Abbas

“Allah O Akbar,” begins the call to prayer that resonates from minarets in towns and villages from Sinkiang to Morocco, from Paris to Timbuktu. It is also the war cry of militant Islamists throughout the world.

Driven by a desire to understand and expose the internal tensions within Muslim societies, torn between a mythical past and a desire for modernization and democracy, I traveled for seven years throughout the Umma, the land of the faithfuls.

After photographing in 29 countries, my research shows that Islam, the relationship between the Muslim and his God, feeds on Islamism, the force that would exploit the religion to political ends. A critical reassessment of this religion becomes more urgent after the massacre of September 11.

My photography is a reflection that comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity—the suspended moment—intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. A reflection on the subject precedes it. A meditation on finality follows it, and it is here, during this exalted and fragile moment, that the real photographic writing develops, sequencing the images. For this reason a writer’s spirit is necessary to this enterprise. Photography could be described as “writing with lights,” but with the difference that while the writer possesses his word, the photographer is himself, possessed by his photo, by the limit of the real which it must transcend so as not to become its prisoner.

—Abbas, April 2002