘Abbas who said:
When (Prophet) Ibrahim (Abraham) was thrown into the fire, he said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and, He is the Best Disposer of affairs.” So did Messenger of Allah Muhammad (ﷺ) when he was told: “A great army of the pagans had gathered against him, so fear them”. But this (warning) only increased him and the Muslims in Faith and they said: “Allah (Alone) is sufficient for us, and He is the Best Disposer of affairs (for us)”
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Hadith 4563
Prophet Ibrahim (AS), our Father, is how Allah describes him in the Quran. What's the significance? In the second chapter of the Quran, Allah talks about Bani Israel (the Jews of that time), who are called Bani Israel because they are the children of Israel, also known as Yaqoob (AS). Prophet Ibrahim had two sons, Ishaaq and Ismaeel. Ishaaq is the father of Prophet Yaqoob, also known as Israel, and the Jews that Allah refers to in the Quran are the children of Yaqoob (Israel). Ismaeel is the ancestor of the Arab peoples, from whom our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW) comes. As Muslims, we call Prophet Ibrahim (AS) our Father because he is the ancestor of both the children of Israel and the children of the Arabs, making him symbolic of a religion that came for all of humanity. This is important because, as we see in Surah Baqarah, the Jews of that time, Bani Israel, turned religion into something exclusive. So, as Muslims, when we call Prophet Ibrahim (AS) our Father, it signifies a religion for all of humanity. With all that being said, in Surah Baqarah, in the Divine sequence of our Lord, before talking about Bani Israel, Allah talks about Adam, our original Father.
Rasheed Araeen - Inspiration for this blog post
In this blog post, I am directly referencing Rasheed Araeen’s Islam and Modernism. Rasheed is an artist whom I encountered while exploring the Frieze International Art Fair in London. Frieze Art Fair is one of the most significant global events in the art world. While in awe of just being allowed to experience art at such a high level, I stumbled upon Rasheed Araeen's works—not in the general Frieze London display but in the Frieze Masters section. Frieze Masters showcases works created before the year 2000, making them more historical and also certifying them as masters of their craft. I was impressed by his Islamic-inspired art but also by the blatant political messaging within it. All of this to say that I was deeply impressed by the physical manifestation of his intellect, and now I get to share his raw intellect with you in this blog post.
Philosophy
One of the main questions of philosophy revolves around the betterment of life in terms of human consciousness. Questions such as: Where did human consciousness begin? To answer that question, most people agree that the beginning of human consciousness started with what was visible and what was experienced by the eye. Thus, human consciousness can be represented by objects and things.
An example of this philosophical system is seen in the writings of philosopher John Locke, who conveyed that, “I pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding.” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1690) Essentially, he argued that knowledge can only be understood through sensory experience. In this philosophical system, knowledge is limited to what is seen, touched, or experienced. My argument in this blog post is that the realization of Allah, the unseen, broke humans out of the subjugation to the experiences of the eye. The very idea of the unseen, invisible, Divine places Islam above all ideologies and philosophical systems, both historically and conceptually. That being said, Islam also has an empirical attitude (similar to the school of Empiricism to which John Locke belongs), as the Quran states that nature itself is a sign from Allah.
"This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah – who believe in the unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them."
Surah Al-Baqarah (2:2-3)
Hegel’s “self-consciousness” theory
“The absolute becomes self-consciousness in man’s cognitive and practical activities. But man’s central motive for such activities is, in Hegel’s view, to become self-conscious himself, and since the absolute in this phase is not distinct from man, the absolute becomes self conscious only in the self consciousness of man….His portrayals of men must convey men’s central position in the universe, a position from which he produces unreciprocated portrayals of other things.”
Hegel: Introduction to Aesthetics by Michael Inwood
Let’s start with Hegel’s self-consciousness theory, as explained in this quote. This theory is complex, and Hegel is essentially addressing man’s place in the world and his need to express himself through art. Rasheed states that the root of self-consciousness is rooted in the primitive stage of self-consciousness. This primitive stage of consciousness dates back to cave drawings of humans and animals. Interestingly, this is where the word “narcissism” originates—a man looking at his reflection, falling in love with it, and thereby acquiring a self-consciousness of being both man and God together. In the definition provided by Michael Inwood, we see that the “absolute” is not distinct from man, which mirrors the process through which narcissism arises. However, this primitive stage isn’t sufficient for human beings striving for the betterment of human consciousness. We must look beyond the primitive and continue to evolve, right?
