About Me
My Inspiration and My Work
My name is Farah, and I am an Islamic artist dedicated to reviving the spirit through beauty. My work seeks to embody the timeless principles of Islam—justice, love, mercy, and a profound connection with Allah—while encouraging each of us to embrace our authentic selves in our religious practice and spiritual journey.
Rooted in the rich traditions of Islamic geometry and Arabic calligraphy, I explore a variety of mediums including acrylics, gold leaf, oils, resin, and alcohol inks. Each piece I create is a reflection of my passion for capturing the soul of Islamic teachings and inspiring a deep sense of spiritual awakening.
Since teaching myself art at the age of 13, I’ve been driven by a desire to build a community of like-minded individuals—Muslims who are intuitive empaths, questioners, and seekers of truth. I envision a space where we, who often feel caught between the modern secular world and a short sighted interpretation of faith that can be problematic.
While my platform is rooted in Islamic teachings, it warmly welcomes spiritual seekers of all backgrounds. It’s more than art; it’s an invitation to discover, connect, and reflect on the divine through creativity and community.
I have been honing in on my craft since the age of 13. I started off by drawing pictures of celebrities in pencil and started experimenting with paints at the age of 17. To this day I have developed my skills in a wide range of areas including:
Arabic calligraphy
Acrylic paints and oils
Wooden box making
Digital art.
Graphic.
Islamic geometry and Islamic illumination.
“Like a lover, the job of the artist is to make people feel what they do not.” - James Baldwin.
Growing up, I was a kid who had my own way of doing things- I was inquisitive, creative with art and a highly intuitive empath. I had dreams, big dreams. My values were rooted in love, empathy.
I am a proud Muslim woman. My relationship with Allah is the most important thing. But it wasn’t always like that. Let me enlighten you on my faith journey.
In my Islamic education, I was taught that my authentic self was not compatible with what Islam wanted from me. I was taught that I should just obey and not question even the questionable things. I was taught that Allah was like the God of the Old Testament where he is harsh, dogmatic, out to catch me with his relentless tests. And that “this life is short and a test. It is a prisoner for the believer”.
I was taught that he was a God that favoured blind allegiance to leadership and supporting unjust power dynamics whether it be at a state level or within the family. A god that didn’t care for my emotions, dreams and desires. I was taught a scarcity mindset about Allah.
I was taught that anything outside of this were my ‘desires’ and ‘sinful’.. I was taught that there was no room for individuality/authenticity in the faith as I just had to follow rules. Adhering to a narrow description of what the ‘Perfect Muslimah’ was. So many of the descriptions about our worth were attached to being either a wife or a mother. And that my personal dreams and desires should be thrown away so as to not take away from that.
We still see this today being preached on podcasts on a wide scale…
Some of the most toxic spaces are our spaces when our faith is all about mercy and justice.
I was losing myself slowly. I fell into the deepest depression I had ever been in, thinking that there was no way out. Thinking that this is what Allah wanted for me.
My prayers felt robotic. I was emptied out of so much of what made me… me. All my desires, emotions, dreams… gone. What's the point of not living a full life if Allah doesn’t want it for me and won't support me in it. I developed a severe dissociative disorder as a result because I felt prisoner to this interpretation of faith that I thought was the absolute truth (no other narrative existed for me).
Soon, I had a moment of internal rebellion where I hated Islam. I hated God. I didn’t want to be Muslim anymore. I had moments where I stopped praying and I felt its effects. It wasn’t long before I went back, feeling hostage to this faith.
Throughout this struggle with faith, I decided to take a trip to Istanbul in 2018. I met with another religious friend who moved there. We sat in a cafe in Eminonu, we were discussing about Islam and the heart. I told her I wasn’t happy with my life. She told me something that sticks with me to this day:
“Farah, a lot of people have the wrong idea of Allah. A lot of people don’t ever consider authenticity in their religious practice or how they live their lives. Explore what is truly within your heart. Because it will bring you closer to Allah. There is a hadith that states whoever knows themself knows Allah. And to bring glad tidings always.”
