Numair Choudhury

Spiritual or Ritual?

            A few days ago, when I was in car near the airport, I saw something that struck me immediately.  A truck, laden with goods, was speeding in front of us.  And on top of all the goods was a man balancing himself and reciting his payers.  The moment I saw this, I was reminded of another incident of a man at prayer that had struck me.  This man was in a Gulshan mosque, sitting under a fan, with a servant standing beside him.  The servant was holding an umbrella over his employer, to shade him from the afternoon sun.  The contrast between the man on the truck and the one in the mosque could not be greater in my mind.  One was risking his life to say his prayers on time, and the other was not willing to sacrifice a few minutes of exposure to the day's heat, to relinquish any hold over his status as employer.

            What this made me think of was the actual reasons behind our Islamic customs of saying prayers, fasting, distributing money to the poor and reciting suras and doyas at religious sites, and the superficial token they have now become to many.  The virtues of praying regularly is the discipline it demands, the community binding it promotes and of course the encouragement of checking in with ones spirituality.  However, instead of sitting side by side with his servant, the master actually ordered him to stand on duty.  And what is the worth of distributing money to the poor when it is coming from funds that have been defaulted from banks that cater to those that already have money?  Or when the money is directly being siphoned off the poor through monopolies that have the capability to exploit those that are already indigent?  What does it signify when a car that is normally speeding, with little respect for pedestrians and human life, blasting music away, slows down and stops its music in front of a mahzar?  Is religion a robe that one garbs at moments opportune to ones self-gratification, or a philosophy that one lives in true respect for a community?

            These are the questions that strike me when I think of what religion has become to many.  Instead of a spiritual plane, what I see more often is a series of programmed practices that have lost the very essence of its creation.  The customs are no longer holistically exercised in relation to ones spirituality, but separately from ones daily life as a duty that one must employ to achieve religious validity.  On the other hand, the sure-footed man on the truck displays his faith; his regard for religion as something that ties in with his work as it ties in with his life.  He is the true believer - having reached an understanding with his personal God, an understanding that many others lack.