þ7ì÷më÷}}}}}}}}}}pí DMMM mmmm Chapter 13 Ideals and Realities of Islamic Community Life The Closeness of the Community Just as the Islamic family has its own patterns and style and provides the primary setting for the life-cycle rites of birth, naming, circumcision, marriage, and death, so also has the larger community typical structures and functions that both express and accommodate to an Islamic vision of life. That is, at both the family and the wider community levels Muslims regulate their lives by means of both transcending Islamic norms and values and regional customs and practices. IslamÕs inherent adaptability to a variety of local contexts is a testimony to its enormous success as a world religion. Muslims on Sumatra feel a close brotherhood with Muslims in Pakistan, Central Asia, and Europe, and at the same time they feel proud and special for being Minangkabau or Batak or Acehnese, three of the distinct cultures on Sumatra. This chapter seeks to discern typical forms of Islamic community life through a description of the town, the city, and the ways people gather together for trade, work, business, education, recreation, and worship. When appropriate, we shall point out differences among peoples, as well as when strict Islamic teaching and local customs diverge and even conflict. It is not possible in the brief confines of a single chapter to do justice to the variety of data that would be required for a thorough treatment of Muslim community life. Rather, we shall present the typical as well as examples of the exceptional, so that the reader will be aware of the texture and quality of Muslim societies and begin to understand how they function. The Mosque From its origins, Islam has been closely identified with settled forms of social and economic life, in both the town and the city. The romantic and Western associations of Bedouin of the desert and a monotheism born from meditation in vast expanses under a brilliant sky are far from the facts. As we observed in Chapter 4, Muslims have always preferred to live where people gather together for worship. Making a hijra to a settled community has traditionally been a meritorious act, for it both symbolizes and embodies the intention to live responsibly with others for the common good. The MosqueÕs Uses The center of the Islamic town or city is the Friday mosque, and this has been so since the earliest times.1 Adjacent to the mosque, which must be architecturally and structurally complete and enclosed, is the market or bazaar (Arabic, suøq). In large towns and governmental centers, there traditionally is a palace, or the house of the ruler or his representatives, which is fortified. Sometimes the governorÕs house is at the edge of town, for security reasons. Often, also, in the center is the public bath (h.ammaøm), which provides a place for ritual purification, especially after major impurity. The Friday mosque is a multipurpose building where important public announcements and proclamations are made, crowds are gathered in times of crisisÑfor example, to rally support for defense or holy warfareÑand where at the Friday worship service, the rulerÕs name is mentioned in the sermon, thus demonstrating his continued authority. (When the sovereignÕs name has not been mentioned, this has often indicated a change in government. During times of conflict, citizens listen closely to the Friday sermon.) The major mosque also often has an educational function, with learned shaykhs holding forth either in the mosque itself or in special attached buildings or arcades. The mosque provides a place for men to rest, to socialize, to take time out from a busy day in order to meditate for a while, even to eat, as well as, of course, to perform the obligatory daily salats. After school, boys may go to the mosque for instruction in QurÕan recitation or, nowadays in crowded, noisy cities like Cairo, to do homework. If the mosque is famous for being also the burial site of a famous saint, then many people, women included, will visit the place for blessing and intercession. But in large cities, there will be a variety of saintsÕ tombs connected with mosques that are not necessarily Friday mosques but that nevertheless provide a focus for the life of individual quarters. The shops and workshops closest to the mosque typically deal in candles, incense and perfumes, religious objects such as rosaries and amulets and books, together with the leather-working establishments that bind the books as well as manufacture slippers and other products. When I was living and studying in Cairo, my shaykh at a large mosque occasionally sent a boy out into an alley close by to find a certain book or pamphlet. There were always little eating establishments nearby, too, where a quick lunch of falafel, goat cheese, Syrian flatbread, and greens and onions could be purchased for a few pennies, the boy usually going to a separate little vending stand for each item. When such a simple but satisfying repast is spread out on a mat in a quiet corner of the mosque, it is not long before a small group gathers to have a bite or two. Although most people do not use the mosque for a brown-bag lunch, it is normally permissible to consume food on the premises. On occasions when large numbers of travelers descend upon a town or city, it has traditionally been normal for people without accommodations to sleep in the mosque. And during the last ten days of Ramadaøn, pious Muslims like to keep nightly prayer and recitation vigils (known as iÔtikaøf) in the mosque. Men also use the sanitary facilities that most large mosques have, such as toilets and ablution taps. The MosqueÕs Hospitality.ÊÊSeveral years ago I received a telephone call from a representative of the district attorneyÕs office of an American city in which there had arisen a controversy over a local mosque, which happened to be in a residential neighborhood. The premises were being used as a sleeping place for visiting and transient Muslims. The legal representative wanted me to appear as an expert witness for the prosecution by saying that such behavior was not typical of or approved by Islam. I immediately replied, ÒBut, oh, yes, it is!Ó The callerÕs ardor for my cooperation instantly cooled. I agreed that this particular pattern of social life would understandably arouse the anxieties of the neighbors about the value of their property, because they viewed the mosque as what in the most charitable terms could only be called some sort of Òcrash pad.Ó Of course, in an Islamic context one who finds it necessary to put up in a mosque for the night is hardly considered to be a hippy or a bum. On the other hand, such a person would not be turned out of a mosque if he came seeking shelter and had no place else to go. Hospitality and protection of the stranger and wayfarer are sacred in Islam. The Marketplace Not far from the central mosque in a large town there traditionally is a closed shopping area with warehouses for textiles and other valuable products. Either in these enclosed structures or nearby are shops with metal products for cooking or ornament; however, the actual smithies or forges will be some greater distance away, but possibly no farther than a back alley. Rather than a grid plan, as in the ancient Greek and Roman cities of the Mediterranean basinÑinfluential in the West with their sense of municipality with its own authority and structures of civic involvement and expressionÑthe classic Muslim city of the central regions, at least, has grown out from the center according to separate and partially separate quarters. Ethnic and tribal groups sharing a religious identification nevertheless lived in separate enclaves from earliest times. Non-Muslims settled in their own city sectors, the Jews often as close as feasible to the governor and his guard, for protection in times of persecution and unrest. The Protection of the Marketplace The inhabitants of the Muslim town or city have always had some anxiety, even fear, about being attacked, either in the individual quarterÑwhich may have a bitter feud with another quarterÑor from the outside. Of course, walled fortifications are not unique to the Muslim world, for they were the means by which people protected themselves in medieval Europe, too. The positioning of the quarters and associated trades and occupations has often been hierarchical, with the elite and powerful being near the center.2 Often the individual quarters have also their own gates and security systems. The maze of small streets and alleys that double back on themselves and generally end in the quarter contrasts with the grid pattern or the modern rationalized system of streets and boulevards and public squares and gardens. These last have not been part of traditional Muslim settlements, because of the extreme privacy at the family level that Islamic life requires. The typical single dwelling usually has a central courtyard of some sort, secure from the eyes of outsiders, and the main entrance is constructed so as to conceal what is immediately inside the house. Windows on the street are fashioned so as to make it impossible for strangers to see in and to enable the women of the house to spend as much time as they want peering out. In the Arab world, these mashrabiyya-screened windows, often beautifully crafted, are now dying out as new, high-rise Western style apartment complexes take over. There are many aspects of MuslimsÕ houses that have deep religious significance, such as their social separations, their use as prayer space, and their inviolability...
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