Sunday at the Square: Crossing a threshold to Islam
As a part of my preparation for our last dinner A Rabbi, A Priest, A Pastor & An Imam I attended worship services with each of our speakers. Each visit was transformational in its own way. But it was my visit to a mosque that was most memorable.
Probably like most Americans, I had never been to a mosque and I had my own preconceived notions about what the experience would be like. As it probably should be, I was mostly wrong.
In getting ready, I expected to feel constrained by how I should dress. In part, I did (Florida in July screams bathing suit to me, not burqua). But beyond the overabundance of clothes, I give a thumbs-up to not having to put on make-up or jewelry. When I sat on the floor without shoes with Muslim women after the service (it felt very comfortable, like college girlfriends hanging), I learned that they see freedom in not needing to dress to please others, which can be a distraction from doing their daily work and serving God. (This is self-evident to any woman who’s worn stockings. I’m still convinced that stockings are a secret communist plot to overthrow capitalism, but then that’s a post for another day.) At the far edges of the dysfunction our culture owns, there are dangerous surgical procedures to tuck, stretch and saw off. At the very least I think it’s fair to say that women in our culture have some of our own constraints and I do believe the whole glass houses and stones thing.
The prototypical newsreel footage of Muslims at worship subconsciously hints at militarism, sort of a gentler version of North Korean soldiers on the march. In person it was nothing like that. The prayer was poetic, the movements in the prayer like a peaceful ballet that appealed to me in the same way as do the liturgical traditions of my own Episcopal Church. Taking a front row seat inside a mosque shows the texture of the individual humanity that the two-dimensional view from outside totally misses – the people moving in and out of the service, the babies crying, a random sneeze or cough… making it feel just like any church on any Sunday morning.
It’s pretty easy to characterize people before you’ve bothered to cross their threshold. And it’s pretty hard to hate them after you have. If I had one prescription for world peace after my visit to the mosque, it’s that you should go to a mosque or two (and Muslims to a church or two). What a tragedy it would be if peace could come so simply but we somehow never got around to it.
Stay tuned next Sunday for my visit to the mosque, part two. (Good stories have cliffhangers, eh?)
(Photo credit.)
Add comment July 26th, 2009
