al-Muṣawwir

The Fashioner who gives each thing its form

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Recited as it sounds in the Qur'an, 59:24.

Heard together with: al-Khāliq / al-Bāriʾ / al-Muṣawwir

Start with what we know

Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us. It is the Name.

Episode 1

In us

Human sculptors and potters: form imposed from outside, on material that resists

But: Needs clay, tools, a model, time

Episode 2

In nature

Saturn's hexagon: a jet stream 'about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) across' holding a six-sided shape (NASA Saturn facts); snowflakes; honeycomb

Episode 3

At our best

3D bioprinting of tissue layers

But: Needs living cells from somewhere; prints shapes, not lives

Episode 4

The Break

Take away clay, tools, a model, a second attempt.

Not a finer sculptor, but the One who gives each thing its form from within.

Read: Q 59:24; 3:6; 64:3; 40:64

From the tradition: al-Ghazālī: taṣwīr is the finishing, the giving of form: He arranges the forms of what He brings into being in the best order (the decorator, in his architect analogy). Isaiah 64:7 'We are the clay, and You are the Potter'

On screen

Geppetto can carve the shape; he has to wish for the life. al-Muṣawwir gives the form and the one inside it.

Where it shows up

In scripture: Q 59:24; 3:6; 64:3; 82:6-8. Isaiah 64:7; Genesis 2:7
The same thread in Jewish and Christian scripture: Moderate. Isaiah 64:7 (Eng 64:8) potter; Genesis 2:7 'formed a Human from the soil's humus'
In the universe: NASA: Saturn's north-pole hexagon, first seen by Voyager in the early 1980s
In nature: Spider web time-lapse (BBC Earth): form from inside the animal
In people: Fingerprints: no two alike, even in identical twins
In science: Developmental biology: morphogen gradients shape the embryo (Turing patterns)