Local Islamic community celebrates Ramadan
Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 20/00) - God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The similitude of His Light is a niche wherein is a lamp. The lamp is a glass; the glass as it where a shining star...Light upon Light!
Across from the Igloo Inn on Franklin Ave.is a brown house, a make-shift mosque for the small Islamic community in Yellowknife. Inside a man stands in wool socks, voice rising and falling, reciting Arabic words over a thousand years old, each syllable still intact. "God is great, God is great, witness there is only one God," a wail wrapped in melody, his throat alive.
Carpets from the Far East cover the floor. The hands of a clock on a wall are frozen on some other time and the sweeping strokes of Arabic calligraphy skirt the face. The walls are bare except for that clock and another wall-hanging with the same sweeping strokes reciting some sacred verse.
The man stands facing North-East, toward Mecca, a city in Saudi Arabia a few kilometres from the shore of the Red Sea and the site of Islam's holiest monument the Kabah, which according to Islam was originally built by Abraham. All prayers face Mecca.
"Islam is a lifestyle," says Kareem Yalahow, a Somali Muslim who was in for afternoon prayers.
He says Islam is the final revelation from God through the final prophet Muhammad to humans.
"There is the Torah, the Gospels, but the Quran(Islam's holiest book) is the final testament," says Yalahow.
This December is the ninth month in the Muslim lunar calender which marks this year as 1421. This is the month of Ramadan, a 30 day fast that lasts between sunrise and sunset. According to Islamic tradition the ninth month, Ramadan is the month of the first revelation of the Quran.
When the call to prayer ends, the rest gather around a long mat in a side room. It is after sunset and it is time to break the fast.
The mat is lined with paper plates holding small clusters of dates, a doughnut, a coconut biscuit and a spiralled chocolate sweet. Lamb stew with a mix of potatoes, mushrooms, corn kernels and green peppers is passed around in a still steaming pot. Sitting on the carpet, some cross-legged and others on their sides, everyone eats with their fingers and torn pieces of pita bread. They drink apple juice from a Tropicana carton.
Everyday they break fast together after sunset, and when done then the ritual washing before prayers begins.
Islam is one of the world's three great monotheistic religions -- belief in one God -- yet it is probably the most misunderstood in the West.
The core precept in Islam is belief in only one God and the prophet Mohammed is the last of God's messengers in a long line that began with Adam--the first human according to creationism.
Muhammad was born in Mecca nearly 600 years after Jesus into an era when the Arab world was splintered and polytheism-- belief in many gods--was common.
He was raised by his uncle and married a rich widow in his twenties. When he was 40 years old an angel visited him and announced that God had chosen him as a prophet. According to Islamic tradition, the angel Gabriel dictated the Quran to Muhammad throughout his prophetic career.
Muhammad's message of "submission to one God" met with pagan resistance in Mecca. He managed to gather a few followers but had to flee to Medina--day one in the Muslim calendar--a few hundred kilometres away because of persecution. He eventually returned to Mecca and over time Islam grew and united the Arab world making it a global power which threatened Western Christian empires.
Today Islam is one of the world's fastest growing religions and its followers number in the billions all over the world.
The Muslim community in Yellowknife consists of around 60 members. They gather at their newly purchased Yellowknife Islamic Centre everyday during Ramadan for prayer and a communal breaking of the fast.
And here they're gathered on a cold Wednesday, evening with frost on the windows for their first prayer after the breaking of fast, part of the great mass of followers that follow the same rituals all over the world.
After the ritual washing, one of the men, Yusuf Hashi stands with a shawl around his head at the front of the room facing North-East, five men stand behind him, waiting for his lead. Silence.
Hashi begins in Arabic, "In the name of Allah, most gracious and merciful...." The other men follow in chorus and echo his words.
The prayer is from the opening seven verses in the Quran.
After Hashi recites all seven verses he bends over with his hands on his knees and begins the prayer again. He then kneels with his forehead touching the ground and prays again.
Depending on the time of day the ritual is repeated up to four times.
Prayer, also called salah, is the core ritual in Islam. It is done five times a day. Muslims have to practice salah no matter where they are. It is the constant reinforcement of absolute submission to God.
The prologue to the opening verses of the Quran reads, "prayer is the heart of religion and faith."
"You wake up and pray so God makes the days easy for you," says Hashi, a Somali Muslim, "then you can go out in life and you know he's always watching."
"We were created to worship him, all nature was," he adds.
And somewhere on the other side of the world the call to prayer from a mosque tower breaks over the sands like a slow wave and hundreds of Muslims throw their mats on the ground to fall before the face of unseen God that's more real to them than the dust that flies up as they drop to their knees.
And when the final words are spoken, with everyone still kneeling, they turn their heads from left to right and whisper to each other "Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatallah."
Peace be on you and God's mercy.
