Interfaith Opportunities
Network

 

Resources
Sandow Birk's American Qur'an
at Grinnell College

          For nearly six years, Los Angeles-based artist Sandow Birk has been engaged in a project to transcribe and illustrate an English translation of the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Islam.  Based on traditional models of manuscript illumination, Birk's  American Qur'an  combines the handwritten text with images drawn from contemporary American life.
          The Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College is currently exhibiting 86 works from the series.  The artist expects to complete the series in 2014.

"What is Islam?  And What Does it Mean for Islam to Be in America?"
by Caleb Elfenbein, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and History,
is available when you click on the illustration above. 
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When an early selection of suras by Sandow Birk was shown in California in 2009, the president-elect of the Historians of Islamic Art Association, Marianna Shreve Simpson, thought that some Muslims might consider the use of figurative images in this context "heretical." 
But she added, "I've never in my entire career heard of an artist creating a handwritten copy of the Koran in English, and certainly not one that incorporates representational imagery.  So this is completely novel, what he is doing."

Read "Personal Meditations" on the Koran

Click here for the artist's thoughtful, reverential approach

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Tughra (Official Signature) of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66)
  
15 New Islamic Galleries
open at
Metropolitan Museum of Art

           New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia is the name of fifteen "greatly enlarged, freshly conceived, completely renovated galleries featuring the Metropolitan's renowned collection of Islamic art."

          "The opening of these extraordinary new galleries," says Director Thomas P. Campbell, "provides a unique opportunity to convey the grandeur and complexity of Islamic art and culture. . . . In sequence, the 15 new galleries trace the course of Islamic civilization over a span of 13 centuries."

          Explore the galleries' riches:


see calligraphy
(including Sultan Suleiman's official signature, above)




  Faith Formation
Online Community for Christian Educators

Church Publishing Incorporated (CPI) has launched

www.buildfaith.org
 
an ecumenical online community expressly designed for Christian Educators and faith formation leaders across the denominational spectrum.

The new website features a forum for sharing knowledge and best practices, offering practical tools, links, and encouragement.  Content is both original and collected from other respected blogs and websites.  The site is being updated daily and maintained to ensure that content is fresh, relevant, and  accurate. 

Both content and subscriptions are free.
Visit the New York Public Library's

Three Faiths:
Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Documents,Themes, Short videos


Sharing Mary in the Qur'an and the Bible
 
Read passages in the Bible and the Qur'an
side by side:
click here

    Megaplanet with Spiral by Josh Simpson