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Yasser S. Khan and Rizwan Ahmad
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The offending dress (Image credit: BBC)
Recently, a woman in Lahore was accused of blasphemy for wearing a dress printed with Arabic calligraphy. The crowd had assumed that the sartorial motifs must be verses from the Qur’an.
In reality, the words on the dress were hayah and hulwah meaning ‘life’ and ‘sweet’ respectively. Islamic scholars had to be called in to verify this to eventually disband the crowd.
How did the misunderstanding come about?
The calligraphic style of the print on the dress loosely resembles the Thuluth style of writing. Thuluth literally means “a third,” referring to its compactness, as this style of writing occupies a third of the space in comparison to other more expansive Arabic calligraphic styles.
The Thuluth style is most notably visible on Kiswah, the black fabric that covers the Kaaba with verses from the Qur’an. The iconicity of the Kaaba, being one of the most well-known symbols within Islam alongside the crescent moon, extends to the black cloth that covers and adorns it in golden inscriptions of Qur’anic verses , which makes the association of the Thuluth form of writing with Qur’anic verse even stronger.
Generally, Muslims in Pakistan and the Subcontinent at large are able to read Quranic Arabic, even as they might not understand it; recognizing the script is distinct from comprehending it. Considering their familiarity with the Quranic script and the iconic visibility of the Kiswah, the crowd in Pakistan recognized the Thuluth form of Arabic writing on the dress, which to them is blasphemous as it is perceived as an irreverent treatment of sacred Qur’anic verses.
For the crowd, it was the form of the writing that evoked the sacredness associated with the Qur’an which they mistakenly associated with the content of the writing. If the dress had been printed with Urdu words (in which case the crowd would have known the content) or even perhaps Arabic words in another font, the misrecognition would not have arisen.
Using the sacred associations evoked by Qur’anic form strategically
Arabic “Do not urinate!” sign in Dhaka (Image credit: Global voices)
While the hapless woman in Lahore likely was unaware of the sacred associations evoked by the print on her dress, authorities in Bangladesh use the form of Qur’anic Arabic more strategically.
In Dhaka, as elsewhere on the subcontinent, it is common practice for men to urinate on the street, due to inadequate public toilets.
In addition to providing better sanitary facilities, the Ministry of Religious Affairs commissioned prohibitive messages against public urination in Arabic.
Why write prohibitive messages against public urination in Arabic instead of Bangla, even though Arabic is a language Bangladeshis recognize mostly in relation to the Qur’an?
For many Bangladeshis, as for Pakistanis, anything written in Arabic in a font associated with the Qur’an seems sacred. While they are unlikely to understand the meaning of the prohibitive messages written in Arabic, the use of the form of Qur’anic Arabic for the prohibition is effective, as people will be fearful to urinate on what they assume to be a sacred Qur’anic verse.
In both cases, it is the form that evokes the association with the sacred text, not the content.
These two episodes demonstrate that in the meaning-making process, there is often a complex negotiation and interaction between form and content of language. Conventionally, we give more precedence to content at the peril of losing the meaning conveyed to us by form. The overlooking of form can lead to misunderstandings, as happened in Lahore, just as the deliberate use of form can become a powerful tool to evoke associations that bypass content and thus shape perceptions. Alongside content, the form of language, script, or font shape and are shaped by the meanings they are supposed to carry. A neglect of form in our everyday perception of language can only lead to a fractured understanding of how meaning is produced and how it is perceived and consumed.
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Yasser Shams Khan is an Assistant Professor of Literature, Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Qatar University. He is the recipient of the 2024 British Association for Romantic Studies President’s Fellowship. His work focuses on the history of theatricality and performance practices, with specific interest in issues of race, Orientalism, and empire in the long eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
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Ahmad, Rizwan. 2022. Mal Lawwal: Linguistic landscapes of Qatar
Ahmad, Rizwan. 2020. “I regret having named him Sahil”: Urdu names in India
Grey, Alexandra. 2018. Do you ever wear language?
Piller, Ingrid. 2010. Transliterated brand names
Piller, Ingrid. 2013. Linguistic theory in Dubai
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Enjoyed reading it! I think the bright perhaps somewhat frivolous colours of the scrips on the hapless woman’s dress also stirs up the people as such fonts as you explain often appear in golden colour on a black wrapping.