What is name of the app. I'll like to download it too.
Thanks
Kolawole Adegbola
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------
From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Date: 10/13/23 4:14 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer
-- Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I have downloaded to my phone an app that speaks out the Islamic call to prayer at the designated times for the traditional five times a day prayer for Muslims.
When the call sounds, I pause and listen to the melody, immersing myself in the sonorous rhythms perfected over centuries of developing the practice of Islam into an artistic form.
I don't understand the Arabic words- I will read about them later- but I expect they are a salutation to the creator of the universe, the ultimate justification of existence, the consummation of being to whom the Muslim prostrates in a continual rhythm as he or she kneels on the prayer mat in recognition of the enfolding of existence by Something beyond existence.
Do I believe that a creator of the universe exists?
I think it's possible.
Do I know if such a creator exists?
I don't know.
Why then do I adapt to my use a central practice of a religion dedicated to submission to belief in that creator?
It is possible to be sensitive to what Wole Soyinka describes as the unknowable immensity that sorrounds us, to its undented vastness, to identify with the idea of the cosmos as fundamentally a mystery which human thought tries to make sense of, part of that effort being belief in the idea of an ultimate creator, an idea, however that raises further questions about ultimate origins, and even to try to communicate with this creator, as many religious people as myself do, while concluding that ideas about such a creator are more paradoxical than straightforward, surrendering oneself to those perplexities as one immerses oneself in methods human beings have developed to approach this mystery, the glorious music of the human voice in the Islamic call to prayer being one of them.
I have downloaded to my phone an app that speaks out the Islamic call to prayer at the designated times for the traditional five times a day prayer for Muslims.
When the call sounds, I pause and listen to the melody, immersing myself in the sonorous rhythms perfected over centuries of developing the practice of Islam into an artistic form.
I don't understand the Arabic words- I will read about them later- but I expect they are a salutation to the creator of the universe, the ultimate justification of existence, the consummation of being to whom the Muslim prostrates in a continual rhythm as he or she kneels on the prayer mat in recognition of the enfolding of existence by Something beyond existence.
Do I believe that a creator of the universe exists?
I think it's possible.
Do I know if such a creator exists?
I don't know.
Why then do I adapt to my use a central practice of a religion dedicated to submission to belief in that creator?
It is possible to be sensitive to what Wole Soyinka describes as the unknowable immensity that sorrounds us, to its undented vastness, to identify with the idea of the cosmos as fundamentally a mystery which human thought tries to make sense of, part of that effort being belief in the idea of an ultimate creator, an idea, however that raises further questions about ultimate origins, and even to try to communicate with this creator, as many religious people as myself do, while concluding that ideas about such a creator are more paradoxical than straightforward, surrendering oneself to those perplexities as one immerses oneself in methods human beings have developed to approach this mystery, the glorious music of the human voice in the Islamic call to prayer being one of them.
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