Reflections on Prayer

Five times a day, every day, loudspeakers through-out Alexandria, Egypt remind people that it is time to pray.  It is true that the loudspeakers are much too loud- loud enough to alert even those who are hard of hearing. They blast from every mosque on every block - sounding much like a bad echo.  Some imams can carry a tune while, sadly, too many others can not.  Indeed, it can be very irritating when you are woken up as early as 4 in the morning to an Imam reminding you that God is great, there is only one God, Mohammed is God's slave, urging you to go pray, telling you it is good to pray, and that prayer is better than sleep. (which at 4am, it certainly feels like sleep is much better than prayer!) Since Americans are very individualistic, most would be offended by someone waking them up to tell them not only that they must pray, but also the exact time they need to pray.

However, as a Christian, one has to respect this cultural focus on prayer.

I know, there are some out there who think that when a Muslim prays, it is somehow completely different than when a Christian prays. We've all seen the pictures of people lining the streets kneeling on rugs and bending forward in apparent  unison with others as the imam chants in Arabic. To those of us not raised in such a culture, this is a very strange-looking ritual. Luckily, the cool thing about living in this culture is the opportunity to just ask people questions. A student told me that during Ramadan (which begins May 27) that he and his father will pray for 4 hours a day.  During a 4 hour prayer, it is my understanding that much of the prayer is lead by the Imam and repeated by the people. (Kind of similar to when Christians pray and the congregation repeats "Jesus, hear our prayers" over and over) I asked him "What could you possibly pray about for that long?" He told me that the first part of every prayer is to praise God, second is to thank God for his blessings, third to pray for the needs of the world and governments, fourth to pray for the needs of family and friends, and fifth to pray for one's personal needs.  Funny, but that is almost identical to how I was taught to pray while growing up in a Protestant Church!

 When you talk to people who are perceived as "different" than yourself, it is amazing what you learn that you have in common.

What else is the same about praying in both cultures?  Christians are generally taught to pray before getting out of bed in the morning, before eating (most of us eat 3 meals per day), and before bed.  Hmm, how many times a day does that mean Christians are supposed to pray?  FIVE?  Do you wonder about the significance of 5 to both Christians and Muslims?

Other things that I have found interesting about the Call to Prayer:  

1) It is not necessary to go to the neighborhood mosque in order to pray each day- you can pray where-ever you are. 

2) You must wash before you pray. (Have you ever heard the phrase "Cleanliness is next to Godliness")

3) Life does not stop during the Call-to-Prayer, everything continues on as normal.  Not everyone stops to pray right then - but most will try to remember to pray later in the day

4) Exception to #3.  Friday morning.  On Friday morning, life does seem to nearly stop.  Most roads are blocked with people in the streets in front of their neighborhood mosques on their prayer rugs.  Most businesses are closed.  The usual 5 minute Call to Prayer now becomes an entire 1-2 hour sermon over the loud speakers - just as loud.  Not everyone attends the service at the mosque, even on Fridays.  Just like everywhere, people are of varying degrees of "religious" and believers in the rituals of religion.
5) Even though you wash before you pray, for some reason, it is not necessary to wash AFTER prayer, even though you just stuck your head in the dirt and sand over and over while praying.  Because of this, you will see men walking around with a round dirt spot on their forehead.  I have been told by Egyptians that sometimes men will even hit their forehead with a hammer in order to form a permanent bump on their forehead by those who are trying to "prove" how religious they are to their friends and relatives, and perhaps to their law enforcement officials who may be more lenient on someone who is perceived as God-fearing. (How different is this than Christians who are one way in public, but completely the opposite when they are in private)
6) The loudspeakers are not as loud in other areas of Egypt.  For some reason, Alexandria's Imams seem to think that their voice needs to be loud enough to be heard all the way to the moon.  I have been told that it is not very loud in other Middle Eastern countries as well.
7) If you fly Egypt Air, before they even do the safety briefing, they play a recorded prayer for the safety of travelers.  I don't know what it says yet since it is in Arabic, but that is what I have been told.
8) Many Egypt Air flights also have a Qur'an (the Muslim Holy Book, much of it very similar to the Old Testament) bolted on their wall as you board their plane.
9) Prayer rooms are everywhere!  The focus on prayer in this culture is astounding.  At the mall buying a new pair of Nikes and have an urge to pray?  Lucky for you, there is a prayer room just down the hall.  In the airport waiting for your connecting flight and have time to kill?  Great! Head on down to the prayer room.

As a Christian, I do feel really grateful that Jesus did not give us so many rituals to follow when we pray as it seems much easier to just bow your head and silently whisper your prayer which can be done anywhere at any time and does not require washing, removing one's shoes, facing a certain direction, praying by gender, covering one's head, or getting down on hands and knees.  However, perhaps it is the visual of seeing prayer rooms everywhere and the loudspeaker reminder to pray that does help keep the focus of people on the Divine?

Here is a link so you can hear the sounds of the Call to Prayer as taken from our school's basketball courts.
https://www.facebook.com/laura.lamarche.5/videos/10209634260318353/?l=2578102955405495492

Next up - Ramadan.  I keep hearing the stories about this month-long holiday, but it sounds like there will be a lot to tell after experiencing it.  I hope to blog about it, but just before it begins Cassandra will return from Europe bringing along her best friend since kindergarten, Jessica and her husband-to-be, Derek and we will be tour-guides extraordinaire once again! (Which means little time to blog)  

Eid, continued

Okay - so this blog post will be a work-in-progress.  I am publishing it before it is done.  We still have a couple of videos to download. And, as the week goes on, I am sure we will have more pictures to take and more things to talk about.  And, at the end of the week we depart for a day in Cairo to see the pyramids, then on to Sweden - so who knows when I will actually finish this whole blog and there are interesting things going on that I want you all to see and learn about before they are weeks old  - so I figure it is just easier if I publish now and edit this post with new information as it comes in....

