Picturing Islam: Art and ethics in a Muslim lifeworld comes as the result of a 25-year friendship between Kenneth George and the Indonesian artist, Abdul Djalil Pirous. This relationship permeates each chapter, where a friendly conversation between the two, usually centred on Pirous's artwork, leads the author into the main topics of the chapter. A key concept in George's exposition of the ebbs and flows of Pirous's art is the idea of a ‘lifeworld’, his ‘shorthand for the on-going circumstances in which we find ourselves, culturally, politically, historically, and experientially. Each of us is thrown, with others, into a lifeworld through which we must find our way, refashioning its horizons as imaginatively and as pragmatically as we can’ (p. 4). George uses the concept of ‘lifeworld’ to convincingly show how Islam is anything but static, and rather is continually created, debated and interpreted. George crafts Pirous's narrative around the many events and personal ruminations that influenced the artist's creative process. The chronological flow of the work details Pirous's ever-changing ‘lifeworld’ from his childhood in Aceh, Indonesia where he was inspired by his mother's art and her practice of dzkir, ‘a mindfulness of God through special meditation and chants’ (p. 21), up to Pirous's retrospective exhibition in 2002, where his childhood roots and Acehnese visual culture are displayed.

George focuses on a specific set of paintings by Pirous, his ‘spiritual notes’. These ‘notes’ are intended as objects of reflection and meditation for both artist and the public that can be engaged with repeatedly. These ‘spiritual notes’ are not for sale, but on rare occasions Pirous allows a friend or an individual whom he sees as fit to own one of them. The inspiration for the ‘spiritual notes’ happened in 1970 during a visit to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that shook Pirous's ‘lifeworld’ and led him to change his art. Shocked by the museum's low regard for modern Indonesian art and engaging with the Islamic Art exhibit, he reached a deeper understanding that the ‘Indonesian aesthetic identity rested in Islamic civilization and culture’ (p. 44). However, this realisation and shift in his ‘lifeworld’ was not smooth and involved going from being a successful artist well-versed in modernism to eventually seeing both religion and art as venues for people to turn to for ethical guidance.

Pirous began to use Islamic calligraphy in what George calls the artist's ‘expressive calligraphy’ phase from 1971–74. However, the Arabic in his paintings was unreadable, which was a source of tension with his Muslim viewers, and Pirous realised he needed to sacrifice some of the freedom of his previous expressionist style. Creating a ‘Qur'anic aesthetic’ demanded greater insight from Pirous, because the work needed to display the perfection of the verse. In order to do this, Pirous incorporated motifs from the material and visual culture of Aceh, making the art, according to him, more Indonesian while simultaneously displaying the universal message of Islam.

Throughout Picturing Islam, George directs the reader's attention to national concerns influencing and motivating Pirous's works. For example, as Suharto's authoritarian regime and its hold on Aceh in the mid-1990s grew, ultimately turning to violence, Pirous lost his ‘spiritual optimism and composure’ (p. 110), and paintings of Qur'anic verses no longer made sense in the chaos. His subject matter and inspirational text then changed, leading to his ‘Aceh series’. During this phase, Pirous drew inspiration not from the Qur'an, but from the Hikayat Prang Sabil [Oath of the Holy War]. He also adapted his materials. Given their competing ethics, at his 2002 retrospective the ‘Aceh series’ had its own space separate from his paintings dealing with the Qur'an. Pirous's artistic evolution is a theme that runs throughout this book.

Picturing Islam can be read across the disciplines of anthropology, art history, visual studies and religious studies. George does not bog the reader down in the introduction with a large theoretically driven project, but rather addresses briefly in the afterword some issues that can be drawn from the work. This refreshing approach makes this book a welcome contribution to be read in conjunction with other relevant theoretical and disciplinary works. Overall, utilising his personal relationship with Pirous, his linguistic prowess and his academic understanding of Islam, George presents a uniquely sensitive and nuanced study of Pirous's lifeworld and art.