On our journey, we have now been to a Christian church, Hindu temple, Buddhist monastery (many!) and really wanted to experience a Muslim prayer service inside of a mosque. As Brayden shared in his post, but a quick refresher – Muslim call to prayer happens five times per day at times set by the lunar calendar; all prayers are in the direction of Mecca; you must enter a mosque cleansed (cleaning your feet and legs to the knee, hands and arm to the elbow, face and head), barefoot, and men pray downstairs while women pray upstairs; the Imam leads the prayer service; Friday prayer is similar to Christian service, with a message and sermon. Inside of a mosque, there are no icons or statues or pictures, there are rugs for praying on, a large open room with no seats (all prayer is standing or kneeling), a mihrab (niche, always in the direction of Mecca to which prayers are directed), a minber (essentially a pulpit up a small staircase), a kursi (an ornate chair where lectures or sermons can be delivered from), and a large dome that represents the heavens. The mosque we visited is small and quaint and we simply came on a mid-day, mid-week, service so it was the run of the mill prayer… which was moving and awesome.
You first wash, then remove shoes and then enter the mosque at prayer time (the mosque we visited had a digital display of the lunar calendar’s prayer times right now).
Here a bunch of pictures of the inside and outside of mosques we have visited in Turkey.
I’m not sure what I had expected, but it was a moving ritual that lasted about 15 minutes. To initiate the prayer, there is the formal call to prayer from the minarets of the mosque, a loud and poetic call that is a reading from the Koran that always echoes though the village, city or square and something that has never gotten old for us and almost gives me the chills each time I hear it through the day. It goes something like this (obviously in poetic Arabic):
- Allah is greatest. (x4)
- I bear witness that there is no god except Allah. (x2)
- I bear witness that Muhammed is the messenger of Allah. (x2)
- Come to prayer. (x2)
- Come to success. (x2)
- Allah is greatest. (x2)
- There is no god except Allah.
- (in the morning call, at 5:45 AM right now {!!!!}, they also call out: Worship is better than sleep. {unclear on this one})
After the calls to prayer, men come in quietly; streaming in and sitting on the light lines in the carpet that guide the rows to pray on, kneeling shoulder to shoulder silently with no acknowledgment or niceties, just a queue of men preparing for prayer. Honestly, we had a little trepidation sitting quietly in the back of the mosque – unsure if we would be scolded or kicked out. No one really paid much attention to us, aside from a few glances, so we just sat still and silent waiting for the service.
The Imam dons a big black cloak and then comes to the front of the mosque where service initiates, reciting lines from the Koran (God is great, praise be to Mohammed), and repeatedly bowing, kneeling and performing Muslim versions of prostrations (about 25 times I would guess, but it wasn’t formulaic). Each man goes at their own pace, so it’s all united in communal prayer but they seem individual in their personal prayers. Unlike some other religion’s services we have witnessed, there is no iconography in the mosque and very little ritualistic deviation from anything but the core religious message… it felt deep and spiritual and each man was very, very clearly deeply immersed in the prayer.
I have heard this before, but it really is remarkable to sit and visualize that at this precise moment, every single praying Muslim is unified together sending prayers toward Mecca together… and the planet has one billion Muslims. That puts Ghostbusters to shame (yes, with all apologies to my Muslim friends I do realize that I just analogized the sanctity of Muslim prayer facing Mecca with singing New Yorkers sharing the love in Ghostbusters, but I have an audience consisting of 4th graders, 6th graders and USC graduates so I feel it is justified here). We were very moved.
The men then took turns standing and filing out of the mosque. It was only about 15-20 minutes of service (when you pray 5 times a day, 7 days a week, you must be efficient or there’d be time for nothing else!) and we stood and walked out to grab our shoes and step out into the sunshine.
Slightly startlingly, there were two old men waiting for us at the entrance (uh-oh was my initial thought). They came up to us and started asking questions in relatively quick and terse Turkish. My head spun for a moment, thinking defensively what we could have done or what they could be saying. Our guide turned with a big smile and shared how interested and pleased they were that we, westerners (they assumed Germans, and then were even more surprised to learn an American family with their kids were interested in their religion and practice), were interested in Islam. We made small talk with smiles and nods and then headed out of the town square, feeling appreciated, feeling that we had communed in a beautiful way with these men, and feeling deeply moved by the spiritual service.
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