This brings us to our Father, Prophet Ibrahim (AS), and his message of monotheism. From this, we move to Prophet Iesa/Jesus (AS) in Bethlehem and Christianity as we know it today. After the time of Prophet Iesa (AS), his message reached Rome, where it faced a significant challenge due to the Paganism prevalent among the Romans of that time. The message of monotheism clashed with the polytheistic framework within which Roman society operated. The solution to this conflict was to allow the message to be "adopted" by Rome and interpreted in a way that aligned with their existing structures. Let’s explore this process further using Stephen Benko’s book Pagan Rome and the Early Christians and also precisely explained in this khutbah by Shaykh Yasir Qadhi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RApZurykkk
Essentially, Rome accepted the message of Jesus (AS) but with its own inheritance of primitive consciousness, thus giving rise to Christianity and its concept of God in the form of Christ. The primitive consciousness associated with the original message of Jesus (AS) is evident in how the polytheism of that time, which required the worship of figurines and statues, became merged with his original message. This fusion is what we now recognize as Christianity. Early Christian apologists like Tertullian and Origen rejected the idea that divine beings could be represented by physical objects, considering such practices a form of idolatry. However, as Christianity spread within the Roman Empire, Christians began to use religious art—not as idols but as symbolic representations of holy figures such as Jesus, Mary, and the saints. The shift toward incorporating figurines and statues into Christianity to align with Roman ideals began during and after the 4th century, following Constantine's conversion to Christianity. Before Constantine, early Christians largely opposed the use of religious images, considering them too closely tied to pagan idolatry.
So now, with the incorporation of polytheism into early Christian teachings, creating Christianity, the "spirit," as Rasheed calls it, conveyed by our Father Ibrahim (AS), is lost… until Prophet Muhammad (SAW). With Prophet Muhammad (SAW), he reinstates the teachings of earlier prophets and brings us to the next and final stage of human consciousness, which supersedes the primitive consciousness upon which Hegel’s theory is rooted. This "next" stage in human consciousness is the creation of abstract thought—the ability to think about concepts and ideas that are not physically present. This liberates us from the narcissism of primitive consciousness which, as we discussed earlier, relied on representations of the self (such as cave drawings) to make sense of abstract concepts.
But Hegel doesn’t arrive at what Rasheed calls “the Spirit of Islam.” He stops at the Romans, then Christianity, and centers man by integrating the “absolute” and man as one, thereby creating self-consciousness, which is essentially primitive consciousness. In his own words, Hegel says, “The universal need for expression in art lies, therefore, in man’s rational impulse to exalt the inner and outer world into a spiritual consciousness for himself, as an object in which he recognizes his own self.” In this quote, he is essentially describing primitive consciousness, as displayed in cave drawings, centering on what a man can see. Then, once we see our reflection, narcissism arises, centering ourselves. To take this point even further, what inspires Hegel’s view on aesthetics is Greek culture. In Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, he states, “The Greek world is the height of beauty in art. In Greek art, the spiritual inwardness and the sensuous outwardness are in perfect harmony, so that the divine appears in human shape, and the human is imbued with the divine.”
Not only is this simply primitive consciousness and representational art, but Hegel’s fascination with Greek facial and body features leads him to believe that the idealized Greek body is superior to all other races. Edward Said, in Orientalism, states:
“In classical Greece and Rome, geographers, historians, public figures like Caesar, orators, and poets added to the fund of taxonomic lore separating races, regions, nations, and minds from each other; much of that was self-serving and existed to prove that Romans and Greeks were superior to other kinds of people.”
From this, can we say that Hegel is an instrument of Westernism?
Cubism and Ka’aba
Now, let's fast forward a couple of centuries to the revolutionary movement of Cubism. Cézanne is considered the architect of Cubism and is called the Father of Modernism. Cézanne, while not a cubist himself, heavily influenced the movement through his work, laying the foundation for this revolutionary shift in early 20th-century art. His work focused on simplifying natural forms into geometric shapes like cylinders, spheres, and cones. Cézanne’s approach demonstrated that reality could be represented not as a single unified image but as a series of different views and forms—breaking down forms into geometric components and showing multiple perspectives at once. What’s so revolutionary about Cubism? Cubism was extraordinary because it overturned everything that the West believed in and represented, particularly representational primitive consciousness in art. It was the most significant attack on the centrality of man in human consciousness.
How does this relate to Islam? If Cubism’s aim was to remove the figural from Western art and its associated narcissism, as the basis for modernism, this had already been achieved 13 centuries earlier by the Ka'aba. In 1915, Russian artist Kazimir Malevich created a piece entitled Black Square. In this work, he attempted to wipe the slate of Western art clean by cleansing it of all traces of human representation, moving away from primitive consciousness. Interestingly, this painting resembles the Ka'ba! According to some art historians, the compositional symmetry of works like Malevich’s indicated egalitarianism, while asymmetry represented the hierarchy of the bourgeois system. Therefore, the shift from figural to geometric forms was not just physical, material, or formal—it was historical, ideological, and philosophical, representing an entirely different worldview.
