Chapter 2

We wish to give our readers a picture of Islamic worship and rituals as agreed upon by both a Muslim who participates in that worship and by a non-Muslim observer. Such a picture will be more objective than either author alone could produce. We present this picture in ways that are comfortable or familiar to the western mind but at the same time not contrary to Muslim sensibilities.

We have not wanted to distort or hide anything. We have aimed to explain as truthfully as we can what is behind the things that visitors see when they enter an Islamic environment, particularly the one in Turkey. We have hoped to do so with fairness, scholarship, and personal insight, in a way that is both contrite and comprehensive, that is neither apologetic nor totally detached. Books have been and are being written on Islam by both Muslims and non-Muslims. Those by outsiders tend to be speculative and lacking in data, while those by insiders tend to use outdated language, recycling the material in the old ways. They are idealistic but offer few points of entry for the modern mind. We would like to unify the best of both approaches by developing a coherent factual foundation, in continuity with the past, on which we do not fear to theorize.

We assume that to a Westerner, some forms of Islamic worship, such as the sacrament of prayer, appear at first glance to be mechanical, impersonal, awkward, and rigid. These feelings arise simply because these forms of worship are different, unknown, and based on a consciousness that is invisible to the outsider. To appreciate Islamic worship, it is necessary to glimpse something of the psychology and principles of an Islamic worldview. Therefore we must go into the structure and mentality behind these rituals. We search out the symbolism and unifying themes that are sacred, living, inspiring, and moving to the worshippers. In this way our readers can perhaps feel something of what Muslims cherish in their worship practices. We hope that our non-Muslim readers come to appreciate such things as the seemingly repetitive postures of canonical prayer, the long hours of fasting, the demanding journey to Mecca, and the care for ritual precision, for these things in the eyes of believers are sacred and divinely instituted, and each part of them has a salvific nature.

Canonical Islamic worship practices were assembled and codified by Islamic jurists in the early centuries of the Islamic experience. The jurists were either founders or followers of various legal schools that differ from one another in details. The most common legal school in Turkey, and in the Muslim world at large, is the Hanifi school, named after an Islamic jurist of the 8th century, Abu Hanifah (700-67). Our description of the classic Islamic practices uses the Hanifi model.

Our main source for this purpose has been al-Mausili al-Hanifi's 12th century codification of religious practices. This work is one of the respected catechistic texts for Islamic practices among Sunni Muslims in Turkey. 'Sunni' refers to the majority of Muslims, those who aim to live by the Kur'an and the deeds and words of the Prophet Muhammad. Al-Mausili's work is a typical concentrated source from which contemporary Sunni guides take their lead. It tells Muslims what they ought to do in all aspects of their lives, for Muslims traditionally have not distinguished between 'religious' and 'secular,' or 'spiritual' and 'material' branches of existence. Al-Mausili's book is thus a book of laws, or codes, or prescriptions.

'Islamic Law' is technically called shariah. This term in its wider sense means 'Divine Law,' or 'Will of God,' or even 'religion.' But shariah also carries the narrower meaning of law codes, or canons, that govern a person's individual and social life in all its forms. When Muslims claim they are following a certain legal school, they have in mind this narrower understanding. They are referring to the specific codes or prescriptions that regulate their private and public life.

We show our readers what this shariah has to say to Muslims about their worship practices. Non-Muslims may have heard that there are five fundamental 'pillars', or basic practices, of Islam: the canonical prayer, which is five times per day; the yearly fasting; the yearly alms tax on wealth; the pilgrimage once in a lifetime to the mosque in Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia; and the confession of faith, a confession known as the shahada.

But we find it misleading to set a limitation such as the number 'five.' For one thing, the Kur'an, the holy book of Islam, seems not to focus on the number and form of worship practices. The Kur'an looks instead at the sense and the quality and the universality of worship. For another thing, to name a number like 'five' was a typical teaching device of the Prophet Muhammad. It called attention to the prime acts of Islamic worship as they shaped the community of Muslims. But in describing the faith, the Prophet also gave a number of seventy-odd practices, saying that the greatest is the testimony of faith, the shahada, and the smallest is the removal of an obstacle from the road where people pass. We infer from this record that the actions that define Islam are not limited to five but are as many as life itself. There is no exhaustive nature to the meaning and range of worship practices, to the types and number and forms of rituals. The divine law, or the will of Allah, is always greater than what human beings can conceive. For example, some argue that jihad, or 'striving in the faith', might belong to the central core of obligatory practices. And yet others argue that scholarship might be considered one of the 'pillars' of Islam.

