Striving for beauty through proximity to God is a theme that has always permeated Muslim poetry in different historical contexts. Here’s a look at poetics and ethics in Islamic art.

By Ayesha Jalal | From the Nov. 25, 2011, issue.

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Let the beauty we love be what we do, there are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
 
Thus Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet, who has been the object of popular venerati...

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