From the outside, this charming manor house on the banks of the Seine, protected by high gilded doors, resembles the other villas in this opulent enclave of Chatou (Yvelines). From the patio side, the view over the Impressionist Island is impressive, safe from the real estate frenzy. On the garden side, in the labyrinth of roses and jasmine, a soft tranquility reigns, maintained by the splashing of a fountain. A languid melody fills the rooms. In the Museum of Sufi Art and Culture, inaugurated on September 28, everything is luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
The establishment funded by the MTO Shahmaghsoudi school of Islamic Sufism provides the reassuring backdrop of a tolerant Islam. The ornate traveler’s staffs and begging bowls engraved in coco de mer bear witness to a mystical quest whose precepts are delivered in Persian by the hologram of a Sufi master.
Even the tabarzíntypes of axes, lose their warlike character here. “It is symbolically what cuts ties with the material world and with our ego. », explains the young president of the museum, Claire Bay, herself a Sufi.
These ritual objects correspond to the works of living artists versed to varying degrees in mysticism. Some are Muslims, like the Moroccan Younès Rahmoun or the Iranian Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, others are not.
“The aura of Sufism overflows all creation, beyond religious or geographical issues, a thousand threads can be woven”says the museum’s director, Alexandra Baudelot. In your eyes, “It is ignorance that maintains the deadliest fantasies.” Claire Bay agrees: “People listen to music, see calligraphy, works and say: “Ah! Is this what Islam is?” »
“Get out of forced otherness”
Stéphanie Chazalon, who has directed the Institute of Islamic Cultures (ICI) in the Parisian neighborhood of Goutte-d’Or for eight years, is also striving to “escape from forced otherness”tragic faces and shameful insinuations. “ Our rolewants to clarify, It is not about addressing religion peacefully – as if it were necessary to reconcile people with Islam, which is not an issue for ICI – but rather addressing unknown, stereotyped or exoticized cultures, supporting artists.. »
This update, on the eve of the reopening, on October 5, of the building on rue Léon (Paris, 18my), it is not useless. Stéphanie Chazalon is aware of the tensions caused by the presence, in the second ICI building, on Stephenson Street, of a prayer room managed by an association linked to the Grand Mosque. When inaugurating it in 2013, Bertand Delanoë, then mayor of the capital, did not fail to remember to what extent the obstacles had been overcome.” immense, cultural, political, psychological, as it is true that there is a context of racism and rejection of the other”.
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