Miye's Response Blog

Warmth around the back of my neck

My mother’s hand

Like a life jacket

Keeping me from sinking

Into the Crowd

The wind blows

With the people

Gusting toward kneeling

Prayer

A blue and white flag flaps

Criss-crossing triangles twist and bend

We walk past.

“I grew up reading the Quran in my mother’s lap,” writes Ziauddin Sardar in the opening line of his book Reading the Quran: The Contemporary Relevance of the Sacred Text of Islam. The poem above was inspired by a picture I took over spring break in the Old City of Jerusalem just before the midday prayer. After closing the stores in the Bazaar, Muslims walked calmly to the mosque in a huge parade of men, women, and children, old and young. The Old City is home to relics of religious significance and sacred ground for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Archeological gold mines are layered one on top of the other underneath the stone streets of the living city. The image reminded me of the personal, intimate nature of Islam and the quote by Sardar. One of the themes of this class has been mixing personal stories and details of muslim faith with historical trends and global realities and with physical monuments like mosques. This blog entry aims at capturing a snapshot of the intimate and personal aspects of faith.

In contrast with the previous blog post on historical progression, which had a perspective with a very wide lens, this entry focuses on the individual. It is easy to forget when learning about religion, especially as an outsider (secular person), that religion is not just a set of beliefs or practices, but it is an individual experience. This short poem is intended to remind the reader of the lived experience in its unique details.

Further, the allusion to the Israeli flag waving above the procession of Muslims toward the mosque is both a very specific allusion and a generalizable theme. It is specific in that it refers to the moment in the picture above, to the Old City in Jerusalem, and to the situation in Israel. However, the coexistence of different religions is felt worldwide. Thus, those lines are both specific and generalizable. In relation to the intimacy of Islam, these lines are a reminder that although this entry emphasizes the personal nature of religion, that is not independent of the macro-scale study of religion. They are two sides of the same coin.

The poem has an almost meteorological motif running through it.  The crowd is like a flood and wind movement, as if the elements are sending them to prayer and not their own inclination.  With prayer isolated in its own line, the poem seems to pause on that word.  Before it moves on and finally lands on the line, “We walk past.”  That line is clearly following the description of the Israeli flag, but does it also have a sense of walking past the word “Prayer”? Past to where? Apathy? Heaven?  Also who is we? Is it the boy and his mother? The crowd? The boy and God?  These questions are unanswered.