What is the significance of creating a museum of Islamic art?
Al Thani: Islamic history comprises one of the most important stages of human development and civilisation. Usually, civilisations are evaluated by their artistic production and we wanted to display to the world the uniqueness and finesse of arts and crafts that were produced by Islamic civilisation. Islamic arts were produced in regions which covered two-thirds of the ancient world stretching from Indonesia to Morocco and Mauritania, in addition to countries that had been under Islamic rule or contained Islamic communities like Spain and China and even southern Italy. The museum will exhibit a millennium of Islamic art – those which were produced from around the time that Islam took root in the 7th century to the 18th century. We think this stage is very important in human history. Will the works of non-Muslim artists who lived under Islamic rule be displayed at the museum? When we refer to the term ‘Islamic arts’ we are not conjuring up the literal meaning; we do not mean this is art
