The Muezzin: A Reflection
I search for myself in art; I come to every piece as a whole person, with all the parts of my intersecting identities intact. Sometimes, one or more parts bubble up more than others, and when I study this painting, my Islamic faith rises to the top first, and my identity as an East African immigrant who lives in Omaha, Nebraska is a close second. The artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme, was a non-Muslim Frenchman whose first encounter with Islam was during a tour of the Near East when he was 41 years old. This trip inspired this painting, The Muezzin, among others in the Orientalist genre. He situated it in Egypt, the home of some of my ancestors in East Africa, and he chose to depict the muezzin, one of the most iconic symbols of my beloved faith.
The story of the first muezzin, Bilal ibn Rabah, is one of courage. Born in Mecca, he was an enslaved person from Habasha, modern day Ethiopia, the son of an Arab father and an Ethiopian mother who was forced into slavery and married to another slave. One of the first converts to Islam, he was tortured by the man who owned him, as he refused to denounce his new faith. Bought and freed by Abu Bakr, who was sent by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), he became beloved by the Prophet who called…
