You have heard this countless times, five times a day if you lived
within earshot of a mosque. In the place of worship where your
parents took you to pray in public, you saw the Imam or Islamic
leader (who performs the same duties as a Protestant minister in
Britain or North America) raise his hands and lift his voice to say:
"In the name of God, the Mercy-giving, the Merciful!" Then you
followed him with your lips and heart.
Whenever the Imam was not there, or when you were with a
group of Muslims who had no. such leader, the oldest or most
learned man among you led the prayers. For Islam is democratic,
and it forms its leaders from within its own membership. It is a pious
faith that breeds men of ability.

These childhood memories put you in touch with a larger world,
a world of trancendental reality. They taught you other things which
all men should know and must respect. Many times as a child, you
thought about your father's and your mother's words, and connected
them with something higher and mysterious, with lofty things you
felt things you felt but could not fully understand: the distant sky
that matched the tiled blue of some mosques, the beauty of nature,
the joy of living, and the love of your parents, of your relatives and
friends. But most of all, they brought your feelings back to your
place of worship, to the mosque; and they brought the ever-recurritlg
name and attributes of God into your mind.
Something about public worship was different from everything
else on earth. People were different when they came to pray together.
Your parents were different. Whenever they approached the place of

prayer, they became silent and reverent, for they had prepared them-
selves by righteous thought and by cleansing themselves physically as

well as spiritually. This was .understandable because our places of
worship are wondrously beautiful with their golden domes and
soaring minarets, and their cool vaults and corridors where men can
pray and meditate. Even the softness of the carpets made you feel at
home as you settled down on them.
In cities where Muslims predominate, such as Casablanca,
Algiers, Damascus, Cairo, Istanbul, Isfahan, Labore, Jakarta, the
mosques defy description. You heard it said that God is met within
them in a special way, just as He is met within a special way at Mecca,
in the sacred enclosure of the Ka'ba. God is the One Who made the
heavens and the earth, and His temples are His home, where men
may meet Him. For this reason, they should be beautiful and
comforting.

 Book HAD YOU BEEN BORN A MUSLIM Growing Up a Muslim author : T.B. lrving