Islam, beyond the stereotypes

Photographer Wasif exhibits Islam and the way one creates divides between people and puts people in boxes

When Munem Wasif was offered a gallery exhibit to coincide with Paris Photo earlier this month, he chose to show “In God We Trust,” his personal project on Islam in Bangladesh and his family’s relationship to it.

Although he was uncertain how people would respond to the exhibit, he felt that after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January in Paris that it was important to encourage people to think about Muslims in ways that did not play into stereotypes.



A portrait of a fakir, a Muslim ascetic who has taken a vow of poverty and worship.

Days after the show opened, Wasif was dining with photographer friends when he received an urgent call from the gallery owner: Stay off the streets, a series of violent attacks was going on in other parts of Paris. After being horrified by the initial descriptions of the attacks, he turned to his friends and expressed a succinct thought.

“I told them that I hope it’s not done by Muslims,” he recalled. Wasif lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with his wife, who is an actor, his sister, a doctor and his father, a lawyer. Because Wasif’s sister wears a hijab and he has a beard, he said others might see them as singularly Muslim.

Men embracing during Muhharam.

In reality, they all view their common faith quite differently. “We have so many contradictions within ourselves,” he said. “We argue with each other all the time.”



Some of these disagreements are over his sister’s decision to wear a hijab, which no one in the family wore before she made the Hajj pilgrimage in 2006.

Thousand of Sufis at Chittagong, Bangladesh, for an annual gathering.

While women in Bangladesh might cover their hair with a scarf or fabric from a sari, hijabs were not common until recently, Wasif said. Her religious observance has become more like Islamic practices found in Pakistan or Egypt, he added.

Wasif's grandmother blessing his father after an Eid prayer.

Wasif is not strictly observant, but said he was influenced by the syncretic Bengali form of Islam that he grew up with. In his exhibit, which took six years to prepare, he tried to show the various forms of Islam in Bangladesh, which is predominantly Muslim, as well as his family’s diverging views.



“As a nation, we are proud of our cultural heritage as well as our religious ones,” he wrote in text for the project.

Students performing an ablution before saying the afternoon prayer at a madrasa.

“On one hand, we have traditional ulemmas (scholars) who help run the mosque and teach us religious beliefs; on the other hand, we have all-night folk song festivals, with spiritual devotees challenging us to consider the traditional values of life and other philosophical questions. We light candles at our weddings, as well as at our protests.”

The Paris exhibit includes photos of his family and a video of them discussing Islam. There are also images of the religious influences and practices in Bangladesh. A few of the photos reflect a recent tendency there toward a more radical, militant Islam. In the last few years there have been several murders of secular bloggers.

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The aftermath of a sectarian attack on a Hindu village on Bangladesh.

Wasif also displayed physical items, including a lock of his sister’s hair to represent the images that he took of her but can no longer show in public since she started wearing the hijab a decade ago.

The gallery stayed closed the day after the Paris attacks, but Wasif asked that it reopen the following day. It seemed to him that it was even more important to foster intricate conversations about Islam.

Topu, a young photographer at home, taking a nap on a prayer rug after midday prayers.

“In the end, the work is not only about Islam but about the way that we create divides between people and put people in boxes,” he said.

Friends at an Eid party.

“For me the work is about questioning how we look at others. At the end of the day we are all human beings.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Times, a partner of The Express Tribune.

Photos: Munem Wasif/Agence Vu