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Landskrona Photo – Lina Hashim, koranic questions

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At the core of Lina Hashim’s artistic project lies an urge to investigate and document the arbitrary way the Quran is interpreted today, using a method best understood as historical anthropology: Do the words and dogmas of the Quran make sense in a modern context? She firmly states that she is a Muslim as she believes in Islam, but doesn’t practise.

Lina Hashim is a former student of anthropology and she puts anthropological methods to use when she investigates, amongst other issues, the Islamic dogma of premarital sex. She does her research thoroughly and draws on her readings of the Quran, consulting imams, her family, and a number of chatrooms and online forums for Muslims.

She asks questions and tries to rationalize answers in order to display the workings of Islam in a modern context; how many of these dogmas are filtered through a widely accepted layer of fiction? If you are able to document by thorough investigation and registration that a dogma is continuously and commonly breached by the greater proportion of Muslims, is it then possible to actually challenge the ancient dogma for not making sense in a modern world?

In No wind with Hijab Lina Hashim has photographed women’s hair, normally hidden from public view under a hijab, a scarf that covers their head, concealing the hair in public. As a child Hashim often saw her mother and her friends taking their hijab off. “I remember that it was fascinating, the way they changed, from having the hijab and all of these boring clothes, to wearing tight dresses, revealing a lot of skin. I never wore a hijab, but it fascinated me.”

The hijab is seen as a way to protect these woman, keeping them as a treasure; for Lina to photograph them without this cover – a commandment of God – would be considered a sin in Islamic tradition.

In order to make the photographs she envisioned, she consulted a number of Imam, or spiritual leaders and by photographing the women from behind, against the white background, which stands as a symbol of their purity, cleanliness and innocence, she separates the women’s hair, making them anonymous and the action is no longer a sin.

Lina Hashim uses her art projects to explore and negotiate her female identity not opposing Islamic dogmas, but respectfully and insistently questioning their validity in a western context. She is a Muslim woman in Denmark who comes with a history and a cultural baggage that she is continually trying to rationalize and make sense of.

 

 

Landskrona Photo Festival
September 8-17, 2017
Landskrona
Sweden

http://www.landskronafoto.org/en/fotofestival-2017/

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