Mosqued

December 15

Back in the day when the Progressives were actually saying sensible things, one of their main concerns was the fact that the majority of American Muslims are ”unmosqued”--that is, they don’t regularly visit their local house of worship. The possible reasons were many: the lack of educated imams to lead prayers, ultraconservatism, shoddy arrangements for women. Anywhere in the world, it seems, it’s pretty tricky to find a really good mosque--in Cairo I didn’t regularly attend Friday prayers because it was typically all shouting and overcrowding, and even men went rather wearily. The gleaming exception was Sultan Hassan, a gorgeous, huge medieval mosque in the old quarter, where Sheikh Ali Gomaa has been the khateeb (that’s the person who gives the sermon, for those of you joining us from other walks of life) for years. Even though I got headaches trying to follow the classical Arabic, going there was always an illuminating experience.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never been to an American mosque. I had been told tales of crushing banality by Muslims who had--stories of sheikhs who could barely speak their native languages, let alone Arabic or English; hostility from other mosque-goers; the obsessive quotidian legalism of the clerical elite that has led to spiritual exhaustion all over the Muslim world, compounded in the US by isolation and vulnerability. The American mosque sounded more or less unbearable. Three weeks ago, however, driven by a need for familiarity and a break from the endless jabs at Islam and Arabs on TV (it’s gotten worse, not better, in the years I’ve been away), Omar and I set out for one of the larger Seattle-area mosques. When we got there, I was pleasantly surprised: the building was quite nice, built with a graceful coppery dome, and the space for women reminded me of an old Mamluke-era house: it was a kind of enclosed balcony above the men’s prayer area, fronted by a lattice. The mosque was patronized mainly by first and second-generation Somalis, along with a few Arabs and Bosnians. It was the first time I’d ever met European Muslims who weren’t converts.  In Egypt (and Iran) there was almost always a mini-interrogation before I was allowed into a mosque; people were always afraid I was a tourist looking for A Cultural Experience, who had come to stare at the congregation like it was some kind of open-air zoo. (I don’t plug this enough: it will sound strange, but responsible tourism is one of the silver bullets that will take care of this breach between ‘East’ and ‘West’, because irresponsible tourism is one of the biggest unreported factors creating it.) Here, no; I was accepted without question. The balcony was bustling with women and children; one young mother turned to me smiling and asked me to watch her child, a little boy named Bilal who was three or four years old, while she washed for prayer. He perched in my lap without any shyness, fluently interchanging English and Amharic as I asked him about his favorite colors--he had that confidence in the benevolence of strangers that children raised in tightly-knit communities are blessed with. It was a relief to be in an environment where help is expected, unquestioned and enjoyed. Just a few days earlier I’d been on a bus, and seeing an elderly woman struggling with her grocery bags, asked if she needed help; she turned to me scowling and said “Do you need help?” I almost laughed. I wanted to say yes, I do need help, because you have depressed the hell out of me. But I just smiled and turned up the volume on my iPod.

The khutba (that’s a sermon) was, in contrast to the company, dull. The sheikh, who was Moroccan, talked first in good Arabic and then in poor English about the necessity of dressing nicely, parking well and taking care not to disturb the neighbors when coming to the mosque--all good advice, but hardly worth the 20 minute drive. According to Omar, the men’s section was silent and withdrawn. We left feeling slightly demoralized.

Today, we decided to try another mosque for comparison. This one was markedly different: the sheikh and the main constituency were Pakistani, joined by a few Africans and Arabs and Bosnians. Most people looked as though they had come from work, and were dressed in shirts and ties. Some of the women were wearing pants. Pants! Even jeans! In a mosque! That alone was enough to brighten my day. Then the sheikh started talking, and I forgot all about outerwear: the sermon was good. The sheikh was trilingual. (Urdu, Arabic, English) His understanding of the Quran was nuanced enough to make me feel as though I’d learned something. There was nothing really transcendent about his speech--I want someday to walk away from a khutba with tears running down my face, and it hasn’t happened yet--but his understanding was sound, his words straightforward, and his faith unpretentious. We left feeling more cheerful than we have in many weeks. It seems there’s hope yet for the American mosque.

We’ll be back.