Ali Eteraz - Native Believer

The prayer hall was split in two halves with the men on the left, the women on the right, a few yards between them. A simple chandelier hung down from the rafter and there were Arabic inscriptions and pictures of global mosques all around the room. I looked at the sisters’ side, hoping to spot Candace among them, but with big prayer shawls covering their bodies it was hard to tell the women apart. I scanned to the front and spotted Sheikh Shakil. He was an elegant and thin man, with a shapely mouth that was not overwhelmed by his fist-long beard. He wore a white robe and leather socks and carried a fat cane. He helped the men “align the ranks.”

Prayer was an exercise in silent emulation. I lined up with all the other men, folded my arms as they folded, and bowed and prostrated as they did. Unlike them I didn’t know what to recite or when to gesture with my fingers or when to turn my head. I had only seen my father pray once — at the funeral of a man we had known from a grocery store. I tried to pull that memory back to me, the body lying in front of the all-male congregation, the act of raising my hands to my ears and then down. Nothing more came to mind. I had been twelve then and found the entire pageant so farcical that I had never again let myself near a religious gathering.

Once prayer was finished, Sheikh Shakil stood up, tapped the microphone, and said that although it wasn’t Friday he had a simple message that he wanted to convey to the congregation. It had come to him the night before, during a conversation with a brother who had gone astray. The milling and whispering quickly died out and the crowd anticipated his talk.

“Religion,” he said, starting slowly, with a hoarse throat, “is a glue.” He looked around, sighed, and was content with the attention he commanded. Then he started over.

“Religion is a glue that God gave mankind so we could stick to each other. Without it we would be broken. Spread apart. Isolated. The religion don’t need us. We need it. We need it because we ain’t meant to be alone. We need it because we can’t be alone. Who alone got the power to withstand loneliness? Allah azzawajal . He took it upon Himself so that the rest of us wouldn’t have to. That is Allah’s sacrifice. The rest of us, man, all we can do is find ways to stick together. Now some of y’all might say, of all the religions out there, of all the glue y’all can sniff, why is it that this brother is trying to preach Islam? Why not Christianity? Rasta? The religions of our African ancestors? I tell you one simple reason why it is Islam: Not because it’s the truth. I know y’all better than to tell you the difference between truth and falsehood. Y’all wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know it. All I’m here to do is tell y’all that in this age. Age of nudity. Age of incarceration. Age of war. Age of drugs. Age of booze. Age of world domination. There’s only one religion that is feared. One religion that all of the peddlers and all of the pornographers and all of the fat cats fear. They know, deep in their hearts, that if you gave us the opportunity we would bring justice and purity and cleanliness to this world. They see us, five times a day, washing our bodies, making ourselves pristine in order to stand before Allah, and they fear our prayer, and they fear our hygiene. They don’t fear nothing else. They don’t fear Osama. They don’t fear the Taliban. Hezbollah. Qaeda. None of them. They got no reason to fear them. They fear belief in something higher than them. Something other than them. Something that ain’t subject to their power. If y’all want to go join them. If y’all think you can rule the world through their devices, I ain’t gonna stop you. You go and do that there. But if you wanna be one of the people who stand on the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, Yawm al-Akhira, and tell Allah azzawajal that you took measure of your age and you put up your hand and you said, Stop in the name of the God! then you got to stick with Islam. It will give you the only pathway to bring change to this world. All the other religions gave in to corruption and wealth. They give in to vanity and hedonism. Islam will give you the brotherhood you need to stand up when you weak. It will give you the discipline you need to survive the prison that is this world. Most of all, it will give you the rope of God. If you got that, then alhamdulillah hi rabbil aalameen .” He snapped his fingers. “The prison walls disappear. Now y’all gotta remember that this system, this system of resistance, ain’t gonna cost you no money. But it’s gonna take all your labor. For it to become your biggest asset, you got to put all your self into it. You gotta sign all your belongings to it. Your spouse. Your children. Your soul. And the way you start that transfer is through the Witness of Faith. You say that statement, and right then — boom — the transfer starts. You start uploading yourself into Islam and it starts pumping its powers of resistance back into you. You stop wanting to get naked. You stop doing things that take you to jail. You stop going to war. You stop them drugs and booze and vice. Say that shahada then. Say it now, my brothers and sisters in Islam: Ashadu Allah ilaha illallah Muhammad rasool Allah .”

The entire crowd murmured the testification of faith, first in a quiet manner and then louder, until it became a collective chant that climaxed with Mu-ham-mad ra-sool Al-lah being sung between the male and female parts of the congregation. Muhammad was not a living person, but in that song he had more life than a thousand presidents. I thought of my father again. He had never taught me about Muhammad. He had never made me chant the shahada . How had my father resisted the inexorable power of this Muhammad who could otherwise move to music a group of citizens of an empire whose predecessor empire didn’t even exist during Muhammad’s time? Was there something in my father that was immune to the charisma of great men? Or was it simply that he had erased the love of Muhammad from his heart in order to carry out the lifelong project of settling in this country? Perhaps it something darker — perhaps my father had sought control over me so completely that he considered even Muhammad a competitor. I wished he was around. I needed an answer as to why I was unmoved by Muhammad.

Sheikh Shakil got off the podium and walked around the mosque, nodding and smiling at his people, mouthing the shahada with them, shaking hands, asking little questions about family. In his other hand he carried a straw skullcap that served as the collection tray. He sent it into the river of rows and it got passed around the mosque. He trailed after it slowly, greeting, laughing, and sometimes embracing. When the cap passed before me I put all my cash into it. Sheikh Shakil watched me from a distance, with a smile on his face, and then suddenly pointed at me. “You got to recite the shahada , brother.”

Air trapped in my chest and became a knot. My eyes hopped across the mosque. I experienced the gaze of the believers upon me. Could they tell I hadn’t recited the testification? What did they think of Sheikh Shakil outing me in front of them? Was he about to make an example of me? Or was shaming me sufficient? My temples started streaming sweat and my armpits filled with moisture. My face contorted into a strange and terrible smile and I made my lips move in the same bur-bur sound others were making, trying to give Sheikh Shakil the appearance of my witness. Every movement of my lips stung me as wrong. Not because I was cheating, but because I was afraid of getting caught. Was I making my lips pout too much? Did I need to make my tongue roll more? Did I need to rock like the others were rocking? Did I need to elongate the round sounds? Flex my neck more for the guttural ones? The panic was intense and nauseating. As soon as Sheikh Shakil turned to the sisters’ side of the mosque, I got up and went out into the street, forgetting even my shoes. In a dumpster across from the mosque I threw up the halal chicken from earlier.