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Visual Qur'an: A conversation with Sandow Birk

American Quran
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Sandow Birk and Bruce Lawrence

Unlike the Gospels of the New Testament - which relate narratives of Jesus' ministry on earth - the Holy Qur'an is believed to be the verbatim words of God as communicated through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad in the 7th Century CE. Collected together and grouped generally according to length (rather than chronologically), the 114 chapters ("suras") form a collection of sermon-like "revelations" that are the fundamental text of Islam, the fastest growing religion in America. At a time when the United States was involved in two wars against Islamic nations and declared itself to be in a cultural and philosophical struggle against Islamic extremists, American artist Sandow Birk's latest project considers the Qur'an as it was intended - as a universal message to humankind. If the Qur'an is indeed a divine message to all peoples, he ponders, what does it mean to an individual American in the 21st Century? How does the message of the Qur'an relate to us, as Americans, in this life, in this time? What is this message that we have spent so much blood and treasure fighting against, and how can the message of the Qur'an be applied to a contemporary American life? In short, what might the Qur'an mean to contemporary Americans?

Contact: Julie Maxwell