Mizan Rahman
I still remember that young man. Sharp features, deep,
piercing eyes, a gentle kindly face. No more than 25 or 26, I thought. Could
easily have been a graduate student of mine, perhaps even one of my star
students. But he didn’t come to be a student, rather to teach me something. Or
should I say to proselytize me into his way of total submission to Allah. What
he really wanted was to show me the way to the local mosque. He didn’t come
alone. It was a congregation, a party of evangelist Muslims. But he was the
only Bengali among them. Maybe he figured that he would be more effective on a
fellow Bengali, that it would be difficult for me to ignore a personal appeal
from someone with roots in the same place.
The mosque is not
too far from my house. About 20 minutes ride by car. I have been there many
times. My two sons would happily accompany me when they were very young. But soon
they lost interest, not because they didn’t want to pray but because the rigor of
the rituals turned them off. Once they were chastised by the imam for not
adhering to the shoulder-to-shoulder rule of lining up behind the
prayer-leading person. He explained that a gap between two shoulders is a sure
invitation to the Devil to sneak in. That silly comment baffled my boys. They
argued in their minds, I suppose, that a place where the Satan is so active and
agile cannot be too attractive, after all. They didn’t mind praying, but not in
that devil-invested environment. Later, I too stopped going to the mosque, for
various reasons, not the least of which was the apparent bigotry I couldn’t
help noticing among many of the devout Muslims. I presume the regular
worshippers at the mosque noticed my absence from the Sunday congregations that
I used to attend, so they targeted me for counseling back to my practicing
faith.
If these gentlemen
were residents of Ottawa,
perhaps I’d not mind much. After all, there are always some unexpected, and
occasionally, some unwelcome visitors at your door, especially at election times.
They are well within their rights to call on any door to make an appeal for my
vote or whatever. So why not the religious preachers? It’s their constitutional
right too. But my young visitor that day was not a local resident. He came from
a faraway country called Bangladesh,
spending a huge amount of money on passage and other expenses, with the sole
objective of taking me and others like me back from our sinful ways to the
mosque! His mission would have been accomplished had he succeeded in taking me
to the doors of the prayer hall. That’s it. He could have then gone back to Bangladesh with
a sense of pious satisfaction. The comic irony of all that couldn’t possibly
have escaped anyone. This young man of 25 had to travel 10 thousand air miles
just to show an elderly person like me how to go to a place that I pass almost
every week to my way home from shopping trips. I couldn’t help asking the poor
lad what was this craze that drove him to waste his time and money on these
silly ideas. Instead of coming here to show me the path to the mosque that I
knew only too well couldn’t he have donated the money to a children’s hospital
in Bangladesh and help show them the way
to a life of health and happiness, I asked. The enormous amount of money he
spent coming to Ottawa
could have helped restore the eyesight of a lot of blind people. Could have fed
a lot of hungry children for months. But, obviously, my words of advice fell on
deaf ears. He responded by saying that it was the duty of every Muslim to
spread the word of Allah. So I had to endure a generous serving of the word of
Allah from a 25 yr old Bangladeshi clad in the traditional Islamic garb
complete with a foot-long beard. Only Allah can tell what good that sermon did
to me, but I do know what good it did to the preacher. He felt elated, liberated,
that he had performed his duty, faithfully and diligently, and that his service
should therefore have earned him a lot of bonus points for afterlife. At least
that’s what he believed, right?
There was a time, a long time ago, when I was
a regular worshipper at the mosque. I’d say my 5 prayers with religious
regularity. If I had to skip any one of them for whatever the reason, I’d feel
very guilty about it. Today I don’t say any prayer at all, yet do not suffer the
slightest bit of guilt at heart. Does it mean I’m doomed, that I’m headed for
the burning fire of hell? No hope of redemption? My folks at home think so.
They do not put the blame on me, of course, it’s all due to the western
influence, they say. If you live in the land of infidels then sooner or later
you are going to end up an infidel yourself. Have I really become an infidel?
What on earth does that insulting word mean anyway? No, sir, I have no appetite
for that sort of prayer. The real prayer mat is not a nylon rug spread out on
the floors of the mosque, rather life itself. My language of prayer is my work,
and my work alone.
