A Community Without Walls

"Long before any thought that Islam might become my own faith entered my mind, I began to feel an unwonted humility whenever I saw, as I often did, a man standing barefoot on his prayer rug, or on a straw mat, or on the bare earth, with his arms folded over his chest and his head lowered, entirely submerged within himself, oblivious of what was going on around him, whether it was in a mosque or on the sidewalk of a busy street: a man at peace with himself."

At Damascus, he saw how Fridays – “the Muslim Sabbath” – bring new life and excitement, and yet solemnity, into the street. It was not a day of rest or retreat, but a day of full activities like other days. He saw an inner contact between working-man and his work. So, rest was needed when one was tired. He compared Fridays with the Sundays of Europe: “Because to most people in the West their everyday life is a heavy load from which only Sundays can release them, Sunday is no longer a day of rest but has become an escape into the unreal, a deceptive forgetfulness behind which, doubly heavy and threatening, the ‘weekday’ lurks.”

He once visited a mosque with a Muslim friend, and saw Muslims praying behind an old imam, in even rows, well-disciplined like soldiers. He saw how quite it was, and how the entire congregation bowed and prostrated, like one man, before God as if He was present there. “It was at this moment that I became aware how near their God and their faith were to these people. Their prayer did not seem to be divorced from their working day; it was part of it – not meant to help them forget life, but to remember it better by remembering God.” As he was leaving the mosque, he asked his friend –

“How strange and wonderful that you people feel God to be so close to you. I wish I could feel so myself.”

“How else could it be, O my brother? Is not God, as our Holy Book says, nearer to thee than the vein in thy neck"?

Some years later, he was traveling in ship, which was tightly packed with pilgrims who were going to Mecca. Below the deck were the lower class passengers. One day, he went to visit a friend below deck, and found a man on an iron bunk with fever. He was told that the ship’s doctor would not come down to help at that lower level. It appeared to him that the man was suffering from Malaria, and so he gave him some quinine. While he was attending the sick man, he saw, through the corner of his eye, that the man’s fellow pilgrims, who were from Yemen, took a whispering council among themselves. At the end, one of them came forward and gave him a few crumpled notes and said,

“We have collected this ourselves. Unfortunately it is not much; grant us the favour and accept it.”

I stepped back, startled, and explained that it was not for money that I had given medicine to their friend.

“No, no, we know it; but do nevertheless accept this money. It is not a payment but a gift – a gift from thy brethren. We are happy about thee, and therefore we give thee money … accept the money, brother, for the sake of the Prophet of God.”

But I, still bound by my European conventions, defended myself. “I could not possibly accept a gift in return for a service to a sick friend … Besides, I have money enough; you surely need it more than I. However, if you insist on giving it away, give it to the poor at Port Said.”

“No,” repeated the Yemeni, “thou accept it from us – and if thou dost not wish to keep it, give it in thine own name to the poor.”

And as they pressed me, and, shaken by my refusal, became sad and silent, as if I had refused not their money but their hearts, I suddenly comprehended: where I had come from people were accustomed to build walls between I and You: this, however, was a community without walls ...

“Give me the money, brothers. I accept it and I thank you.”