And just to relate this to the Black Diaspora's struggle for freedom from Global Racial Capitalism, I’m going to use Robin D.G. Kelley’s book to discuss how surrealism, a movement born out of Cubism, created what he calls Freedom Dreams. Cubism’s challenge to conventional representation opened the door for later movements that prioritized the subconscious, abstraction, and non-representational forms. Robin writes, “By plunging into the depths of the unconscious and lessening the contradiction between everyday life and our wildest dreams, we enter the domain of the Marvelous.” He also states, “Surrealism is about making a new life.” Similarly, Frankle Rosemont explains, “Surrealism is the most exhilarating adventure of the mind, an unparalleled means of pursuing the fervent quest for freedom and true life beyond ideological appearances.” Rosemont further adds, “Surrealism offers a vision of freedom far deeper and more expansive than any of the movements discussed thus far. It is a movement that invites dreaming, urges us to improvise and invent, and recognizes the imagination as our most powerful weapon.”
During the time of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the last Prophet and the Prophet for all of humanity, when he returned to Mecca after being exiled, the first thing he told people to do was to get rid of the figurines and statues at the Ka’aba. Why? Because these statues and figurines represent primitive consciousness, which Islam comes to liberate us from. Islam does away with all of this in the symbolism of the Ka’aba, in which the Spirit of Geometry is born.
From the Ka’aba to the Spirit of Geometry
From this, Rasheed says there must be a connection between the revolutionary movement of Cubism and the Ka’aba, but it can’t just be that they are both cubic. The answer is that what connects them is the spirit of geometry. In Islamic tradition, we believe that it was Adam (AS), the first human being created and the first Prophet, who laid the foundation of the Ka’aba as the first house of worship for Allah (according to Al-Qurtubi, who references the connection of the Ka’aba to Bayt al-Ma’mur in the heavens). Over time, the original structure is believed to have deteriorated or disappeared, and Prophet Ibrahim (AS) was commanded by Allah to rebuild it on its original foundations.
"And [mention] when Abraham and Ishmael were raising the foundations of the House, [saying], 'Our Lord, accept [this] from us. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing.'"
Surat Baqarah (2:127)
So then the question is: how did something from Prophet Adam (AS), and then Prophet Ibrahim (AS), manifest itself in Cubism 13 centuries later? Well, the answer, he says, is that ideas move from one period to another, persisting throughout human history and then re-emerging after a period of time. The spirit of geometry that began with Prophet Adam (AS), the first human being created, and which, according to Al-Qurtubi, references Bayt al-Ma’mur in the heavens, reemerges as Cubism 13 centuries later—in which the spirit of geometry remains consistent.
What comes from geometry
This spirit of geometry allowed the Muslims to achieve great advancements in science, mathematics, and philosophy. This is showcased during the Islamic Golden Age (8th–14th century). From Science and Islam: A History by Ehsan Masood and Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance by George Saliba, we can consolidate the achievements of the Muslims as:
Astronomy:
Muslim astronomers advanced the understanding of celestial bodies, refining observations and calculations that laid the groundwork for modern astronomy.
Medicine
Ibn Sina (Avicenna): Authored The Canon of Medicine, a comprehensive medical encyclopedia that remained a standard textbook in Europe for centuries.
Al-Razi (Rhazes): Pioneered treatments for diseases like smallpox and measles and developed early hospital systems.
Optics
Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen): Corrected ancient Greek misconceptions about vision, explaining how light enters the eye to create sight, forming the foundation of modern optics.
Alchemy and Chemistry
Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber): Known as the father of early chemistry, he explored material composition, distillation, and acid properties, laying the groundwork for modern chemistry.
Mathematics
Al-Khwarizmi: The father of algebra, whose work transformed mathematics and introduced Arabic numerals to the West.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: Advanced trigonometry and its applications.
Philosphy
Ibn Sina: Expanded on metaphysics, exploring the relationship between existence and essence and developing the theory of the "Necessary Being" (God), a cornerstone of Islamic philosophical theology.
Ibn Rushd (Averroes): Known for commentaries on Aristotle, he argued that philosophical inquiry was essential for understanding divine truth, profoundly influencing European thought in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Conclusion:
I want to end this post with this Hadith:
"I saw the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) circling the Ka'aba and saying, 'How pure you are and how pure is your fragrance! How great you are and how great is your sanctity! By the One in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad, the sanctity of the believer is greater to Allah than your sanctity, in his wealth, his life, and to assume nothing of him but good.'"
Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 393
In this Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), our Beloved, is showing us that as much as we, as Muslims, consider the Ka’aba sacred, what’s even more sacred? The sanctity of a believer’s honour.