My parents were two
of the most pious people I knew. After his retirement my father made a habit of
waking late at night to say his midnight
prayer, which is optional according to the scriptures. In our society there are
two generally accepted tokens of exceptional piety--- one who regularly says
one’s midnight prayers, and
the other who has a black prayer mark on his forehead. My father had both.
Quite impressive, wouldn’t you say? These symbols are usually enough to put the
practicing Muslim on a higher pedestal, although in the Taliban country of Afghanistan
these are barely adequate even for ordinary Muslims. It is likely that the
Taliban wind will soon be blowing our way also, so that in addition to a black
spot and midnight session on
the prayer mat you might need to grow a beard that will touch your knees and a
pair of eyes that will never see a woman other than your wife. As a child I
used to go to a Muslim-only school. There we’d have to recite a sura or two
from the holy Quran at the class assembly prior to our academic work. We had to
wear Islamic uniforms, complete with Turkish Fez caps( I never understood why a
Bengali Muslim must wear a Turkish cap). Needless to say, I too had my turns at
the recital. I didn’t succeed in cramming the holy Quran in its entirety but I
did manage to memorize a few passages as almost all Muslim boys and girls did
in those days( they seem to do even more enthusiastically these days,
surprisingly).There is no shame in admitting that I or anyone I know have any
clue what any of those foreign ( Arabic) words mean. That didn’t bother me when
I was young because I was programmed, as everyone else, not to worry about the
meaning of the words, but to think about the good feeling that reciting those
holy words of the Almighty brings. This good feeling, unfortunately, lost its
shine in my later years, as I began to search the meaning of not just the
Quran, but of everything else in life. If that is construed as a sin, then, of
course, I am a sinner.
It is true that I
stopped going to the mosque for congregational prayers, but that doesn’t mean I
stopped praying. On the contrary, I think I’m a better worshipper now than I
was ever before. The language of my prayer is not Arabic, of course. Allah
understands Arabic, I don’t. I understand Bengali. And I believe Allah does
too. If and when I wish to say something to Him I prefer to say it in a language
that He and I both understand. Take, for instance, the word “namaz”, which
means prayer. Will it offend Allah if I say it in my own language, ‘prarthona’,
instead of namaz or salat? Maybe the Arabic Allah will not like it, but the
Allah I know will surely not. And it’s not just the language of prayer, but the
place and manner of prayer also that I like to follow a different track. I
cannot accept that Allah will listen to my prayers only when I’m in a mosque,
not anywhere else. To me, a mosque is a man-made structure, just like any other
building, with bricks and stones, and some traditional Islamic designs to make
it look different from a residential dwelling. I keep hearing nowadays of a lot
of thieves and thugs and plunderers of public money building big spectacular
mosques as a social cover-up for their misdeeds.
I don’t believe my
Creator wakes up only when I prostate myself 5 times a day after I have cleaned
myself in the “proper” way, and followed the prescribed dress code. I don’t
think He is more interested in my daily drills than in my work. I believe He is
nowhere, yet He is everywhere. We can’t be everywhere, which explains the craze
to run to the mosque. But my prayer is to be able to accompany Him everywhere
and anywhere, wherever He may be. I want to be with Him, not out of Him. I want
to be in the homes of all human beings, all living things in the world. This is
the prayer that keeps me occupied all the time, and this is why my failure to
go to the mosque doesn’t bother me at all.
As far as I can
recall, I donated some money when the big mosque in Ottawa was getting built. But then I stopped
giving. I don’t know why, perhaps I shouldn’t have, perhaps I thought I would,
but never got around to actually writing the cheque. I do not even pay the
mandatory fitre or the zakat, on the Eid days. These are among the must-do
items in the Islamic rulebooks. But I do pay to the United Appeal funds. I
contribute regularly to other charities as well( I don’t think anyone can call
me a scrooge). There was, of course, no United Appeal in the seventh century.
