I want to thank the Rev. Douglas Parham and Bishop Jesse Battle for the excellent article supporting the Muslims’ wish to build a cultual center near Ground Zero in NY. Islam is so misunderstood and so often deliberately debased in this country – even, unfortunately, in the black community – that it is good and needed to see the black clergy not fall victim to ignorance and bigotry.
I was reading in the Qur’an a verse (ayat) that I think really captures the essence of Islam. The verse is the Sura (chapter) that was revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him) after he and his followers were forced to flee from Mecca after 13 years of religious persecution and an assasination attempt against him by the pagan Arabs.
He settled in the City of Medina, about 200 miles from Mecca, and it was there that God, in this Sura, directed him and his followers to cease their practice of praying in the direction of Jerusalem, and to instead thenceforth pray in the direction of Mecca, which is where the Kaba – the temple built by Abraham and his son Ishmael to honor and represent the belief in one God – is located. And since that time some 1,400 years ago, when Muslims pray – all 1.5 billion of us – we face the east.
In this same Sura, he also says:
“True piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west – but truly pious is he who believes in God, and the Last Day, and the angels, and revelation, and the prophets; and spends his substance – however much he may cherish it – upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage; and is constant in prayer …”
This is the essence and substance of Islam.
Eric E. Vickers
St. Louis