Art
1. Art is like a magical key that opens hidden treasures. Behind the doors it opens are ideas embodied and imaginings given substantial form.
2. Art inspires human beings to travel in the depths of oceans and heavens. By means of art, humanity sets sail for the outer limits of the Earth and sky, and reaches feelings beyond time and space.
3. Art shows human sentiments and feelings the highest goals, and incites sensitive souls to profound depths. Without art, we would have seen no beauty in the realm of existence where humanity is allowed to act, and all those great abilities and the works they have produced wouldn't have been able to come to surface.
4. Art manifests and defines the power and deepest potentials of the human psyche and soul. Through art, the most profound emotions and thoughts, the most striking observations and discoveries, and the most heart-felt desires are preserved as if recorded on a tape and gain eternity.
5. Through art combined with faith, this once-magnificent world of Islam with its most magnificent places of worship, slender minarets pointing to the realms beyond, sacred designs and intricate patterns carved in marble and bearing a distinct message, diverse kinds of calligraphy, brilliant gildings, and embroideries as beautiful and fine as butterfly wings, became a gallery of invaluable beauty.
6. True knowledge shows itself through art. If one has never produced anything in the name of art, how can we say that he or she knows very much?
7. The vitality of a person's natural capabilities is closely related to the artistic spirit. One devoid of the spirit of art may be regarded as little different than a corpse.
8. Art makes iron more valuable than gold, and copper more valuable than bronze. Thanks to art, the most worthless metals become more valuable than gold, silver, and diamonds.
9. It is the same whether one without the spirit of art exists or not. Such people comprise crowds that are of no benefit, and might even actually harmful to, themselves, their families, and their nations.
10. All the fine arts are eternal gifts of blessed souls to humanity. The products of technology, combined with the spirit of art clocks telling us the time; glasses to compensate or correct weakened sight; telecommunicative devices that shrink space, conveying sounds and images over unbelievable distances; trains, buses, and planes that transport us from place to place all these tools and objects in use in ordinary life can be the work of, and can inspire, sensitive, artistic souls. Criteria or Lights of the Way, Izmir 1990, Vol. 3, pp. 104-109
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