Certainly not in the Arab peninsula. If there were, I believe we’d have been
advised to pay to that fund also. After all, what’s the purpose of fitre and
zakat? Help the poor and needy, right? General service to the suffering
humanity. When I say ‘humanity’ I don’t exclude the humans other than the ones
born in Muslim families or didn’t become Muslims. I mean all humans, of all
colours and hues and creeds. I mean all those living beings that were created
by the same Creator. All those people who ever existed on the face of the earth
from time immemorial. If my donated dollar can bring some relief to an old
suffering Jew or a starving child from a pagan family, then why shouldn’t that
contribution be regarded at the same level as the obligatory fitre or zakat is
beyond my comprehension. If my zakat dollars goes to the United Appeal instead
of the mosque fund, then what’s wrong in that? I found my God the hard way,
after looking for Him here, there and everywhere. This God of mine, however,
doesn’t have an address in a mosque, temple, church or synagogue. Rather He
seems to prefer living in a dense crowd, among the animals, and in the
dirt-filled dark and narrow city slums. He likes to lie down on the dirty smelly
mat of the beggar. He likes to look through the sad teary eyes of the orphan
child. The God I know loves to roam in disguise the leper colonies, and to keep
watch at the doors of the huts of the poor widows who have been cast aside by
the society. I can’t say if He ever visited the site of the World Iztema( the
annual international convention of Islamic evangelists), I haven’t been there
myself, but I do know that He is there with the flood victims, with the
children in various relief camps the world over. I also saw Him in Bosnia and Rwanda where
all those unspeakably cruel things happened a few years ago. In contrast our
learned imams and clerics do not like to step out of their comfy quarters in
the mosque, yet the very Being for whom they spend their entire life with their
heads stuck on the marble walls of the lifeless structures, is more fond of
taking strolls out of those walls and get into the hearts and souls of the
suffering men and women on the streets. That’s why the mosque I know does not have
an address at the corner of any particular street, rather on all streets of all
places all the time. Especially where humanity is being treated with
indifference and disrespect, the suffering poor and weak are being regularly
trampled under the boots of power.
I asked an old
friend of mine why it should be mandatory for all Muslims to follow each and
every word of the holy Quran, especially after 14 hundred years after its
revelation. The friend didn’t like the tone of my question, so he brushed me off
by saying that we do not have the right to question the wisdom of the holy
words of Allah. His response was a bit of a surprise to me, because he was not
an ordinary Joe Bloke, rather a highly regarded modern scientist. I didn’t stop
there, of course. In that case, I asked, why would He bother to give us this
precious thing called intelligence. Why would He not allow us to think
independently if He was the one to give us the ability to think? Just didn’t
make sense, I said. My friend was, obviously, not too pleased with my
questions. So he started using meaningless parables, which is the standard
technique of religious zealots. He brought up the analogy of the military in
what I thought was a simple question about God. If the commander of the army
gives an order, does the soldier have the right to question its wisdom, he
asked. The soldier’s duty is to obey, not ask. Needless to say I found his
argument unacceptable. First of all, life is not a battlefield in the crude
medieval sense, nor am I willing to think of myself as a mindless soldier. No,
I don’t want to be a soldier, I want to be a lover. I want to see my Creator in
love, not in fear. I like to see Him in the image of kindness rather than a
punishing warlord. The basis of my religion is not fear and punishment, rather
kindness and forgiveness. I want to worship Him with love and joyful devotion,
the way the birds do with their wings flapping in the sky. I want to bow to Him
the way the flowers in my garden do every morning, or the way the sparkling eyes
of the little girl on my street do. I want to submit to Him not the way the
mullahs do five times a day in a routine monotonous manner, but the way the
mighty oceans do, or the clouds in the sky, the moon and the sun do. I want to
feel His presence at the core of my soul, in every fiber of my existence.
I’ll never know if I
have the freedom to raise questions about the holy Quran. They had put a seal
on my lips a long, long time ago. But they could not put a seal on my mind and
brain. My mind tells me that He who got my love will certainly not mind my
sulking with Him at times or throwing a question or two at Him. In fact, this
is how I found Him in the first place—by asking questions. He understood it was
never my intention to cut my ties with Him, rather to understand the nature of
those ties. If I fail to appreciate what that relationship is that I have with
Him then it would only be a traditional ’bondage’, and not a soulful ‘bonding’.
The subtle difference between the two is very important to me. What I crave for
is an intellectually uplifting, yet emotionally fulfilling bonding that will
draw me toward Him as a straw is drawn to the river by a swift spring runoff. I
pray that I can understand that this sacred bondage is also the key to my
ultimate salvation.
( Translated by the author from his Bengali article
”Prarthona” published in the book”Lal Nodi” in 2001)
Mizan Rahman, মীজান রহমান
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