Islam's Way

When the Moslems make world news--(see FOREIGN NEWS)--it is usually more political than religious. But to most of the 221,000,000 Moslems between Dakar and Borneo, last week was no different from any other. From Cairo, a TIME correspondent described how a modern Moslem observes one of the world's most exacting religious rituals:

"The Moslem's day begins when he hears the muezzin (prayer-time announcer) calling to prayers just before sunrise: 'La ilaha, ilia Allah, Mohamed rasul Allah!' (There is but one God, and Mohamed is his prophet!). The Moslem washes himself--his whole body 'if he has been with his wife'--stands barefoot on a carpet and, facing Mecca, begins to pray in the manner of a man doing mild setting-up exercises. First he stands at attention and says: 'I am beginning to pray.' Then, putting his hands to his ears, he says: 'Allah is almighty, exalted be Allah.' Standing at attention again, he then recites two suras (chapters) of the Koran. Then, after a forward waist-bend and a deep-knee bend ending with his forehead touching the ground, he repeats: 'God is almighty.' "

Walk up the Nile. "He repeats this ritual twice in the day's first prayer (at sunrise), four times in the second (at noon), four times in the third (mid-afternoon), three times in the fourth (sunset), four times in the fifth and last (about an hour and a half after sunset). The week's most important prayer is at noon on Friday, when Moslems fill the mosques to overflowing. Inside the mosques are fountains, at which the Moslem washes in a prescribed sequence: hands, mouth, nose, face, right arm, left arm, head, ears, right foot, left foot."

Loosely organized, Islam is the religion of a people separated by deserts and living in hard climates. Without a head prelate, a religious hierarchy or even an ordained priesthood, it has its center of activity at El Azhar University in Cairo (enrollment: 15,000). El Azhar, the largest Moslem university in the world, .draws students who walk there from as far as Addis Ababa; its graduates have vast prestige among Moslems in their own countries.

Islam does not maintain that its prophet, Mohamed, was divine; it does not deny Jesus (Issa), but calls Him the divinely sent redeemer rather than the Son of God. It permits limited polygamy,* strictly enforces prohibition, but believes in a paradise full of rich, non-intoxicating wines.

Prayer-Time Rasp. Essentially an unbending faith, Islam resists modernist intrusions with a stubborn orthodoxy. Liberal, rationalist reformers such as Mohamed Abduh and Iqbal on the one hand, and force-loving Mahdists like Mohamed Ahmed on the other, have failed to capture it. Nearly all Moslems still hold the Koran so infallible that all translations are considered heresies. Says Oxford's Islamic Scholar H. A. R. Gibb, in his new book, Modern Trends in Islam: "Liberalism . . . has struck no profound roots in the Moslem mind."

But if Western thought has been kept out, Western technology has not. In many large cities, the muezzin no longer troubles to climb his tower to announce prayers. Instead, loudspeakers have been set up in the minarets, and at prayer time the muezzin rasps his La ilaha, ilia Allah over a public-address system.

Why are there so many faithful Moslems? British Author R. V. C. Bodley, who lived many years among them, suggests this partial answer: in the illimitable nothingness of the desert or the oppressive dark of the jungle, without the distractions of Western civilization, men find the need for worship constant and pressing.

*Many Moslems have only contempt for Western sex ethics, which they consider hypocritical. Mohamed used monogamy as a punishment, admonishing: "If you cannot deal equitably and justly with all, you shall marry only one."

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