Islamic Unity

Words for thought
We conclude with a short episode from Muhammad Asad’s “The road
to Mecca”. Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), before accepting Isl\m,
wrote of his observations of a group of people performing %al\h.
They would bow together in the direction of Mecca, rise again,
and then kneel down and touch the ground with their foreheads;
they seemed to follow the inaudible words of their leader, who
between the prostrations stood barefoot on his prayer carpet,
eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, soundlessly moving his
lips and obviously lost in deep absorption; you could see that he
was praying with his whole soul.
It somehow disturbed me to see so real a prayer combined with
almost mechanical body movements, and one day I asked the
Hajji:
“Do you really believe that God expects you to show Him your
respect by repeated bowing and kneeling and prostration? Might
it not be better only to look into oneself and to pray to Him in the
stillness of one’s heart? Why all these movements of your body?”
As soon as I had uttered these words I felt remorse, for I had not
intended to injure the old man’s religious feelings. But the Hajji
did not appear in the least offended. He smiled with his toothless
mouth and replied:
“How else should we worship God? Did He not create both,
soul and body, together? And this being so, should man not pray
with his body as well as his soul? Listen, I will tell you why we
Muslims pray as we pray. We turn towards the Kaaba, God’s
holy temple in Mecca, knowing that the faces of all Muslims,
wherever they may be, are turned to it in prayer, and that we
are like one body, with Him at the centre of our thoughts.”
Muhammad Asad, The road to Mecca, p87-88
32