Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer

More on egyptian heart stuff:

In Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife. It was conceived as surviving death in the Netherworld, where it gave evidence for, or against, its possessor. It was thought that the heart was examined by Anubis and the deities during the weighing of the heart ceremony.The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart recorded all of the good and bad deeds of a person's life, and was needed for judgment in the afterlife. After a person died, the heart was weighed against the feather of Maat (goddess of truth and justice).

f the heart weighed more than the feather, the person's identity would essentially cease to exist: the hybrid deity Ammit would eat the heart, and the soul would be destroyed. But if the heart weighed the same as the feather, the deceased would pass through the underworld (Duat) and into the Afterlife.

[got all this from google--for what it's worthy. In english we say, "eat your heart out." Where does that come from??]

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma) <yahaya.danjuma@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2023 10:38:28 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer

 

I'm pretty sure it was the heart, but I haven't read it since I was an undergraduate and maybe not since before that. Ask a specialist in Greek philosophy　-JP 

On Oct 17, 2023, at 01:41, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

Hi jp, was it the heart or the liver that was the center of emotions for plato? Anyway, pretty sure egyptians did not associate the heart w emotions.

K

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma) <yahaya.danjuma@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2023 9:45:24 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer

 

Ken, 

It's been a long time since I read Plato, but I seem to recall the brain being associated with thought, the heart with emotions, and the stomach with appetite. I read a paper by a colleague in Japan who traced the idea that the brain was the organ of thought among the pre-Socratics. It was a controversial idea, but eventually caught on. Sorry I don't know more about Greek philosophy. -JP 

On Oct 14, 2023, at 04:46, Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

In biblical times the heart was not associated with feelings, emotion, or love, but thinking. I believe was true for egyptians as well as the israelites or other smaller groups of the region. I wonder when that changed for europeans. My guess is pretty late in history.

Ken

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of cornelius...@gmail.com <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2023 4:24:51 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Adapting the Islamic Call to Prayer

 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

It's a matter of the heart really. The heart, QALB 

Sometimes, the heart listens, the heart hears, the heart knows, the heart feels, the heart sees , the heart after all is the seat of the intellect. The intellect , AQL is mentioned 77 times in the Quran. 

Some people's hearts are dead. 

That was some encouraging good vibes coming from you about

the Adhan - the Muslim Call to Prayer as you say, "sonorous" 

indeed another beautiful  aspect of al- Islam, the most modern 

and the most beautiful religion for mankind.

Those who do not agree

can at least try to suppress

what Bishop Krister Stendahl 

refers to as "holy envy" 

Indeed, those who do not agree

can go drink

the brackish waters of the Dead Sea  

An example of Adhan from Syria 

Last Sunday I kept the company of some Brethren from Algeria, Syria, Morocco and Tunisia, disciples of Ahmad al-Alawi and two days ago found myself discussing the beauty of Azan with Brethren from Turkey, Syria and Somalia, a discussion in which I advanced the view based on my own aesthetic judgement, and of course, my limited personal experience, that when it comes to the the plaintive, the soft and sonorous beauty of the Muslim Call to Prayer Turkey and Iran are unsurpassable - 

I should have added Egypt where I listened to and heard and responded to the Azan, the Muslim call to prayer, everyday for four months.

I say " limited personal experience" because I still haven't heard the sonorous Adhan from the heart of e.g. Sokoto which is in Nigeria, have never heard the Adhan in Sierra Leone or Ghana or Liberia, or the Ivory Coast , although I could have heard it but didn't know that it was the Adhan, just as back in Sierra Leone, I remember that I used to see certain Fullah traders always washing their hands  - up to their elbows and then their feet , their mouth, nose and behind their ears, used to think that it was a Fulani tribal ritual , maybe tribal obsession about maintaining the cleanliness of the aforementioned bodily parts, didn't know that they were seriously performing their ritual wudu 

Lesson learned : Wrong conclusions can be based on ignorance or wrong knowledge 

So when will you be travelling to the corner of the cosmos  known as Egypt in search of ILM? 

When?

On Friday, 13 October 2023 at 10:14:11 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

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.



 

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