CHARTER — The Governing Conditions of Transcription

This document establishes the governing conditions under which transcription may proceed. It defines hierarchy, priority, and limitation. What follows does not describe the work—it regulates it.

CLARIFICATION — On Desire, Submission, and Aesthetic Reinterpretation

This entry clarifies a recurring methodological pattern observed in contemporary discourse on Islamic visual practice. It addresses how arguments are formed, not the private intentions of those who advance them.

Controversy surrounding image-making in Islam does not arise from ambiguity in the revealed texts. It arises from resistance to their implications.

Where submission governs, desire is disciplined.

Where desire governs, submission is reinterpreted.

DOCTRINE – Beyond Aesthetics: A Framework for Islamic Art

VISUAL PRACTICE UNDER LEGAL CONSTRAINT

Islamic Art is not defined by recognizable aesthetic motifs.

It is defined by legal constraints.

The determining factor is not visual style, cultural reference, or symbolic language, but conformity to the Qur’ān and Sunnah as understood through proof-based legal methodology.

Terminology: Transcription (visual)

transcription (visual)

/tran•scrip•tion/

noun

The act of producing marks through continuation rather than composition, where execution replaces creativity and correctness replaces expression.

Terminology: Abstract Transcriptionism

 abstract transcriptionism

/ab•stract tran•scrip•tion•ism/

noun

A post-autonomous form of transcriptionism in which abstraction is not invented but impressed through repetitive, regulated mark-making, governed by legal and theological limits. The image is not sought. The process is the site of meaning.

see also: Transcription (visual), Transcriptionism

Terminology: Transcriptionism

 transcriptionism

/tran•scrip•tion•ism/

noun

1. A procedural visual practice in which marks are produced through continuation under constraint, without planning, depiction, narration, or expressive intent.
2. A method of making in which the hand functions as an instrument of execution, not expression, and form emerges only as a byproduct of sustained compliance.
3. In Islamic legal context, a mode of abstraction structured by submission, restraint, and aniconism, rejecting mimesis, imagination, and autonomous invention.

see also: Transcription (visual), Abstract Transcriptionism