"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.

As the journey continues, however, Dr. Alam begins to soften and warm to his more rustic surroundings. Ultimately, he makes a wrong turn in a very remote place and ends up stranded alone in the desert. As his car runs out of petrol and the batteries start to die, Dr. Alam faces the likelihood of his own death. In a dramatic ending, Dr. Alam passes in and out of consciousness as the interior lights of his car flicker on and off. The viewer only hears scraping and distant shouting as people attempt to unbury his car, which at this point has been completely submerged in sand. The final visual includes the light piercing through the car's sunroof with a single hand stretching down to offer life-saving help.

I read So Close, So Far to be a profound illustration of Allah's subtlety, mercy, and guidance. Dr. Alam thought that he was saving his son—whom, significantly, the viewer never sees—but in fact it was Dr. Alam that required saving. The calamity of Saman's neurological condition becomes a device of the divine plan to lure Dr. Alam out of his heedlessness, crush his arrogance, and subvert his prejudices. The hand extended through the sunroof at the film's close is a proxy for nothing less than the proverbial hand of God.

Another film by Mirkarimi, Under the Moonlight (زیر نور ماه ), shows that perfectionism need not shy away from internal critique. The plot centers around a seminary student from the countryside named Hassan. Hassan travels to the city to complete his religious studies with the plan to return to his village as a cleric. The central tension of the film is that the ceremonial garments for Hassan's graduation are stolen by a homeless boy. Hassan tries to track down the culprit and his clothes but is touched by compassion when he sees the plight of the city's poor and homeless, even if he is taken aback by their utter disregard for him as a seminary student. His growing awareness of the plight of others feeds his growing dissatisfaction with seminary life. In one scene Hassan sits respectfully if awkwardly while his teachers marvel at some of the emerging technologies they struggle to use. The film depicts the tension between who the seminary professors are idealized to be and the underlying reality, portraying them as human, even exceedingly ordinary to the point of unimpressive. Among his classmates as well, Hassan experiences alienation. Their theoretical discussions of jurisprudential issues now ring profoundly hollow and disconnected from the real issues of his new acquaintances a short distance away. As Hassan spends more and more time getting to know the boy who stole his garments and his world, Hassan contemplates dropping out of the seminary and selling his books, presumably to help the needy. Ultimately, Hassan does decide to complete his studies, but resolves to take the homeless boy with him back to his village where he plans to start a home for boys in similar circumstances.

Several profound and Islamically relevant themes permeate Under the Moonlight, including the tension between the form and substance of piety. The film sustains a mature critique of religious forms without devolving into irreverent caricatures. Rather, it shows the need for reform, embodied by Hassan's synthesis between his initial goal of seminary completion with his final goal of using his position and moral authority to alleviate the plight of those in need.

Both films navigate between the hyper-realist and hyper-idealist ethics that often dominate film and cultural production in general. Hyper-realist cultural production focuses on authenticity, accentuating often the harshest realities of life but lacking moral force or concrete prescriptions. Like much commercial rap music, it glories in grittiness, desensitizing the audience and normalizing destructive behaviors, even when true to lived experience rather than contrived for the camera. Hyper-idealist cultural production commits the opposite offense, framing good and evil in clear black-and-white hues, often with an obviously didactic dimension. It is significant that outside of Islamic media designed for children, most adult media of this type is based in a nostalgic and glorious past, not just an indication of our simplistic historical narratives but also our stunted ability to imagine an Islamic present or future in film. Mirkarimi's films transcend these two poles and offer an instructive example for how Islamic film and cultural production can be genuinely perfectionist in the sense articulated by Kaminski while remaining relevant to lived experience and contemporary facing. There is an apt analogy to be borrowed from psychology's attachment theory in how Ummatic film might navigate between these poles. Quoting an article from The Mazaj:

“When the infant begins to cry in distress, the attuned mother does not immediately try to pull the baby upward into calm. Instead, she herself descends. Unconsciously, her own nervous system moves to meet the infant's emotional state, her face softens into something that mirrors the distress, her voice carries the colour of it, her body comes close. She sinks, emotionally, to where the baby is. The infant is met there. Joined. The terrible aloneness of the distress is dissolved, because now there are two people in it. And then, and only then, does she begin to lift. Gradually, her own emotional state begins to move toward regulation, toward ease, toward warmth. And the infant, already attuned to her, follows. Unconsciously, automatically, the baby's nervous system tracks hers upward, out of the distress and into something more settled. […] And it is the experience of being accompanied, repeated again and again, that teaches the developing brain that emotional states are not permanent, that distress has an ending, that another person can be a source of regulation rather than threat. The implications are significant. When a caregiver is consistently responsive in this way, not perfectly, but reliably, the orbitofrontal system develops in ways that support emotional flexibility, stress regulation, and what researchers call secure attachment. The child internalises a fundamental assumption: that when things go wrong, they can be set right. That help is available. That connection and repair, after rupture, is possible.” (https://www.themazaj.org/p/attachment)

What if Ummatic cultural production treated the harshest trials of life as a reliable caregiver treated a dysregulated child, not with platitudes nor glorification, but solemn recognition moving towards transcendence?

