Insight from Islam
UU Fellowship of Midland, MI
November 14, 2004
Jane Thickstun

 Reading

The reading is called “A Trip to the Mosque” by Christopher Buice.  It’s taken from his meditation manual called Roller Skating as a Spiritual Discipline.

 

            “What do Muslims imagine God to look like?”  The question was asked by a young boy in our Unitarian Universalist Sunday School class when we were visiting the local mosque.  We were meeting together with a Muslim religious education class.  A young girl from the mosque replied, “There is a saying in our religion: ‘Whatever you imagine God to be, he is the opposite.’  And so if you then imagine God to be the opposite of the thing you first imagined, you must imagine that God is the opposite of that.  Or, in other words, there is no way for us to know what God looks like.”  Another student, a Muslim boy, said, “God is a being that is neither male nor female but, like many other religions, we use the word He.”  And another student said, “We have a saying in our tradition that ‘You cannot see God with your outer eye, but you can see him with the inner eye,’ or you can see God in the orderliness of the universe.”

            After the question and answer session was over, we went into the main room, where an Imam led the prayers in Arabic.  The assembled worshipers were from Africa, India, Persia, the Middle East, and America.  People from all over the earth were bowing in the same direction and worshiping the same God.  After the prayers we reassembled in the classroom, where we discovered that Unitarian Universalist kids and Muslim kids share common ground in the love of doughnuts.  The people at the mosque were warm and friendly.  I talked with one youth about his experience fasting during the month of Ramadan.  After our social time, a leader from the mosque gave the class a beautifully bound hardback copy of the Koran, written in Arabic with an English translation, as a gift to our church.  When I left the mosque with that copy of the Koran in my arms, I was aware that it was only one of many gifts I had received during my visit.

 

Sermon

 

            Today, even as they mourn the death of the Palestinian leader, Yassar Arafat, Muslims around the world will be celebrating the festival of Eid al-Fitr.  It is the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, when Muslims concentrate on their faith and spend less time on the concerns of their everyday lives.  It is a time of worship and contemplation.  Muslims are not to eat or drink or smoke or have sex during the daylight hours.  At the end of each day the fast is broken with a prayer and a special meal.  Eid al-Fitr, coming at the end of the month of fasting, is one of the most important Islamic celebrations.  It’s celebrated with lights and decorations, treats for children, and visits with friends and family.  A sense of generosity and gratitude colors these festivities. Although charity and good deeds are always important in Islam, they have special significance at the end of Ramadan. As the month draws to a close, Muslims are obligated to share their blessings by feeding the poor and making contributions to mosques.

            I felt it would be appropriate for us to honor this holiday by gaining a greater understanding of Islam, this religion that is so foreign to most of us; this religion that is blamed for so much these days.  Islam is often blamed for terrorism, and for keeping women oppressed in many parts of the world.  There is much mistrust of Muslims, those who practice Islam, in much of the western world lately.  Just yesterday our Midland Daily News ran an article on the fear Muslims have in the Netherlands since the recent murder there by a Moroccan Muslim.  It quotes a young Muslim woman in Amsterdam as saying “We have to watch a lot of Dutch people watching us like we’re criminals. . . The Dutch community doesn’t know much about Islam.  They think Muslims are all the same.”  The same might by said by a Muslim in America about Americans since 9/11.

            In fact, there is much diversity within Islam, as much as within Christianity or Judaism.  You have probably heard of the Shiite and the Sunni Muslims – they separated into different sects early in the history of the religion over the question of who should succeed the founder, Muhammad.  Then there is the mystical branch, the Sufis, who give us great poets and dances that connect us at a deep level.  These are just some of the better known.  Also, Islam is practiced in many countries around the world, and often there are geographical differences in how it is interpreted; for instance, to what extent do individuals interpret the religion and to what extent is it interpreted for them by a religious leader.

            And believe it or not, Islam in its original conception actually encourages equality of the sexes and of races.   The Qur’an was introduced into the Arabian world in a time when female infanticide was common and women had no rights.  The Qur’anic law forbids infaniticide, requires that daughters be included in inheritance, and leaves open the possibility of full equality with men in citizens’ rights such as education, vocation and voting.  According to the Qur’an, women can instigate divorce as well as men, should it prove absolutely necessary.  (H.Smith, p. 166) This is in contrast to what I heard Friday night about the current situation in Iran – in that country right now, only men can divorce their wives, and men have full custody rights (actually possession) of children.  This, in a country that is trying to live by the Qur’anic law!  It shows that there is much latitude in how a religious text can be interpreted.  It reminds me of the situation in our own country, where it is the most fundamentalist Christians who wish to have our nation ruled by their interpretation of Christianity.

