Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE WORSHIPFUL ACTS t 235
low Muslims were doing the same at Arafat outside Mecca, and
that they and others performed the ritual hajj sacrifice in the Noble
Sanctuary in Jerusalem.
Muslim Devotions
Christianity early institutionalized the veneration of its holy men
and women. The martyrs were the first to be so honored, but with
the end of the persecutions and the execution of Christians, the
same veneration was soon extended to the “confessors,” those
holy men and women whose lifelong pursuit of virtue proclaimed
their sanctity as eloquently as the blood of the martyrs did theirs.
They too might be venerated, though never adored, and it was
permissible to request their intercession with God—Islam is particularly
firm in its denial of intercessory powers to any human,
excluding Muhammad—but the line between veneration and adoration
is thin indeed. Augustine had warned about crossing that
line, and the Church Council held in Nicaea in 787 made a careful
distinction between the worship (latreia) and adoration owed to
God alone and the respect and veneration (douleia) that might be
paid to the saints. However complex the matter might be, there
was a small attached rider: Mary, the Mother of Jesus, might be
paid a kind of superveneration (hyperdouleia).
There is nothing remotely like these Christian devotions in
Sunni Islam. Its liturgy, principally the five-times-daily salat, is as
fixed in performance as its Christian counterpart, the Eucharist,
but is far less dramatic since the Eucharist is essentially a reenactment,
and Muslim prayer a recitation. Islam has neither stational
liturgies like the Christians’ annual ritual celebration of the events
of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, nor commemorative liturgies like
the daily celebration of the basic eucharistic liturgy in honor of
some saint, the mass for the dead, and the marriage mass. Sunni
Islam’s only “seasonal” liturgy—as already noted, Muhammad’s
ban on intercalation rendered true seasonal celebrations impossible—is
the time- and place-tied hajj. Despite occasional attempts,
however, the ritual has not as a whole been successfully “trans-