Something clicked in my head, Allah gave me my individual qualities for a reason. Allah says in the Quran that he ADORNED us with these desires. The Arabic term used is ‘zeena’ which means a beautiful decoration.
Desires are only talked about negatively if they cause injustice, excess or harm. This was the start of a long journey to unlearn everything and replace it with a worldview that is better.
Our desires, our dreams, our emotions, they are divinely put there and connect us to Allah. They are what separates us from the Angels and yet the angels were commanded to bow down to us.
On my last day, as I was praying the Friday prayers in Sultan Ahmet, I was wowed by the beauty around me. The geometric patterns on the mosque ceilings: its intertwining vine patterns of blue, gold and maroon that danced on the outer edges of the dome.
The architecture in its different gray hues that towered above in its magnificence. Carving itself a silhouette in the city’s skyline. The motifs on the buildings on the roadside and numerous calligraphy shops on the city streets. These were not just buildings, these were not just bricks and paint. Rather they had a soul to them.
I looked at it all and thought “none of this in our Islamic legacy could have been done by following this version of Islam that I was taught.” A version that overlooked the spirit and killed the spirit.
I remember a hadith of the Prophet (PBUH) that said: There will be among you people who pray so much that it will make your prayers look inferior. There will be people among you who will recite the Quran so much that it will make your recitation look inferior. But they will miss Islam just as an arrow misses a target.
I can’t help but feel this applies to a lot of today's practice of faith. We are so good at the ritual, we are so good at checklists, and they are important, but we miss the spirit of Islam completely in our practice of our faith.
That same day I paid a visit to Taksim Square. As I was strolling down Istiklal avenue there were various musicians playing their cultural songs singing their hearts out. All of this stemmed from our Islamic legacy from Andalusia to the Ottoman era. All of this came through the vein of our desires, our emotions. I was on a spiritual high that day.
It made me have the realization: Our desires, dreams and authenticity connect us to God more than the trials, tribulations and inauthenticity we face.
I got back to the UK, and I splashed on the blues and the navies onto the canvas to remind me of the domes of The Blue Mosque. I adorned them with different verses of the Quran to remind me of that feeling I felt.
I lined the artworks with gold to give it that look of excellence- with the calligraphy dancing on the pages, symbolic of the spiritual high that I felt.
When you read in the Quran that verily with hardship comes ease.
When you read in the Quran that Allah speaks positively about the desires put into us.
When you read that the most beautiful names, Al-rahman (The most merciful), Al-raheem (the most compassionate), Al-Fattah (the opener), Al-Kareem (the most generous) belong to Allah.
When you read that Allah wishes for us ease over hardship.
When you read that Allah is the most generous and abundant.
When you read that Allah is the most just and wants justice.
You then begin to question where your negative understanding of Allah and faith came from.
It comes from the nafs and shaytan to make us despair of mercy of Allah to interrupt our connection with him.
Allah is beautiful, just, reasonable, merciful, generous, and his religion should reflect as such.
There is a reason why people are leaving religion. The world is becoming less religious but more spiritual. That tells me that there is an innate drive in a lot of people to connect to something higher, but are so done with institutionalised religion. Which is a shame because this is not the purpose of religion in Islam. It's that the SPIRIT of Islam has been misunderstood.
Although I didn’t fit into the framework of Islam that was taught to me. I didn’t fit into the modern secular world either. Because Islam is important to me. But an Islam that emphasized its true universal values with Allah’s mercy and beauty.
I hold onto this transformative perspective with gratitude, leaving the past behind. It is an ongoing journey. I am doing so much better religiously.
Now, I want to give that to you for you to enjoy. I want to create a community for all of us who resonate with this. Those who resonate with this story tend to be highly intuitive empaths who are inquisitive. But feel like misfits in the wider Muslim community and also the secular modern world we live in. I want you to use this space as a place to emotionally, mentally and spiritually rejuvenate yourself, whilst connecting to others who are like minded to motivate each other in our faith journey.