Can you see that man?
His head is bowed
His lips whisper a language beautiful to hear.
Now he bends...halfway a perfect 90 degrees.
Allahuakber (Allah is the Greatest)
and to testify to that fact the stranger falls to his knees and places his forehead to the floor. There can be no position more humble than that I think.
What is this stranger doing? There is so much elegance and so much beauty in his actions. Why does his face seem so full of light? He has such an aura of peace around him.
A girl comes to stand next to me. And we both silently watch the symphony of majesty in that strangers silence. He turns his head to the right and then to the left muttering a musical language. He quickly rolls up the mat he was using and with impatience in his stride jogs away. He must have been in a hurry although it had not been visible in what we had been watching.
I turn to the girl standing next to me. "What was he doing? It was beautiful?" I had to know. Nothing has touched my heart like that sight.
"Don't you know?" She turns a slightly shocked face to me. "He's a muslim. He's my brother in islam. We pray five times a day just the way he did."
A muslim. Muslims aren't supposed to be like that. They're supposed to have a sword in their hand and in engaged in a continuous holy war with the world, hate all over their faces. Not like that man definately not like that man in prayer. By just looking at him I had felt at peace.
Am I percieving Islam wrongly?
The answer to that question was the performance of the prayer that man. Can a religion, thought to have so much hate really offer such a beautiful thing to its believers, to be done five times a day? Had I been a muslim, just to experience what that man had experienced I would have rushed to prayer. Not once not twice but five times to keep my heart spiritually alive. I would have cried out all my problems to the Power I was praying to, I would have shared my excitement and happiness. Each prayer would have been meeting with God making Him a part of my life but...Im not a muslim. So I live a life of getting up, sleeping, eating,living all alone.
God isnt a part of my life and the prayer is not my glory.
Its yours. :)