 So, the evening of September 3, around 9pm, Gary and I heard a children laughing and hollering in the streets.  Not just a few children, like on an average evening where the kids are playing soccer in the streets- this sounded like up to a hundred children. These children then all started chanting in unison.  Not knowing Arabic, we had no idea what they were saying, but Gary and I rushed to our balcony to see what all the fuss was about.  Down on the street below, we saw two people leading bulls and many children chasing after them.  The two men stopped their bulls and started to holler at the kids.  Again, we had no idea what they were saying, but suddenly all of the children were lined up on both sides of the road and were no longer chanting.  Now the men with the bulls took off at a run, and all of the children chased afterwards, laughing and screaming.  About this time is when I finally got my phone out and started to video-tape, just as they went around the corner.  The kids came back later, chasing a different bull, so Gary got his phone out this time.  Unfortunately, they never did the chant again.  I tried to ask one of the workers today what the chant was about.  He wasn't sure (and frankly, his English wasn't the best so I wasn't sure if he understood my question or if I was interpreting his answer correctly) - but he told me that they were chanting about God being so good and to thank him for this animal.


Again, on Sunday, August 4, the same thing happened.

Another thing we have learned is that not everyone butchers their own lamb - many hire someone else to do it.  It also appears as though you can do this ahead of time as every butcher shop is very busy right now and has many carcasses hanging out in front.  To purchase a sheep, you first ask the price, then they take you to the pens and you pick out the sheep that you want.  You can tell them how many kilos you are interested in - and they will get you a bigger or smaller sheep, depending on what you tell them. They then bring the animal out of the pen and weigh it by hanging it up in a harness and using a simple counter-balance weight system. Once the weight is known, you can then figure out the cost of the sheep.  You then give them a down-payment, they tag the ear with a number, and they write you out a receipt.  They also tell you to take a picture of the tag.  You set an appointment to have it butchered.

We are told that this guy is less than one year old.

Counter-weight balance that is used to weigh the lamb 

 You are to be there when the animal is butchered.  They then place the meat in 1 kilo bags. The person who purchased the animal is then required to deliver it personally to the poor.  It is also part of the holiday to eat some of the meat yourself.

I am hoping that Gary will get a picture of the stacks of small grills that are for sale everywhere as well.  We think (from a youtube video that was shared with us) that they make shish-kabobs and cook the meat directly on the coals.

Got the grill picture! Small grills cost 14 pounds ($1.40 USD, approx)

Lamb kabob on open coals

Also, the atmosphere seems a bit like Christmas - with the sales going on all over the mall!  I wanted to try on a pair of pants and the line for the dressing room wound way around the store. I probably had 30-40 people in front of me. Luckily I had an English-speaking Egyptian who teaches math at the British school right ahead of me, so we were able to have a bit of a conversation while we waited!

9/7/16  So, our brilliant church secretary, Lisa Myers, who studied to be a minister herself, gave me some fascinating information regarding my previous post relating the Bible story about Abraham and his "first-born son" .  Here is what she told me:

The Torah (and Bible) state that the son was Isaac.  The Quran doesn’t name the son, but most Muslims believe that it was Ishmael, Abraham’s son born by Sarah’s Egyptian slave Hagar maybe about 14 years before Isaac was born.   Muslims point to the command to Abraham to take his only son and sacrifice him.  Had this occurred after Isaac was born, Abraham would have had two sons, although Abraham does send Hagar and Ishmael away into the wilderness presumably to be forever lost because Sarah wanted to get rid of any potential threat to her son Isaac inheriting the first-born birthright.  So perhaps Abraham did feel that the only son he had left was Isaac.  Hmmm.

Another interesting piece of information --  Isaac is the father of the Israelite people, and Muslims believe that Ishmael is the father of some Arab tribes.  A number of Muslims even assert that Muhammed was a descendant of Ishmael.  Could be.  The rivalry of the htrying talf-brothers’ mothers is still being played out in the friction between the Israelites and Arabs.

It seems the government is trying to crack down on butchering animals on the streets.  I have heard reports that they will be fining people up to $50,000 EGP for doing so, but no one believes it will happen because frankly, there just aren't that many police around.

Did I mention that all animals that are sacrificed on Eid are male and under 1 year old?

Not everyone likes this holiday - and I am not just talking about the animals!  First of all, so many animals are sacrificed at once that the streets run red with blood.  The sacrifice is done in the traditional way, which means that they use a knife to cut through windpipe and jugular, then the animal bleeds out and suffocates.   Even for some Egyptians, this is too much.  Others don't like it because they see it as people trying to prove their "holiness" to each other.  Just like some Christians only show up for church on Christmas and Easter, and only give to the poor when others can see them doing so - some Muslims are no different!  Of course, there are those who are faithful, and continue to give to the poor all year around, even when no one else can see them doing so - but, because the tradition is to sacrifice and butcher the animal you purchased in the streets - those who have a tendency to "show off" about what a holy and good person they are - will buy the biggest and best animal they can afford so that everyone will know what they have done.  They will then go back to their homes, continue to be selfish, not care about others, and never give another penny until the next year.  For those who do not believe in God, or see religion as being hypocritical - their views are confirmed in their mind when people of faith fall short of what they profess to believe and practice.


Okay, so remember to keep checking back on this post because it will keep growing and changing .....

And, please leave comments about anything you might want me to write about in the future