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Transcript

The title of the exhibition is "Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture." Crossing bridges seems to be something you really need to do at this moment. Humanity needs to learn about each other. In fact, in this exhibition, most of the objects, if not all of them, are bridges in themselves. You look at one object, and you find more than one culture has contributed to it. You find that an object actually combines Islamic faith, Christian faith, Jewish faith. You find that people who live together contributed to the making of Islamic art.

One of the gifts that Sabiha brings to this exhibition is that she understands that God is in the big things and the small things. I think the LDS concept of tender mercies of God being extended to individuals in the world, in the Church, throughout all mankind--those tender mercies, those are recorded in the narrative of the Koran, the illustrations of the Koran that we have exhibited here--that God loves His children.

As a visitor looks at these objects, they are not going to just see pretty patterns and just nice decoration. They're also going to sense that strong devotion to beautifying, putting something in the world that is connected to the greater source of creation.

People of integrity everywhere realize that extremism doesn't represent the bulk of people who practice Islam, who follow the faith of Islam. We certainly want to reinforce the notion that peace is a major, major message of people of good faith everywhere.

I know that our Father, God the Father, is God over all the earth and that He loves all of His children and wants, in this last great dispensation, despite the fact that we know that the world will end in conflict, for us to be peacemakers along the way. And this collaboration has gone a long way to establish new venues and new conversations between our culture and Islam that are going to forward in the short term, and hopefully longer term, greater peace.

Beauty and Belief: Islamic Art Exhibit

Description
A new BYU art exhibit focuses on understanding Islamic faith and culture.
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