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INTRODUCTION

The relationship between law and art in Islam varies greatly between temporal, geographical and political boundaries. Scholarly attempts to define this relationship often construct definitions which ignore con­temporary art practice or simply refer to the dominant discourse that use the interpretive lens of the West to show points of difference and similarity between what is produced by the contemporary ‘us’ and the backward primitive ‘them’.

These approaches hugely oversimplify the problem of defining Islamic art, which is not a stagnant or historicised concept confined to the pre-modern Middle East, but a dynamic and subjective cultural product informed by different interpretations of the Divine law. Any assertion to the contrary exhibits an ignorance of the diversity of cultural approaches to Islamic law, ignoring both that the making and reception of art does not take place in an intellectual vacuum[1169] and the receptivity of art to intellectual developments in cultural practice.

This chapter aims to explore the nature of the relationship between Islamic art and Islamic law, and debunk some common misconceptions, particularly with respect to the legality of the use of the human figure in artistic representation. The following discussion will also examine the way in which law influences and governs the production of art and how artistic practice can be understood as a tool for assessing the way in which legal principles are interpreted and applied as a result of the values and dominant ijtihad methodologies of the cultural context in which it was produced.

II.

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Source: Hosen Nadirsyah (ed.). Research Handbook on Islamic Law and Society. Edward Elgar Publishing,2018. — 474 p.. 2018
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