Turning to another arena, international sport is one of the cultural sectors in which Muslims enjoy the most recognition and support. Among the most popular Muslim athletes of this generation is Khabib Nurmagomedov, the Daghestani mixed martial artist known for his wrestling prowess and observance of Islam. In a sport dominated by an aesthetic many would deem toxically masculine, Khabib's dedication to faith and a clean life stood out and gained significant attention. He refused to shake hands with women, questioned the purpose of bikini-clad ring girls, and regularly displayed rare sportsmanship towards his opponents during his meteoric rise through the UFC promotion. His practices, including prostrating after victory and defiantly saying "alhamdulillah" in interviews, were often explicitly Islamic, earning him a cult-following amongst young Muslim men worldwide. Despite his broken English, he generated viral quotes that remain in use on the internet today, such as the infamous challenge to his archnemesis, "send location."

"Send location" was said in the build up to the biggest fight of his career against Conor McGregor. McGregor, an Irishman who at one point was the world's highest-paid athlete, was the embodiment of everything Khabib was not, flaunting a lavish lifestyle complete with luxury cars, booze, and women. Leading up to their fight in 2018, McGregor continually crossed the line from professional to personal, mocking Khabib's family, country, and religion. In the final press conference before the fight, McGregor, flanked by the morally unscrupulous President and CEO of UFC, Dana White, aggressively offered Khabib a glass of his personal brand of whiskey, which Khabib firmly refused before the two began to trade insults. When Khabib and McGregor finally stepped into the ring to fight each other, the event had taken on far more symbolic significance than a normal UFC match. For many of the viewers it was read as nothing short of an encounter of Good vs Evil, and for Muslims watching, Islam vs Kufr. Khabib's decisive victory that night remains the most-watched and highest-selling fight in MMA history, with over 2.4 million people tuning in. The most significant aspect of Khabib's story, however, is that he retired just two years later, at the peak of his career with an undefeated record, to honor the promise he made to his mother that he would not continue to fight after his father passed away.

Somewhat of a foil to Khabib would be Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah, often cited as the most popular Muslim athlete in the world and one that has been an ambassador for the acceptance of Muslims in Liverpool and the UK, although he is often met with a mixture of admiration and disappointment among devout Muslims. Though Salah prostrates after scoring goals and donates huge sums to humanitarian efforts, he strikes a much less bold figure than Khabib, adhering much more to a politics of respectability within the established structures of the English Premier League. Widely seen as more apolitical, Salah has drawn criticism among Muslims for various indiscretions, including posing with Brazilian supermodels and posting pictures of himself and his family celebrating Christmas.

The juxtaposition of Khabib and Salah reveals important considerations for Ummatic soft power and cultural production. On one hand, representation in existing structures has hard limits. Mohamed Salah has reached the very top of the football world, and yet he could not be described as someone who has had a structural impact on the sport. Apolitical stances within such structures do not move the needle long term. As the World Cup played out in North America this year, FIFA rightly came under scrutiny for failing to meaningfully discipline Israel over its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as it had done to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Sport is always extremely politicized, despite the selectively deployed platitudes to the contrary. Athletes like Khabib, whose story arc mirrors that of Muhammad Ali, demonstrate a readiness to confront falsehood and sacrifice fame on a matter of principle. After leaving the UFC, Khabib launched Eagle Fighting Championship, a rival MMA promotion of his own.

A theory of cultural production adequate to Ummatic soft power must begin by refusing the reflex to measure Muslim cultural influence by visibility since visibility is what the current dominant paradigm is willing to absorb. A prostration after a goal can be made legible to the prevailing order without disturbing it. The relevant question, then, is not whether a cultural product is Muslim in appearance or visible within existing structures but what paradigm it serves and toward what end it moves those who consume it. This yields two criteria. The first is structural: does the work accommodate the dominant order or contest and reconstitute it? Khabib's refusal of the whiskey, his "send location," his retirement at the summit on a promise to his mother, and finally his founding of a rival promotion are not gestures of representation within the UFC's symbolic economy but interventions against it and, ultimately, alternatives to it. The second criterion is teleological, and here Mirkarimi and the perfectionism Kaminski describes become indispensable. Genuine Ummatic cultural production does not merely reflect Muslim life back to Muslims; it orients them. It meets the audience in the lived texture of trial and heedlessness—Dr. Alam's arrogance, Hassan's disillusionment—and from there lifts them toward transcendence, just as the attuned caregiver descends into the child's distress only in order to draw the child upward out of it. The hyper-realist abandons the audience to their distress; the hyper-idealist glosses over the distress entirely. Ummatic cultural production should accompany, then elevate.

Symbol, where we began, is the medium through which both criteria reach the masses. But symbol is double-edged: the same emotive, subconscious force that can bind hearts to Islam can just as easily ornament an accommodation with kufr in Islamic dress. The task of Ummatic cultural production is not to manufacture more Muslim tokens but to ensure that the symbols it sends point somewhere—that they confront falsehood rather than decorate it, and build rather than merely belong. Soft power that globalizes a Muslim aesthetic while leaving the surrounding paradigm untouched has, in the end, only sent its coordinates to be located by someone else. Soft power that genuinely serves revival sends a location of its own.