03.18.08

The Faith

Posted in seeker, The Sink at 8:09 pm by Dan Jensen

Mehrzad was raised in a religious household. His family was Iranian and Muslim, though his parents were not Shi’a or even Sunni. They didn’t mind being the only Muslims in Sinktown, as they were not suited to the specific practices of most Muslims, a fact that would inevitably produce friction in a Muslim community.

Mehrzad played violin. As a boy, he did this as a matter of obedience to his parents and as a religious obligation, for music was the only form of prayer practiced in the Kariyani household.

Mehrzad’s parents were radical Islamists, but not the kind of inflammatory stereotype that the appellation Islamist is likely to conjure up. The Kariyani sect is fundamentalist with a single fundamental: monotheism. For him, “one God” meant that no one man or ideal can represent God. Even Muhammad, for him, could only have been a man of his time and place, and the Qur’an was no more than a book of its time and place. Still, both Muhammad and the Qur’an meant a great deal to Dr. Kariyani as a Muslim, even though he would call other Muslims “idolators” for making the Prophet and the Qur’an “partners with God”. Though for most Muslims an absolute, unwavering belief in the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet is the foundation of their faith, Dr. Kariyani would often assert that “belief is just a pretty name for idolatry“.

So it was that the Kariyani boys, as good Muslims, would perform their prayers five times daily. Each boy would pick up his instrument, face their Qiblah, and reverently perform his scales or a song. For most Muslims, facing the Qiblah means turning toward the Ka’aba, a pre-Islamic stone idol in Mecca. The Kariyanis did not do this, for obvious reasons. Instead, they faced the sun, which meant that they would face a different direction each time. In the morning, they would face the East. In the evening, they would face the West. At noon, they would turn opposite the shadows on the ground outdoors. When praying during moonlit nights, they would face the moon. “We face the light,” Mr. and Mrs. Kariyani would often say. They did this as Iranian Muslims, knowing that their ancestors turned toward fires and other light sources during prayer. The Iranians had prayed five times daily long before Muhammad, and their prayers were songs.

“Words are inadequate for prayer,” the elder Kariyanis would occasionally insist, though Mrs. Kariyani would still chant the orthodox Islamic prayers of her childhood. She would defend her action by pointing out that she did not speak Arabic or understand the words. She insisted that it was the chanting and the sound of the words that aroused the spirit; not the meaning of the words.

© 2008 Dan J. Jensen

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