Life

Gallery of knowledge, power, perfection, and beauty

November 23, 2017

Amal Al-Sibai



Saudi Gazette

Jeddah is always bustling with a fun event to attend or an awareness campaign or a book signing event or a children’s entertainment concert. There never is a dull weekend in Jeddah. Regular exhibitions are held year-round that benefit both the businesses and vendors but also the locals, looking for unique and trendy fashion wear, home décor, or cute cupcakes to serve their guests. Other exhibitions showcase the talents of Saudi women, starting up their own homebased businesses ranging from cooking and baking to crochet to photography and flower arrangements to much more.

What is the most recent exhibition held in Jeddah that everyone is talking about? What is this exceptional and unprecedented idea for an exhibition that has already delighted and amazed its visitors, leaving them with much to think about and contemplate and grow?

It is the Exhibition of the Beautiful Names of Allah hosted by King Fahad Public Library, near King Abdul Aziz University.

The exhibition truly is a must-see and offers its visitors an experience like no other, engaging your mind with mind-blowing facts, engaging your senses with hands-on experiments, and impressing your eyes with the most beautiful of images, and uplifting your heart that yearns to know and draw near to the Lord.

The founders of the exhibition call themselves Mawkeb Al-Jalal and can be followed on Twitter, @makeb-jalal, and on Instagram.

The idea behind this first of a series of exhibitions planned for Jeddah is to instill higher awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the Lord. Visitors learn about and explore the Beautiful Names of Allah, the meanings, the implications in our lives, the impact on our hearts and on the world of these Names and Attributes of Allah.

Read on for a brief overview of the exhibition but words cannot do it justice. Check out their website and social media accounts to find out dates and times and to reserve tickets (the tickets are free of charge).

The exhibition is divided into sections and each section has vivid stations with beautiful artwork, and speakers to explain the name of Allah in that station. You can watch a video or read the posters or give a try at the experiments.

The first station explains the name of Allah, Al-`Adheem, the Magnificent One. This station exhibits images taken from satellites of the stars, planets, and the sun, and the galaxies, and it points that all of this greatness, splendor, grandeur, and vastness is like a speck of sand in a vast desert in comparison to the greatness of Allah. Learning about the name Al-`Adheem, leaves one in awe at the greatness of Allah and makes one humbled by how small we really are in comparison with this amazing universe.

Next, you step to the section of the name of Allah, Al-Qadir, the Omnipotent, the Able, the Capable. Looking at breathtaking pictures of what Allah has created for mankind on this Earth is evidence of His omnipotence. The sheer magnitude of the mountains, an entire kingdom of plants and animals under the oceans and seas, the rain that comes down from the sky; all these signs in nature point to the Creator.

As Allah says in the Holy Qur’an, “Is there any creator other than Allah who provides for you from the heaven and earth?” (Chapter 35, verse 3)

The answer is no; there is no creator or provider or sustainer other than Allah.

The exhibition walks you through the name of Allah, Al-`Aleem, the All-Knowing One. Allah’s knowledge is absolute and complete, it was not preceded by ignorance and will never result in forgetfulness. We are invited in the Holy Qur’an to gain some insight into the expanse of Allah’s knowledge by reading the verses which detail the growth of the fetus in the mother’s womb, the structures and anatomy of the bird, and many other scientific marvels that scientists are discovering.

Allah in the Holy Qur’an describes the form of the human embryo as `alaqah, which is a leech. Only with advanced ultrasound imagery can we see the human embryo and it so closely resembles the shape and form of a leech, which feeds on the blood of other organisms, as the human embryo receives its nutrition from the mother’s body.

Another station teaches you the name of Allah, Al-Hakeem, the Wise One, who is All-Wise in His creating and commanding and who perfected everything He created. Look at the human body. It takes four hours for a dialysis machine to cleanse the blood of the patient, and this must be repeated three times a day. Whereas the kidneys which Allah created for us cleanses the blood 36 times a day, without our awareness. The kidney is about 12 centimeters long whereas dialysis machines are much bigger and cannot function nearly as well as the kidneys.

Visitors at the exhibition can even conduct a simple experiment, they wear a glove that traps the thumb and then are given samples of a shirt to button or shoelaces to tie. Without the blessing of a thumb, we would be incapable of performing even the simplest of our daily tasks.

How many times did we stop to think about that?

Other sections of the exhibition show the astounding beauty of Allah’s creation; a lovely bird, a rare fish, a beautiful human baby, a blooming flower, the sunset. Written in exquisite calligraphy in this corner of the exhibition is the verse in the Holy Qur’an, “So blessed is Allah, the best of creators.” (Chapter 23, verse 14)

In all, there are seven stations at the exhibition, each of them extremely interesting and very well organized.

There is much to see, touch, listen to, learn, and absorb at this exhibition. And there is boundless love, reverence, and appreciation to have for the Creator. “But those who believe are stronger in love for Allah” (Chapter 1, verse 165)


November 23, 2017
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