Our Quest for Juma

Teizeen:

Juma is the Muslim day for congregational prayer accompanied by a sermon, and always occurs on a Friday afternoon - somewhat equivalent to the Sabbath for Jews and going to church for Christians on Sundays.

So, this last Friday, Ryan and I were on our Quest for Juma: we were in Jodhpur in the state of Rajasthan, and we wanted to find a mosque where we could attend the Juma prayers and sermon. 

Step one involved finding a mosque - the crooked narrow streets of Jodhpur were not particularly conducive to us stumbling upon a mosque.  Buildings merge into one another, and houses, shops, and places of worship were therefore not easy to spot.  Roads do not have names, and all sign boards (except those catered to tourists), were in Hindi. 

So, to find a mosque, we needed to find a Muslim who we could ask.  We began combing the streets with our eyes to look for someone wearing a topi on their head (traditional Islamic head wear - they can come in various forms, but worn only by Muslims here), and had our catch in a matter of just a few minutes - a man with friendly eyes, who was sitting nearby in front of his spice shop and also happened to speak really good English. 

Welcoming and eager to share Juma with us, this man named Ramadan, said he was going to Juma in a few minutes and we could join him.  As we waited, we talked about Islam, the importance of education in Islam, and the our role of Muslims in the world today.  Islam, said Ramadan, is a beautiful religion, but there are people who do not know how to practice it.  Then, he started talking about the Rolls Royce: "The Rolls Royce is a beautiful car - if someone drives it and crashes it in an accident, it is not the fault of the car - it is the fault of the person driving it."  And with that simple analogy, he explained how the religion itself is beautiful, but there are people who don't know how to practice it the right way.


As it came closer to the time for Juma, I wanted to know if the mosque had a space for women to pray.  Congregational Muslims prayers involve standing right next to the people to the right and left of you in a line, "shoulder to shoulder, feet to feet", touching your neighbor on either side.  I believe that part of the wisdom behind this is to emphasize equality before God: everyone has to stand touching each other regardless of which mosque you pray  in, making segregation due to race or skin color, or social or economic status that much more difficult. 


Men and women, however, are segregated for the simple fact that your purpose is to pray before God and focus your attention on your prayer. Because of the close physical proximity that is required in congregational prayer, men and women pray in separate lines, or different spaces within the mosque.
The mosque we went to either did not have a space for women, or it was not accessible at the time, but as we walked towards the mosque, I was gently shuttled into the home of a Muslim family living right across the alley from the mosque, whose women were instructed to 'take care' of me during Juma.  The loudspeakers on the mosque reverberated loud enough for us all to hear the sermon and prayer from inside this house. 


Here I was, in a strange family's house, who opened their doors to me based on the simply fact that I was Muslim and so were they - I was automatically welcome.  I was offered a cup of tea, and tried to converse in my limited knowledge of Hindi with the women of the house.  We prayed together - the Muslim prayer is in Arabic, so no matter where in the world you are, and no matter what language one speaks, the prayer is exactly the same.  This universality was what made this house, for the brief 1 hr I was there, feel like home: we all knew what to do for the prayer, and we were doing it exactly the same way, even though we couldn't speak the same language, and knew very little about each other.

After the Juma service was over, they insisted that I join them for lunch.  I told them that my husband, Ryan, would be waiting for me outside in the alley and I should go, but this did not deter them: they extended the lunch invitation to both of us.  So, the afternoon ended with us all sitting on the floor in a circle, dipping our chappati's in tasty mutton curry, and chatting in broken Hindi and English (and some Gujarati), while I tried to appreciate the scene: a white American Muslim man, a Kenyan-Indian Gujarati speaking girl who has never lived or visited India and now lives in America, and am overly hospitable Muslim family in Jodpur, all coming together because of our common religious heritage.