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G21 MIDEAST: QUIET QUESTIONS: AJ comes back for our anniversary celebration to talk about issues of faith.
Nairobi, KENYA - Every day I question something in my life. Sometimes the same thing for many days. Until I have satisfied myself on the viability of the answer.
I spend more time thinking about issues in my quiet moments - walking through Uhuru Park into the city centre, at a Citi Hoppa window watching the Nairobi streets running under me, staring blankly at the television with images of "Sunset Beach" re-runs flashing on the screen. Intense, inward-looking thoughts are less difficult to schedule than one would think. They tip toe up to you, almost effortlessly.
For the last few years, the questions I have asked myself in my quiet moments, my quiet questions... although at times, they seem almost disquieting... have centered around my faith and my religion. There is a lot I don't know about Islam, its history, the origin of its practices and the reasons some of its practices have mutated into sect-defining characteristics today.
My Islamic education has been sparse. I rarely attended madrasa in my childhood and when I did, preferred to suck on mabuyu and achari rather than recite surahs from the Qu'ran.
At some stage, my father decided that a one on one at home would be more effective than a class setting and so a Maalim would teach my sister and me Quran recital for an hour every Saturday and Sunday morning. But boarding school stopped even those weekly events. In university, I would attend halqas with other female student s but because Sunnis populated them, I experienced little growth as a Shia, and so even the chance it offered to question areas of faith was redundant for me.
My return to Kenya offered me the chance, or so I thought, to find the answers that I was looking for. But at first I experienced a language barrier. Having been away from the community for so long, the language in which sermons were made (a combination of Gujrati and Arabic) was incomprehensible to me. Time and exposure corrected that flaw.
But having had that one door of knowledge opened to me, I became greedy and craved for more. I didn't just want information anymore either. I wanted answers. I wanted analysis. And debate. And discussion.
I wanted knowledge.
I became so fascinated with the development of the Shia faith, and the power that one single moment has in shaping the behaviour and habits of an entire community, that I wanted to know it all. And each of my questions seemed to spawn more. Like Errour in Spenser's Faerie Queene, I became an ever-perpetuating womb of questions.
For example, prayer. It is one of the five pillars of Islam and sermons are full of references to the importance of performing prayers five times a day to ensure the health of one's faith. It is an intricate act which is shared by all Muslims, regardless of their sect with only a few minor differences, and it requires complete concentration.
All my life I have either prayed or watched people pray but never thought about why a prayer is composed of all those particular, and extremely graceful, acts.
I never knew that the three positions that one adopts while performing prayer, are different ways of worshiping Allah and that each position communicates a different message about your relationship with Allah.
When you are standing on the prayer mat, facing the Ka'aba, you are a friend to Allah. When you are bending at the waist at a ninety degree angle with your hands resting on your knees, you are a servant to Allah. And when you are prostrating on the ground with your forehead, palms of hands, knees and toes being the only points of contact with the ground, you are a slave to Allah. So much subtlety in each pose and yet in all its simplicity, so much implication.
But gems like these are difficult to find.
Recently I came across a website, www.bettermuslim.com, which proved to be a treasure trove of religious insights. Started by an Ishnashri (a member of the Shia faith) from East Africa who now lives in London, bettermuslim.com is a blog that narrates small incidents in his life that bear an Islamic implication. The website also offers links to Ishnashri sermons in English.
It isn't that I found answers to all my questions there, although yes, some were answered especially by the sermons. It was more that seeing others ask themselves the same questions that I had struggled with somehow dampened my burning curiosity. Together we reached a sort of understanding that filled each of our individual voids of ignorance.
My quiet moments of late have been filled with mental replays of those insights and sermons, in an attempt to capture every little nugget that it has to offer, no matter how insignificant, confident that it will somehow contribute to the growing strength of my faith and my identity as a Shia Muslim.
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