I recently asked my friends on Facebook: Why is there so much emphasis on food before Ramadan begins? I got a nice spectrum of answers, mostly logical, even if sometime defensive: “We want to eat right”, “We need to make sure there is something to break fast with.” These are good and true but there is more to it than that, I think.
The coming of Ramadan is like a visit from a queen. This is the single most celebrated ritual among Islam’s required Five (which are: 1) witness to God’s oneness and the prophethood of Muhammad, called the shahadah; 2) ritual worship five times daily, or salah; 3) pilgrimage, at least once in a lifetime to Makkah, the city housing the kaaba, to which almost one billion Muslims direct those five time daily salah; 4) giving alms of our excess wealth, or zakat; and 5) fasting in the month of Ramadan.)
More Muslims practice the fast than practice the ritual daily prayers.
Blogging the journey
There is much that can be said about this particular formal worship, as can be said about other forms of worship in Islam and about worship in human history. That’s where this blog comes in. I thought why not take advantage of the new social networks and public media to share some of the joys and tribulations of my own journey in the context of Islamic worship.
I start with fasting this month of Ramadan and travel all the way to and through my first hajj, or pilgrimage to Makkah. I write this blog in the context of Islam and modernity but also in the context of the human quest of “knowing” the truth of our existence, the purpose of our lives, and the destiny of our endeavors. I will reflect both as a matter of personal experience and also from the perspective of a retired religious studies professor.
I have always been interested in the unseen, the transcendent, the metaphysical and the non-ordinary. That interest has been personal as well as professional. I used to tell people it was nice having a job as a religious studies professor because I had permission to talk about God in the public space and not be accused of proselytizing. It was my job and it was mostly in the context of a secular university, so it was okay.
Not everybody gets this distinction though. My son-in-law told my daughter that I was trying to convert him when we first met. I had to think long and hard, what I could possibly have said that led him to that conclusion. Then I remembered. I had spoken at some length about our beliefs and practices as Muslims. Where I thought I was simply providing information about a religion still unfamiliar to many Americans, with no obligation for him to respond in any particular way, he thought the only reason some one would give that kind of information would be for the purpose of conversion.
It is unfathomable for some people that more than one faith can co-exist, sustaining their distinctions and even at time their opposing points of view on certain crucial matters. But this is where we stand as a global community. We stand upon the precipice of a tightly interconnected world that does not know one world order. Instead, we see the splendor and beauty of diversity.
The phenomenon known as religion
After teaching for 15 years in the southern part of the US, I have understood how important it was to explain the phenomenonological approach to religious studies. In brief, there is this phenomenon amongst humans and through out human history, known as “religion”. We look at this phenomenon as part of what it means to be human. Nothing more; nothing ominous; just like looking at different kinds of carvings left on the walls of caves by our earlier ancestors.
There are certain benefits though: chief among these is removing the fear that ignorance can produce, to help to understand other cultures and our own. While, the essence of each religion might be quite similar, that which divides them makes them all the more interesting. It is this beauty I wish to share, from one perspective: mine, about one religion: Islam.
In this case, I want to celebrate here those aspects of Islamic practice that are distinctive to Islam. What is more, I do not pretend to share them in some universal way, only in the way in which I am experiencing them, and only this year. This year is special for me because after almost 40 years of the practice of Islam, by choice, I will embark on the “journey of a lifetime”: the pilgrimage to Makkah for the first time.
While I will make this pilgrimage in fulfillment of the ritual requirement of Islam, I have already been warned. My Muslim female friends say I will encounter certain aspects of gender apartheid at Makkah and they warned me I would NOT be able to keep silent. I would not be able to avoid a confrontation against someone, some where, that would restrict my fullest participation in all the steps and stages of the journey, just because I am a woman.
Truth be told, I have also spent many of the past 40 years in resisting the tendency to restrict or limit women’s full experience in Islam. I still harbor a small hope that I can leave this struggle off when I go to visit the kaaba. But then, I thought of a compromise: I could share the journey, the joys and the sorrows, but only in the form of a personal journal or blog and leave off the gender jihad (struggle for dignity and equality) for a later date, another place, another set of circumstances.
I would wear my disguise of acquiescence and deference so long as I could walk the path of the pilgrim. But each day I would also reflect. If the day was one of infinite joys it would also be my pleasure to simply make this regular record. If there were conflicts of interest vis-à-vis gender justice, I could express them fully here at the keyboard but NOT as a human shield. Just this once, I could observe them as they occur and not feel the pressure to conform them—at least not in the face and not immediately. I would evoke the memory of the wisdom thus spoke: the pen is mightier than the sword!
I endeavor to keep pace for approximately one hundred days. I start here with meeting the queen, the month of Ramadan, and I end with a visit to the king, the hajj. This is an apt metaphor I think. In many ways the queen is closer to us. She comes to visit us, indiscriminately. We see her every year, no matter where we abide. The patriarch king is a more remote, once, at least once, in a life time. We have to make our way there and even while there we have to watch our step but yet we must make so many steps with proper repose at each.
For me, for now, that is all I ask. Well, I also ask for the peace to be able to make all the rites related to the performance of hajj irrespective of the changes that are in play regarding women’s full participation.
Who knows what lies before me? Maybe I will approach to the “house of God” in Makkah unfettered by that which has characterized my life as a woman, activist and scholar on Islam and gender. All the more to share, all the more to keep a record, all the more then to celebrate, as I do today the next stage in the transition of the human spirit from the planes of the mundane everyday ordinary to the throne of the divine in celebration of the divinity within our selves.
Feel free to join me.
