Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
I have downloaded to my phone an app that speaks out the Islamic call to prayer at the designated times for the traditional five times a day prayer for Muslims.
When the call sounds, I pause and listen to the melody, immersing myself in the sonorous rhythms perfected over centuries of developing the practice of Islam into an artistic form.
I don't understand the Arabic words- I will read about them later- but I expect they are a salutation to the creator of the universe, the ultimate justification of existence, the consummation of being to whom the Muslim prostrates in a continual rhythm as he or she kneels on the prayer mat in recognition of the enfolding of existence by Something beyond existence.
Do I believe that a creator of the universe exists?
I think it's possible.
Do I know if such a creator exists?
I don't know.
Why then do I adapt to my use a central practice of a religion dedicated to submission to belief in that creator?
It is possible to be sensitive to what Wole Soyinka describes as the unknowable immensity that sorrounds us, to its undented vastness, to identify with the idea of the cosmos as fundamentally a mystery which human thought tries to make sense of, part of that effort being belief in the idea of an ultimate creator, an idea, however that raises further questions about ultimate origins, and even to try to communicate with this creator, as many religious people as myself do, while concluding that ideas about such a creator are more paradoxical than straightforward, surrendering oneself to those perplexities as one immerses oneself in methods human beings have developed to approach this mystery, the glorious music of the human voice in the Islamic call to prayer being one of them.
Kolawole Adegbola
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cornelius...@gmail.com
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
It’s a matter of the heart really. The heart, QALB
Sometimes, the heart listens, the heart hears, the heart knows, the heart feels, the heart sees , the heart after all is the seat of the intellect. The intellect , AQL is mentioned 77 times in the Quran.
Some people's hearts are dead.
That was some encouraging good vibes coming from you about
the Adhan - the Muslim Call to Prayer as you say, “sonorous”
indeed another beautiful aspect of al- Islam, the most modern
and the most beautiful religion for mankind.
Those who do not agree
can at least try to suppress
what Bishop Krister Stendahl
refers to as ”holy envy”
Indeed, those who do not agree
can go drink
the brackish waters of the Dead Sea
An example of Adhan from Syria
Last Sunday I kept the company of some Brethren from Algeria, Syria, Morocco and Tunisia, disciples of Ahmad al-Alawi and two days ago found myself discussing the beauty of Azan with Brethren from Turkey, Syria and Somalia, a discussion in which I advanced the view based on my own aesthetic judgement, and of course, my limited personal experience, that when it comes to the the plaintive, the soft and sonorous beauty of the Muslim Call to Prayer Turkey and Iran are unsurpassable -
I should have added Egypt where I listened to and heard and responded to the Azan, the Muslim call to prayer, everyday for four months.
I say “ limited personal experience” because I still haven’t heard the sonorous Adhan from the heart of e.g. Sokoto which is in Nigeria, have never heard the Adhan in Sierra Leone or Ghana or Liberia, or the Ivory Coast , although I could have heard it but didn’t know that it was the Adhan, just as back in Sierra Leone, I remember that I used to see certain Fullah traders always washing their hands - up to their elbows and then their feet , their mouth, nose and behind their ears, used to think that it was a Fulani tribal ritual , maybe tribal obsession about maintaining the cleanliness of the aforementioned bodily parts, didn’t know that they were seriously performing their ritual wudu
Lesson learned : Wrong conclusions can be based on ignorance or wrong knowledge
So when will you be travelling to the corner of the cosmos known as Egypt in search of ILM?
When?
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2023 4:24:51 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
--
cornelius...@gmail.com
Words and their meanings….in time, out of time...
“Then, even after that, your hearts were hardened and became as rocks, or worse than rocks, for hardness. For indeed there are rocks from out which rivers gush, and indeed there are rocks which split asunder so that water floweth from them. And indeed there are rocks which fall down for the fear of Allah. Allah is not unaware of what ye do.” ( al-Baqarah 2:74
These are war times. In this wartime (Israel declares war on Gaza and imposes a heartless blockade on on the long suffering people of Gaza : “The total blockade of Gaza was announced on 9 October 2023 by the Defence Minister of Israel, Yoav Gallant. “We are putting a complete siege on Gaza … No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it's all closed” he announced. "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly," he added.”
Cornelius Ignoramus wants to know is the heart associated with feelings, emotion, love, hate or just “ thinking “ ?
Re -” In biblical times the heart was not associated with feelings, emotion, or love, but thinking” etc (Ken Harrow)
In that case, are we to understand that in “Biblical times” the so-called heart was a metaphor for “the mind”?
If so, what is the Biblical Hebrew term for ”mind” and how are/were heart and mind distinguished?
I know that it would be useless asking any of Nigeria’s anti-intellectual Pentecostal poets (I know one who is fairly representative and thinks that all the findings of recent Biblical Scholarship and Biblical Criticism (( t.ly/Sbc5m) and people like Bart D. Ehrman are anathema. He thinks that every letter, comma, exclamation mark and full stop in the Bible text that he has in his hands (usually the King James version) is literally the unadulterated unexpurgated, inerrant word of God, like the Ten Commandments that were written by “God’s finger” and defines scripture quoting Paul@2 Timothy 3:16–17
Two chapters on the subject of Prophecy in the ancient Near East and The origins of prophecy in Israel dealt with in Israel's Prophetic Tradition - essays in honour of Peter Ackroyd should suffice to disabuse him of such ideas about God’s mediated / unmediated authorship
And in the sonnet tradition it's the heart, heart, heart. The heart is where the love is, where the love resides, love's habitat, love & suffering, shuffering and the heart, the heart even suffering heart attacks because of love; you can’t be a poet or write a decent Petrarchan sonnet unless you are lovelorn, love-torn and suffering
“He said, me and Melissa, well we fell out of love.
We ran out of luck, seems like lightning struck.” (That's why I'm here)
The poor fellow, love’s fool
It begins with
The engagement ring
Then comes
The wedding ring
Followed by
The suffer-ring
The Mind?
Fast forward to The Last Poets 👍
“Niggers are very untogether people
Niggers talk about the mind
Talk about: My mind is stronger than yours
"I got that bitch's mind uptight!"
Niggers don't know a damn thing about the mind
Or they'd be right
Niggers are scared of revolution”
It’s something that I have never wondered about since circa 1960 when I first encountered the concluding line of Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 1 by Sir Philip Sidney: "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
Of relevance :
John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma)
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Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 9:45:24 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
Harrow, Kenneth
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 7:26:16 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
The Platonic soul consists of three parts which are located in different regions of the body:[8][9]
- the logos (λογιστικόν), or logistikon, located in the head, is related to reason and regulates the other parts.
- the thymos (θυμοειδές), or thumoeides, located near the chest region, is related to spirit.
- the eros (ἐπιθυμητικόν), or epithumetikon, located in the stomach, is related to one's desires.
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 6:41:52 PM
Harrow, Kenneth
The Platonic soul consists of three parts which are located in different regions of the body:[8][9]
- the logos (λογιστικόν), or logistikon, located in the head, is related to reason and regulates the other parts.
- the thymos (θυμοειδές), or thumoeides, located near the chest region, is related to spirit.
- the eros (ἐπιθυμητικόν), or epithumetikon, located in the stomach, is related to one's desires.
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 6:41:52 PM
John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma)
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Harrow, Kenneth
cornelius...@gmail.com
Adjacent matters : going beyond Plato to Plotinus where the heart has a different locus and function.
Hazrat Hajj Sultan Hussein Tabandeh Reza Ali Shah wrote this short treatise :
The philosophy of Plotinus