            The Muslim world has done better with racial equality.  According to Huston Smith, the expert on world religions, “Islam stresses racial equality and has achieved a remarkable degree of interracial coexistence.”  The Black activist Malcolm X discovered this in a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, and it changed his own attitude dramatically.  (p. 168)

            But we can get a much better understanding of Islam by looking at its roots.  Islam arose in the center of the Arabian peninsula some 600 years after the time of Jesus.  It was a nomadic desert society, made up of tribes with tribal religion, worshipping local deities.  In the recent generation or two, however, trade was changing the lifestyle of the Arab people.  Muhammad lived in Mecca, which had recently become the most important settlement in Arabia.  People were accumulating wealth, and individualism was starting to replace the communal ideal of the tribe, threatening the interdependence that meant all were cared for.  New ideas were coming in from other lands; in particular they were becoming aware of Judaism and Christianity, religions with books, whose people were more sophisticated and unified than the backward Bedouins.  According to Karen Armstrong, many came to believe that “al-Lah, the High God of the ancient Arabian pantheon, whose name simply meant “the God,” was identical to the God worshipped by the Jews and the Christians.” There was a shrine to this god in Mecca, the Kabah, a massive cube-shaped shrine that had been in the heart of Mecca since time immemorial.  This shrine was the most holy place in all of Arabia, and people would come from all over the peninsula in a pilgrimage. (Armstrong, p. 135)

            Muhammad came to believe that this most powerful god was, as his name says, “the God,” the one and only God.  Muhammad was concerned for his people, “unable to accept the superstition and” killing that were the norm.  Armstrong notes that “Muhammad knew that . . . a single deity who was the focus of all worship would integrate society as well as the individual.”  One day in the month of Ramadan in 610A.D., Mohammad was commanded by al-Lah to recite, or to proclaim; in other words, to be Allah’s mouthpiece.  He fought it, but ultimately this force overpowered him, and he submitted.  For the next 23 years, he received the word of Allah that he recited to others, who wrote it down, since Mohammad couldn’t read or write.  The result is the Qur’an, the foundation of Islam.  Muhammad and the Qur’an transformed the Arab world.  Within a hundred years of Muhammad’s death, not only were the tribes of Arabia unified, but they had established an empire that “stretched from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees and flowered in a civilization that kept science and math and the knowledge of the Greeks and Romans alive and flourishing through the time of Europe’s Dark Ages.

            The Qur’an is more than just a book.  It is seen as the one miracle of Islam.  Muhammad felt it defies belief that this book should have come through him.  The Arabic word, qur’an means recitation, that which was recited.  The way it came about certainly seemed inspired.  And the book itself, the language, the poetry of it, is apparently beautiful enough to convert people on the spot when they hear it.  It must be read in the original Arabic to appreciate the effect; how it sounds is almost as important as what it says. Armstrong mentions that “Western people find the Koran a difficult book, and this is largely a problem of translation. Arabic is particularly difficult to translate . . . and the Koran is written in dense and highly allusive, elliptical speech.”    Muslims memorize great portions of it, they read it often, it is chanted in the mosque, it is the center of Islamic life.  It is meant to yield a sense of the divine, and Muslims claim that they can experience a sense of transcendence through it. (Armstrong, p. 144)   Unlike the Jewish and Christian bibles, where God is talked about in the third person, in the Qur’an God talks in the first person, speaking directly through the book.  The Qur’an is the incarnated Word of God for Muslims, just as Jesus is for Christians.  Muhammad is not seen as holy, but the Qur’an has a holiness equivalent to that of Jesus for Christians.

            Muslims don’t try to imagine what Allah looks like, as the reading showed.  It is a much more abstract concept of the divine than is found in Judaism or Christianity.  Instead of focusing on the image of God, they focus on the qualities of God.  In Islam there are 99 names for God, corresponding to his attributes.  Many of them are qualities we should all aspire to as well, so they serve as a model for us.  They are things like “the Merciful, the Strong,. . .the Everlasting, . .  the Caring, the Bringer of Peace,. . . and so on.” (Idiot’s Guide, p. 45) The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam points out that “Islam also teaches that God is neither male nor female.”  They use the male pronoun when referring to God because in Arabic the “ah” ending signifies a feminine noun, grammatically speaking, so using the male pronoun with the feminine noun Allah, the genders cancel each other out, and it’s the closest you get to “it” in Arabic. (p. 46)

            Muslims believe in a radical monotheism.  God is one, there is only one God.  They see the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity as blurring the distinction between the human and the divine, and see it as blasphemous.  They have no concept of original sin, and see human nature as basically good.  These beliefs make them sound like Unitarians!

