Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: evaluation

Transcript context

…Medieval art, a lot of it was religious. In some way, you must find Islam, Islamic art — you’ve collected Persian carpets — more beautiful. I know this is hard to express, but is there a way you could try to articulate for us, probably most people in this audience not being Muslims, but your take on what is more beautiful that you would like to carry to all of the listeners? How would you put that? What has it meant to you? Oh, OK. I think in Islam, because you can’t depict people or animals, they put all their artistic expression into architecture and abstract art. So in the Islamic world, buildings and books, et cetera, they are developed — the carpets are developed — it’s an interesting thing the Prophet said that depictions of humans in carpets are OK because we walk on them, and we’re not showing that are worshiping the pictures in the carpets because we walk on them with our feet. There is leeway there and ways of interpreting what the Prophet had to say in ways that are logical and make sense for a modern society, but because of the corruption that I talked about earlier, the people who rule in the Islamic world, they don’t care about that. They just want to hold onto political and military power and all the money. That type of corruption has led to the really bizarre and undemocratic states that we see that populate the Muslim world. Are you a long-term optimist about this situation?…

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