His painting includes references to Arabic calligraphy as well as western graffiti styles.
Art – whether it be one of Ali's murals mixing Qur'anic calligraphy with Banksy-style graphic impact, or Aisha Zia's play No Guts, Ho Heart, No Glory, staged in a boxing gym and telling true stories of young Bradford girls' lives – was the channel for that conversation, a way of undermining polarities and finding some shared ground.
It linked back to calligraphy and Islamic tradition.
Often the best way to deal with a terrible situation is to pretend it's not happening and/or learn calligraphy.
"WE MUST face the future," reads the calligraphy draping a distillery in Yanshan, about an hour's drive north of Beijing.
IN THE streets surrounding the Sule Paya pagoda in downtown Yangon, Burmese Muslims ply their trade, selling sweetmeats, calligraphy or spectacles.
He recalled that at one time you could pick up a page of ancient Islam calligraphy for as little as $100, many times less than it would be worth now.
On the walls of the false burial chambers, Koranic verses, chosen by Hafiz Iqbal, have been inscribed in an ink made from burned mustard oil, in a style of calligraphy taken from the Taj Mahal.
Mao Zedong, whose calligraphy adorns the museum entrance, would be proud that his efforts to make art serve politics have not been abandoned.Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, might be relieved too that his vision of a festival combining sport and art has survived.
If he is right about the technology too, future generations will come to see English as something like calligraphy or Latin: prestigious and traditional, but increasingly dispensable.
But there are still huge swathes of the world, and large sub-cultures, where religious archetypes populate the collective unconscious; when people close their eyes, they see Christian icons, Koranic calligraphy or statues of Buddha, rather than juicy steaks or gleaming motorbikes.
