Allah is Mystery

Midday we were drinking mint tea at a nearly empty coffee house in the Middle Atlas when we heard the call of the Imam to pray. A boy who worked there, he must have been about fifteen, immediately pulled out his rug, placed it in front of the bar facing North and bent down to pray. In another corner of the cafe, a Moroccan man in his twenties sat at a table with his expresso smoking a cigarette and watching an MTV show of a nearly naked woman gyrating to hard rock. There is a naturalness to this scene that is hard to explain. How can a culture whose words and daily actions are so threaded with Islamic belief also be so tolerant of other ways of being.

The Islamic religion does not believe in representation. There are no drawings or paintings of Allah because they do not think of Allah in human terms. Allah is neither He nor She. Allah is Mystery. I heard this many times. For a country where religion is so much a part of daily life it seemed strange to my Western eye to see no religious likenesses. Located near the center of each city and each town is a mosque with a tall minaret. Five times a day the Imam's voice calls the people to pray. Speakers are placed in every corner of every city and town calling the people to stop what they are doing, to bow down facing Mecca and pray. The prayers are short, perhaps about five minutes. Our guide tells us:

"You must wash your head, your feet, your elbows, your ears and your face, either at home or outside the mosque door. Yes, we always wash before we do our daily prayers this certain way; it is a symbolic washing."

Friday is a special day. Everyone tries to go to the mosque mid-day on Fridays. As the Imam calls, you see people leaving their work, woman and babies coming out of their homes and frisky school children laughing and shouting, all on the way to the mosque. There is a short prayer from the Koran and then the Imam gives a sermon; a visiting scholar may also give a short talk.The women and children sit upstairs and the men -- and sometimes their young sons -- sit on the ground floor. Since people who are not Muslim cannot go inside a mosque I was only able to peek surreptitiously through the half-opened door. Some of those doors were intricate -- carved and painted and tiled -- and some were more modest, even appearing to have been made from old car-body sheet metal. In urban places there might be ornate fountains for washing; in other places just a tin bowl on the ground near the mosque door.

Moroccans would remind me that the Koran is much like our Bible and that Muslims have the same values as Christians. After I had become more attuned to the way the Islamic religion is integrated into every facet of life, I began to appreciate the intricately tiled designs encrusted on walls, behind fountains, high up in cellings -- so mysterious and depthless, even hallucinatory; you could get lost for hours in a single wall corner. Sometimes I wondered if Allah, the all-seeing and ever-present, was hidden somewhere in all this complexity and beauty.

Susan

Comments

[Constance Kopriva]

I came to your web-site because my son, husband, and I have just produces our first wine.
I was looking for inspiration. Your opening page with the grape pickers was the best I had seen--because it speaks volumes.
I went to your blog and the word 'Allah' got my attention...esp. in the world we have now. Thank you for sharing your experience. It gave me more understanding...what we all need at this time. To better know this other part of the world old present leaders have invaded.
Constance Kopriva