            They believe that humans have free will to either turn toward God or turn away from him. We owe gratitude for the gift of life.  Armstrong says that, “In the Koran an ‘unbeliever’ . . . is not an atheist in our sense of the word, somebody who does not believe in God, but one who is ungrateful to him, who can see quite clearly what is owing to God but refuses to honor him in a spirit of perverse ingratitude.” (Armstrong, p. 142) Turning toward God also entails surrender.  Smith tells us that “The word Islam derives from salam which means primarily “peace” but in a secondary sense “surrender.”  Its full connotation, therefore, is the peace that comes from surrendering one’s life to God.” (p. 146)

            “There is no God but Allah, and his prophet is Muhammad.”  This is the first of the five pillars of Islam.  It’s called the shahadah, and is the confession of faith that makes one a Muslim.  The first part is often heard translated as “there is no god but God,” and it is said often by Muslims.  It affirms that there is only one god.  The second part affirms the authenticity of Muhammad and the validity of his revelation.

            The second pillar of Islam is regular prayer.  Muslims are expected to pray five times a day, facing Mecca.  “It consists of a physical routine of bowing and prostrating [while saying] short recited passages and phrases [that] praise God and remind ourselves of our mission here.”

            The third pillar of Islam is charity.  Muslims are expected to give to those less fortunate.  The Qur’an even specifies how much – “annually, two and one-half percent of one’s holdings should be distributed to the poor.” (Smith, p. 162)

            The fourth pillar of Islam is the observance of Ramadan.  This month is holy because it is when Muhammad received his first revelation, and because it is the month when Muhammed and his followers left Mecca – a bit of history I didn’t go into, but it’s an event that marks the beginning of the Muslim era.  Muslims fast during Ramadan to help them reflect on their religious lives, to learn self-discipline, to remind them of their frailty and dependence, and to teach compassion, for only the hungry know what hunger means.  (Smith, p. 163)

            The fifth pillar of Islam is pilgrimage.  Every Muslim who is able is expected to journey to Mecca once during his or her lifetime.  Huston Smith says, “the basic purpose of the journey is to heighten the pilgrim’s commitment to God and his revealed will, but the practice carries fringe benefits.  It is, for one thing, a reminder of human equality, for upon reaching Mecca, pilgrims exchange their clothes . . . for two simple sheet-like garments.  The gathering also promotes international understanding.  In bringing together people from multiple countries, it demonstrates that they share a loyalty that transcends national and ethnic boundaries.  Pilgrims pick up information about other lands and peoples, and return to their homes knowing more about the world.” (p. 146)

            Islam stresses practice much more than doctrine.  More important than what Muslims believe is what they do.  The five pillars of faith outline the major actions that constitute the religion.  The Qur’an also contains the Sharia, or Qur’anic law, which spells out how Muslims are to live in community.  The value of community is supreme in Islam.  The Muslim world didn’t go through the Enlightenment that gave us our emphasis on individualism.  The Qur’anic law is intended to show how to put into practice the values of Islam.

            Islam has a great deal of tolerance for other religions.  It builds on the stories of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in an essentially respectful way.  It was seen by its early proponents as an Arab religion, which united Arabia.  The expansion beyond the areas that were Arab was not for the purpose of spreading the religion.  They merely wanted to create a just society, but the religion was attractive to many in the regions they conquered.  The Qur’an acutally states, “Let there be no compulsion in religion”  There have been centuries when Christians, Jews and Hindus lived in freedom under Muslim rule.  The Jews enjoyed a Golden Age in Spain under Muslim rule, and it was the Christians who kicked them out when the Muslims lost their power there.  And to this day the seat of the Eastern Orthodox (Christian) Church is in Istanbul, a city in Turkey, which has been Muslim for a long time. (Smith, p. 169)

            I have barely scratched the surface in describing Islam here today.  I hope you have gleaned some insights that will help you on your own faith journey.  I myself find the prayer practice particularly inspiring, if daunting.  And I like the idea of a pilgrimage; I’m trying to decide where mine should take me, where I might go to seek religious inspiration and renewal.  I hope as well to have shed some understanding on this little-understood religion– understanding that will help us stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters who are so often these days looked upon as terrorists.  So, in solidarity with our Muslim friends celebrating Eid al-Fitr today, let’s be sure to enjoy the treats at coffee hour!