My First Prayers at a Real Mosque: A Young Woman Recounts why The Faith Fits

By Joan Elizabeth Mulholland

In my recent love affair with Islam, I often feel the weight of how it appears to an outside observer.  But even worse that tiny part of me that wonders if they are right.

I was one of a small number of children in this world who were fortunate enough to have grown up without a religion. I say “fortunate” because that upbringing has blessed me with the chance to chose myself. When I hit my alcoholic bottom at twenty-two, and was finally able to reach out to AA, I was told, essentially: find God or die drinking. To die young was almost as scary as the prospect of going on living in the absolute hell I has created for myself and so I went with the God thing.

This fall, three women in the prayer group from our small-town university decided to make our way to Noor.  It would be my first visit to a real Mosque: usually we worship in a “Multi-Faith-Prayer-Room”.  My friend jokingly called it our “all white trip to Noor.”  I had not noticed any significance that it was white members of our prayer group who were free to make the trip. But the comment had been bugging me. My tinge of embarrassment is a Western one: in Islam race is kind of a non-issue. Islam spreads, mainly, not by birth but by conversion. The Muslim Students Association—the group of which ours is a splinter—might say the three of us are bad Muslims for many reasons, but race is just not one of them.

No, this embarrassment come from my own worry about how this looks to everyone else; my fascination with Islam, my potential conversion, my insistence that shari’a is not what people think, at least when you look broadly enough, all this, I know, looks childish, utopian and uninformed on my part; the equivalent of how the young flirt with communism or vote for Nadar.  Thinking about, I decide that my olive skin and dark hair means I could probably pass for Arab--though that’s a stretch.  Certainly, Syrian or Persian though. 

On the bus, we talk about mothers, grad school, our plans for the prayer group. Ester returns from the bathroom and warns us that the window is not frosted and in fact you could see in through it I feel the instant need to ask.

“What would a hijabi girl do?”

 “Hold it.” says Ester definitively. 

 I cannot help asking childishly curious questions like these about “hijabi girls.” Hijabi girls are the Muslim version of a golden girl-- who is above average in every way. 

We tease, but sometimes I envy them, their sweetness, their simple preservation of the status quo. They are who they are, and unfortunately I am who I am: a bunch of experiences that pull me in different directions, force me to look for more complex explanations.

Finally, we arrive at the mosque, a modern Japanese-influenced building. This is not how I imagined it. It just didn’t scream “Mosque”.  I was expecting something much more ornate, which is ridiculous, given that the whole reason Islam is so compelling to me is it’s lack of pomp and ceremony. What did I expect from a faith that forbids pictures of the Prophet Muhammad, and has no religious props of any kind?

Perhaps my favorite things about Islam, being a person who adores words and books is that in Islam we worship nothing but God with no intermediaries –not even Muhammad himself--save the words of the Qur’an, which are direct from God. Muhammad never healed the sick or parted the sea, no, his words themselves are the miracle and they, plus God make up Islam completely. The words of the Qur’an are all that belongs in a Mosque, however beautifully they may be written on its walls, or recited in a call to prayer, it is them and only them that should inspire the awe and make a Mosque a glorious, God-filled place.

Inside there is big open foyer that holds an open guest book which  is not invitation enough for me to sign. As one friend signs the book, the other says to me, “they are going to think we are hijabi girls”.  Suddenly, I remember that I am wearing a headscarf, as is Louise, making us look like the kind of Muslims that wear our Muslim garb full time and don’t have friends who don’t. I think we liked the idea of being hijabi girls, if only for a day, but worried about perhaps making an wrong first impression at a Mosque where most of the women who pray know a great deal more that I do about Islam and don’t chose to wear their hijab all the time. 

Later, in the bathroom washing my hands, I remove my headscarf and begin to wash for prayers.

 “Jenny, they have a whole Wudu room for that”, says Louise and I’m visibly excited. I have only ever washed in bathrooms since our small splinter group is not set up with all the amenities of the “Multi-Faith-Prayer-Room” to which the Muslim Students Association lays claim.

The Wudu room is magnificent. It’s like a beautiful roman bathhouse. The whole room is covered in white tiles and looks as if it simply rose up from the floor, just for you. It reminds me of that live shape-shifting space ship from Star Trek that could simply manifest for you all manner of creature comforts. There is a comfortable stool to sit on while you wash. 

In front of me there is helpful signage: “how to wash for prayers.” 

Ester treats us to each step aloud and we wash first our hands—to the elbow—then our face and neck, and because of the sign says to: we do our ears—we don’t usually but it feels good and I like it. 

I don’t wear foundation on Fridays anymore but when I wash my face I cheat a little by avoiding my mascara’ed eyes.

As I flick a few drops of water on my hairline and I watch Ester douse hers generously, I again think “What am doing here?” and “why Islam of all faiths?” I imagine how today,  I will bow down, for the first time with many other Muslims in a proper Mosque with a proper Imam: will it be everything I had been hoping for? Until now, Islam has been anything but the straight jacket I thought it was and much more like a well tailored one that was made just for me, or for someone very close to my size.  

When you chip away everything that has been added to Islam since the death of the Prophet, you are left with a core faith that is more protestant than the protestants and was so long before they existed.  This insistence on a personal relationship with God suits me perfectly.

The greatest sin a Muslim can commit is shirk--the crime of joining others with God. To do so is to forsake the personal relationship with God that Islam supports. This is why, whenever it mentions Muslims as a group, the Qur’an defines them as those who do the things that built that relationship, like reading the Qur’an, doing their five-times-daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan and making the pilgrimage to Mecca. 

We all finish the ritual with a proper foot wash and put our headscarves on again. Most people have already begun to pray and we leave our purses on the side and join them. I lift my arms and say “Allah ho Akbar” then cross my heart with my hands looking down. 

I think about the sameness and the uniqueness of each person’s prayers and how Islam is a well-tailored jacket—structured, but in a way that supports you—in my experience.

Jumma is a silent prayer and I have not yet memorized it. It begins before the Imam arrives and each person does the same prayer, with the same physical motions quietly and individually.  I do the physical motions though I have not yet memorized the prayer and use the time to silently thank God for bringing me here.

When I have finished two rounds I take my cue from others to sit in quite contemplation before the Imam arrives. 

As soon as he does arrive I almost laugh aloud at my earlier anxieties about race. His name is “Tim” –short for Timothy and he’s Italian and a former Catholic who, unlike me, wouldn’t stand a chance of passing for anything but white.  But he is a Muslim, like I may be one day.

Islam helps thaw out my heart when it gets frozen and keeps me on track in a way that does not feel disciplinary; I’m taking better care of my home and putting money away for the future and it feels easy and natural. Islam supports me in becoming my most beautiful self, helps me become a more contented, humble, responsible person.

image:  under cc license by Beth Rankin (BohPhoto) from Kent, OH, USA

Joan Elizabeth Mulholland has an MA in Philosophy, is a TA who is pursuing her Ph.D. in political science.