"Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws"
This apocryphal quote, often attributed to Confucius, holds a profound truth for Islamic revival in general and Ummatics specifically. Masses speak the language of symbol. Symbol is uniquely emotive, spiritual even, and taps into the subconscious such that it generates certainty and compels in ways the explicit analysis or instruction cannot. If we are to understand why the most popular artists, including musicians, are some of the highest earning figures in the world, it is because they are masters of symbol and tapped into this intimate, emotional-spiritual world. Ummatics must therefore pay due attention to symbol if it is ever to touch the masses, and cultural production of various types is the method by which symbols are conceived, articulated, and distributed at scale for mass consumption. This piece will give a few reflections on two Iranian films and international sports figures Khabib Nurmagomedov and Mohamed Salah to offer some preliminary considerations for Ummatic soft power and cultural production to distinguish soft power that genuinely serves Ummatic revival from that which merely globalizes Muslim aesthetics while accommodating dominant paradigms.
Legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami once said that the censorship in the Iranian republic compelled its filmmakers to make more intelligent films. While many of his peers in the film world would hesitate to give the revolutionary government such credit, the point stands in stark contrast to its sex and violence-obsessed counterpart in Hollywood. This insight pairs well with Professor Joseph Kaminski's work on perfectionism, which outlines a governing ethic alternative to the purported secular neutrality in which governments seek to inculcate thick values within their subjects. The banal observation is that every nation-state does this to some extent anyway; the constructive question is, rather than merely preventing problematic content and frameworks, what should Ummatic cultural production promote? In taking sex and gratuitous violence off the table, Iranian cinema is already a laboratory for exploring just that.
So Close, So Far (خیلی دور، خیلی نزدیک) is an award-winning film by Reza Mirkarimi that demonstrates how film can present an Islamic worldview that isn't crude or overly didactic. The film centers around Dr. Alam, an accomplished neurosurgeon, and his unexpected journey towards faith. While Dr. Alam is clearly accomplished professionally, his family life is deeply fractured, evidenced by his estrangement with his wife and his attempts to flirt with his secretary. While working late hours he pores over some X-rays only to realize that his own son, Saman, has a life-threatening neurological condition. The problem, however, is that Saman has left on a multi-day trip to go stargazing in the Iranian desert, and all attempts to reach him before he departs fail. The majority of the film thus follows Dr. Alam's urgent quest to track down his son. Along the way, Dr. Alam reveals his arrogance and low regard for some of the more provincial characters he meets, including a village Imam who needs a ride to perform a burial. In a telling exchange, when the Imam marvels at the ingenuity of the automatic windows of Dr. Alam's luxury car, Dr. Alam makes a tongue-in-cheek remark disparaging the infidels who made his car, a perspective he presumes the Imam to hold.
