About

about the site:

think halal is a visual mixtape. It’s a speculative design fiction blog. It uses found images to speculate a futuristic scenario where an alternative visual culture of muslim origin may have looked like if it had continued to develop in isolation.

Visual culture today is mostly homogenized. I’m not suggesting that there is any lack of creativity but the internet has ensured that nothing gets created in isolation. Everything is influenced and at the same time influential.

The idea that you can create a visual culture in isolation today is impossible. This, however, does not stop creatives with a rich hereditary i.e. India, China to feel the need to reassert their identity by trying to build upon the work that defined their visual culture. But all they end up doing is reusing traditional motifs and creating nostalgic remixes.

This brings us to think halal. Historical Islamic visual culture has been both the sum of many regional cultures and at the same time, isolationist because of its strict regulation of what is permitted in its visual culture and its idea of personal space that is at odds with today’s secular world. 

These restriction has always bred creativity and given the large size of the area that islam covers and its current role in today’s conflicts, it makes for an interesting visual story.

about the editor:

Adnan is an old blogging dinosaur.  His blogs have been featured in various international publications such as Newsweek, USA Today, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, among others. He was the finalist in the weblog category at the SXSW web awards in 2002 and 2004.

He also blogs at Wristfashion

he likes to meet new people all the time so you can reach him at adnan.arif /at/ gmail or follow him on twitter: @adnanio