Would U Pray With A Muslim...

[cathoholic_anonymous]

This question is of special interest to me, as I’ve spent most of my life in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim heartland. I came to boarding school in England when I was fourteen and my family left for good when I was eighteen. Obviously, I had no sacramental life of any sort when I was in Saudi – there are no churches there – but thanks to my parents’ care and the help of my Muslim friends, I developed a strong Catholic faith.

I believe that Divine Truth in all its fullness and perfection is only to be found within the Catholic Church. Nowhere else. But I do not believe that that Truth is to be found within each and every Catholic. There are elements of truth in Islam, even if it only provides a scattered mosaic, and a devoted Muslim may be able to remind an individual Catholic of something that s/he has overlooked or forgotten about.

I have prayed alongside my Muslim friends and I will continue to do so. They have inspired me to a greater love of God. Their practice of praying so regularly each day – and being so open and honest about their need for prayer – has been especially useful for me. When I transferred to boarding school in Britain, I found that it wasn’t ‘cool’ to be religious. The other boarders used to snigger because I enjoyed going to church and didn’t only turn up to services when the teachers forced us to go. They made fun of me when I prayed at night. But as I had grown up in an environment where prayer is seen as a function as natural as breathing, I didn’t falter. In fact, when people incredulously asked me, “You pray?” I would shoot back, “And you don’t?” If I had grown up in a country less religious than Saudi, I doubt I would have had the strength to stave off the peer pressure.

As for this nonsense about Allah being the moon god…the word for ‘God’ in Arabic is ‘lah’. But Arabic is like French and everything has to carry the definitive article, ‘the’. In Arabic this is al. So we say ‘al-kursi’ (the chair), al-kitab (the book), al-burtuqal (the orange), and al-Lah. The God. This is why Christian Arabs use the same word for God as Muslim Arabs do.

The name for the moon goddess of pagan Arabia was al-Lat. Not al-Lah. The misconception stems from the fact that the two words are similar. (By this logic, cap, cat, cut, and can all mean the same thing in English!) Muhammad actually instructed Muslims not to pray when the sun is rising (they pray at dawn instead), when the sun is at its zenith, or when it is setting exactly, just in case people assume they are worshipping celestial bodies and not God.

Having read the Qur’an in its original language and studied Arabic intensively, I believe that the God of Islam is the God of Abraham - albeit a clouded view of Him. When my best friend Sobia and I pray together, we rarely use the same words - I read from my breviary, she kneels on her prayer mat at my side. Praying silently alongside one another is in no way a compromise of our differing beliefs, but an affirmation of God's generosity - He has made us friends and we're grateful.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

This question is of special interest to me, as I’ve spent most of my life in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim heartland. I came to boarding school in England when I was fourteen and my family left for good when I was eighteen. Obviously, I had no sacramental life of any sort when I was in Saudi – there are no churches there – but thanks to my parents’ care and the help of my Muslim friends, I developed a strong Catholic faith.

I believe that Divine Truth in all its fullness and perfection is only to be found within the Catholic Church. Nowhere else. But I do not believe that that Truth is to be found within each and every Catholic. There are elements of truth in Islam, even if it only provides a scattered mosaic, and a devoted Muslim may be able to remind an individual Catholic of something that s/he has overlooked or forgotten about.

I have prayed alongside my Muslim friends and I will continue to do so. They have inspired me to a greater love of God. Their practice of praying so regularly each day – and being so open and honest about their need for prayer – has been especially useful for me. When I transferred to boarding school in Britain, I found that it wasn’t ‘cool’ to be religious. The other boarders used to snigger because I enjoyed going to church and didn’t only turn up to services when the teachers forced us to go. They made fun of me when I prayed at night. But as I had grown up in an environment where prayer is seen as a function as natural as breathing, I didn’t falter. In fact, when people incredulously asked me, “You pray?” I would shoot back, “And you don’t?” If I had grown up in a country less religious than Saudi, I doubt I would have had the strength to stave off the peer pressure.

As for this nonsense about Allah being the moon god…the word for ‘God’ in Arabic is ‘lah’. But Arabic is like French and everything has to carry the definitive article, ‘the’. In Arabic this is al. So we say ‘al-kursi’ (the chair), al-kitab (the book), al-burtuqal (the orange), and al-Lah. The God. This is why Christian Arabs use the same word for God as Muslim Arabs do.

The name for the moon goddess of pagan Arabia was al-Lat. Not al-Lah. The misconception stems from the fact that the two words are similar. (By this logic, cap, cat, cut, and can all mean the same thing in English!) Muhammad actually instructed Muslims not to pray when the sun is rising (they pray at dawn instead), when the sun is at its zenith, or when it is setting exactly, just in case people assume they are worshipping celestial bodies and not God.

Having read the Qur’an in its original language and studied Arabic intensively, I believe that the God of Islam is the God of Abraham - albeit a clouded view of Him. When my best friend Sobia and I pray together, we rarely use the same words - I read from my breviary, she kneels on her prayer mat at my side. Praying silently alongside one another is in no way a compromise of our differing beliefs, but an affirmation of God's generosity - He has made us friends and we're grateful.