Posted by This morning, I performed wu’du (ritual cleansing before prayer) for the first time in years. I don’t like wu’du much, it’s a little too messy. I’d prefer to wash my hands and face and just pray. No my feet aren’t caked in mud either. I can’t imagine that not giving myself over to the minutiae of wu’du will cause my prayers not to be accepted by God. Still, it didn’t seem all that bad after all these years.
Prayer, salat, namaaz, comes and goes for me. I fast during Ramadan. I give to charity. And I try not to sin (too much). I regard prayer as a way to calm the mind but it’s damn near impossible to hear the Creator talking back to me. So I keep trying. From time to time.
After finishing Fajr (morning) prayer, I opened up my email to find a link to an article titled, Practicing Islam in Shorts by Thanaa El-Naggar. It’s a really great article and well describes how I grew up. My parents always said they wanted to give us the tools to accept Islam on our own terms. What we did with it as adults was our business. “La-ikraaha fid’deen” – “Let there be no compulsion in religion”.
So as children, my sisters and I went to Islamic Sunday School and boy, did I hate it. Mostly because I was picked on for the being the youngest and quietest in my class. I had long sideburns. Kids can be cruel. I really enjoyed the history portions of class but I stunk out loud at reading Arabic. But mostly, as Naggar points out, I just hated the minutiae.
My Islamic studies teachers taught me how to how to obsess about the mundane—about all the things I’m doing incorrectly and therefore my prayers will not be accepted. They taught me guilt. They taught me fear. They taught me that being a good Muslim is difficult.
In Sunday School, religion became a piety pissing contest. It was a referential game. Who could pick out some small little thing from the hadith or fiqh that would best their opponent in the game. What little obscure bit of the Qur’an was germane to a person’s point. Don’t worry, God… Allah… whatever… is in there somewhere.
More from El-Naggar’s article:
I never quite rejected Islam, I just took a break from going through the motions of prayer out of guilt. I wanted to see if I could be compelled to return to my prayer rug. I did. I returned when I felt like my life was empty without worship. I prayed out of gratitude. I prayed and it gave me solace. Ablution became less about splashing water over various parts of my body and felt more like a daily cleanse. A baptism. I stopped obsessing about the small things and my new mantra was “Al-‘amal bil niyat,” which means actions are dependent on their intentions. My other mantra was “Al deen yusr,” which translates to religion is ease.
I can’t disagree one bit. I’ve come to believe that it is only in the living that we find grace. Some of that is giving yourself over to the wisdom of your forbears. Rooting yourself to a way before you have the experience to question. One of my favorite quotes (2:153) reads:
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ اسْتَعِينُواْ بِالصَّبْرِ وَالصَّلاَةِ إِنَّ اللّهَ
مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ
Ya ayyuha alla’theena amanoo ista’aeenoo bi-as’sabri wa’as-salati in-Allaha ma-asabireen.
O ye who believe! Seek help with patient perseverance and prayer; for Allah is with those who patiently persevere.
I don’t blame my teachers for how we were taught Islam. It’s how they were raised as well and for those who grew up in deeply religious societies, the Way might have been simply self-evident. However, I believe we need a different way of educating people in Islam (in religion in general) that doesn’t take a reductionist approach or treat faith as a fait-accompli or doubt with answers such as, “because that’s how it’s done.”
We live in a modern world largely devoid of magic, of the sacred unknown. But although many people are moving away from the traditional ways of practicing religion, I’m not so sure humanity will ever rid itself of wondering,”What happened before t-minus zero”? And then trying to make sense of the answers we find.
