... Brick By Word-Worn Brick

Art is not a plaything in [the] hands [of the murid]; it is not a means for gaining [selfish] pleasure, for diversion, for stupefaction, for the expenditure of accumulated energy. It is not a servant to sexuality, politics or capital. Art is the special trust given to man by God. It is the creative pen of the Maker, given by Him to his viceregent so that he might make a second earth and a second paradise, new forms of life, beauty, thought, spirit, message, a new heaven, a new time. God possesses absolute freedom, absolute awareness and absolute creative power. Ideal man, the bearer of God's trust, he whom God has fashioned in His own form, is an eternal will overflowing with beauty, virtue and wisdom. In all of nature, only man has attained to relative freedom, a relative awareness, and a relative creative power. For God created him in His own image and made of him His relative, telling him, "If you seek Me, take your own self as an indication."

Ali Shari'ati, On the Sociology of Islam, tr. by Hamid Algar, Oneonta, New York: Mizan Press (1979), 123-124.