World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 54 стр.

     The ritual must be performed five times a day: at dawn, midday, mid-             cially joyous celebration (the ‘Id al-Fitr) at the end of the month, one of the two
afternoon, sunset, and in the evening before going to bed. The form of this           chief feast-days of Islam.
prayer is given in the section on Islamic texts at the end of this chapter.                The official Islamic year is lunar, consisting of twelve months each of four
     The prayer is to be recited facing Mecca. The direction toward Mecca from        weeks exactly, and is therefore shorter than our regular, solar year. As a result
wherever one may happen to be is called the qibla. In the mosque it is marked         the month of Ramadan cycles backwards throughout the regular year, and oc-
by a niche in the wall, called the mihrab.                                            curs in every season. Consequently the length of the fast from sunrise to sunset
     Ideally the prayer should be performed in a mosque, but if that is not feasi-    varies greatly, from the middle of summer to the middle of winter. Ramadan is
ble any clean place will do, indoors or outdoors. Moslems often use a prayer          relatively easy to keep when it occurs in winter, but in midsummer it is more
mat for this purpose.                                                                 difficult.
     At a mosque, shortly before the time for prayer, the muezzin (mu’adhdhin)                                  Pilgrimage to Mecca: the Hajj
chants the call to prayer (the adhan) from the minaret.                                    So far as circumstances permit, every Moslem should go on pilgrimage to
     The sacred day of the week for Moslems is Friday. It is not a day of rest,       the sacred city of Mecca at least once in his lifetime. The city of Mecca is sa-
unlike the Sabbath in Judaism and Sunday in Christianity. However, all men            cred because it was the site of the original, pre-Islamic worship of Allah. In that
(though not women) are required to take part in the Friday noon prayer at a           capacity it had been a center of pilgrimage long before the time of Mohammed.
mosque, if one is available. The Friday service follows a special form, includ-       Only Moslems are allowed to enter the city.
ing a sermon by the leader (the imam). The word “mosque” comes from “mas-                  The proper time for the pilgrimage is a period of four days during the
jid”, meaning a place of prostration. Strictly speaking it does not have to be a      twelfth month of the Islamic year, and so, like Ramadan, it cycles backward
building but can be simply a piece of open ground dedicated to prayer. The            through the seasons.
mosque can legitimately be used for many purposes related to religion: as a                Men must wear a distinctive white two-piece garment in place of their
school, meeting place, or even for eating and sleeping, if necessary.                 usual clothes. Those who have taken part in the pilgrimage agree that this uni-
                             Legal almsgiving: Zakat                                  form clothing, submerging all outward differences such as race, age, and
     Moslems are strongly encouraged to provide help to those in need. In addi-       wealth, conveys a profound experience of the unity and brotherhood of Mos-
tion to private charity, Islamic law requires the payment of a special tax for this   lems. Women may wear the costumes of their regions, but also now usually
purpose, called the Zakat. It is to be paid at the end of each year, in proportion    wear white.
to one’s possessions.                                                                      The high point of the pilgrimage is the commemoration of the sacrifice car-
     It is paid only on certain classes of goods above a minimum, such as ani-        ried out by Abraham. (As we have seen, Moslems view Abraham as a Moslem.)
mals, agricultural products, precious metals, and objects intended for sale. Ac-      God had commanded Abraham to kill his only son Isma’il in sacrifice, as a test
cording to one authority, for example, the taxable minimum of camels is five,         of faith, and Abraham made preparations to do so, but at the last moment God
and on each group of five a goat is due (Al Firuzabadi, Kitab al Tanbih).             instructed him to kill a ram instead, which he did. (In the Hebrew Bible the son
     As this example may indicate, the traditional prescriptions for the tax were     was Isaac.) To commemorate this, the pilgrims perform animal sacrifices, and
not laid down with a view to a money economy. As a result, in practice today          thousands of animals are killed in the space of an hour, creating a considerable
the Zakat is widely considered more as a general obligation to give money to          problem in the disposal of the carcasses.
charitable causes than as a law to be obeyed according to the details of the let-          The day on which this is done, the tenth of the month, is celebrated not
ter.                                                                                  only in Mecca but throughout the Moslem world as the Feast of Sacrifice, and
                                  Fasting: Sawm                                       is the second of the two great Moslem feast-days.
     For a month each year Moslems are required to fast. The fast occurs during                                               Jihad
the ninth month, Ramadan, and consists in abstaining from all food and drink               This term, often translated as “holy war”, literally has the broader meaning
from sunrise to sunset.                                                               of “struggle, exertion”. It signifies the general effort to advance the cause of Is-
     The fast of Ramadan is not exactly like the Christian Lent. There is no          lam, a duty sometimes ranked as a sixth Pillar. Mohammed spoke of a twofold
limitation on eating or drinking during the night, and this is usually a party-       jihad, one internal or spiritual and harder, the struggle against oneself, against
time, when families and friends get together and celebrate. There is an espe-

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