We follow this broader line of thinking. We look at Islamic worship in modern Turkey in a comprehensive way. We do not limit ourselves to the classic number of sacraments, or to the formal or orthodox concept of worship. We extend the concept of worship to include what some would call nonorthodox, innovative, or heretical activities. Our basis for such an extension is the way the Kur'an uses 'calling on Allah' and 'worship' in an inclusive and transcendent sense that covers all forms of devotional practice. In direct contact and harmony with this Kur'anic approach, the Prophet also understood worship broadly. He saw all life, and not only particular ritual acts, as service to Allah, as ways of blessing. This Kur'anic principle is our first tool for comparing and contrasting the various practices of Muslims in Turkey.

We feel it is informative to say that all Islamic worship practices are encompassed by the confession of faith, the shahada: 'There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.' Furthermore, there is an essential core of Islamic ritual practices, or sacraments, that are the platform for an Islamic ethos. This central set of sacraments is formative of community but, as we have explained, not exhaustive of worship. These primary sacraments were demonstrated in his life by the Prophet Muhammad and have been codified by the schools of Islamic law. It is this orthodox core of what we call 'canonical' sacraments as practiced in Turkey which we particularly want to illumine in this book, according to our best understanding of what Islam is. This primary set of rituals is therefore our second tool for comparing and contrasting the practices of Muslims in Turkey. We describe what observers will see of Islam in Turkey in terms of the criterion of orthodox and nonorthodox. In doing so, we try to remain loyal to our promise of being as fair as possible to all orientations.

We faced different possibilities for ordering our chapters. The classical or catechistic method of ordering the canonical rituals is to put canonical prayer first, followed by fasting, the alms tax, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the other hand, if we go by the frequency of being mentioned in the Kur'an, which is the holy book of Islam, canonical prayer and the alms tax should come together first and prominently. Fasting and the pilgrimage rarely occur in Kur'an, and the animal offering is mentioned even less. Another option for ordering our chapters would have been to look at the way children in Turkey typically learn about the rituals at home. In that case fasting should come first, followed by the canonical prayer, the pilgrimage, the alms tax, and the confession of faith.

We finally decided to order our chapters according to the intensity and popularity of the practices of religion in Turkey today, as we perceive it. This is why the first chapter is about the confession of faith, for the different ways of witnessing to faith that we describe are the most widespread, frequent, and popular of all religious expressions and worship. Each succeeding chapter then describes religious practices that are less visible or common or popularly attended than the ones in previous chapters. We do not mean that the succeeding rituals or practices are therefore less important. In fact, our chapter on the canonical prayer sacrament, which comes later, is the longest of all. What we are trying to do is give clues to our readers where Muslims are located in Turkey from a religious standpoint.

Readers can study the variety of ways we have classified Islamic worship practices in Appendices A - D at the back of the book.

The task of writing these pages has been long and arduous. We have faced several issues as if for the first time. For instance, we have searched for fresh ways of putting into English certain phrases and ideas whose fullness of meaning better lies in the Arabic itself. An example is the watchword of the Islamic faith, Allahu Akbar. This constantly recurring expression has often been translated into English as 'God is great,' or 'God is greater and more majestic than anything in the universe.' We want our readers to explore this expression and feel more of what Muslims feel when using it: that God is not restricted to being a distant, nebulous, omnipotent power to whom we resignedly leave all problems, but that God is also immediately and at every moment manifest to our consciousness as a forceful, salvific, overwhelming, joyous, and empowering presence. There is only one such presence, and it is God. And since our context for these pages is Islamic, we believe it best to use the Islamic name for God: Allah. The result is that our translation for the watchword of Islamic faith, Allahu Akbar, is 'It is Allah who is magnificent!' We call this phrase 'The Magnification of Allah.' We have attempted several expressions like this that we think will prove attractive to our readers.

A technical problem involves transliteration: how to write Turkish or Arabic words in the English alphabet so that our readers can get some idea of the approximate pronunciation. We have been eclectic, using whatever English spelling strikes us as a compromise between three often conflicting needs: the need to give a pronunciation clue to our readers; the need to show the Turkish spelling of the word, the one which visitors to Turkey are likely to encounter; and the need to use what is easily recognizable to the world's Muslims. For instance, to refer to the month of fasting, we use Ramazan, which is how the word is both spelled and pronounced in Turkey. Yet our readers or other Muslims may have seen this word spelled as Ramadan. In another case, we have chosen to spell the term for the yearly pilgrimage as hajj. In Turkish, the word is written hac, but that form does not give our non-Turkish readers the correct hint as to pronunciation. At the back of the book is a glossary of terms with transliteration alternatives.