A few personal reflections on the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. The notes are very amateur – I am not a religious scholar, and am very ignorant of Islam (and also of two other highly relevant topics, the Arabic language and Christianity.) Still, in understanding one must take first steps. Corrections of misconceptions by those more knowledgeable than I are welcome! I've also attempted to write in a way which is respectful – if I've made any boorish missteps, let me know so I can fix them.
I recently visited Istanbul for the first time. It's the first majority-Muslim city I've visited – more than 90% of the population identifies as Muslim, and roughly half are practicing. It's also the first time I have experienced the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, which is recited five times a day.
If you have never experienced the adhan, then your first experience may well go something like this: you will be walking down the street, when the air is suddenly filled with glorious singing, ringing out from the minarets of any Mosque within earshot. "God is greatest! God is greatest! I testify there is nothing worthy of worship except God." It continues on, lasting several minutes, sung with glorious musicality and devotion. Of course, the experience isn't captured by recordings, but they provide a hint1:
As you listen to the recording, imagine it echoing across the entire city, from the more than 2,000 mosques in Istanbul, filling the streets, a shared celebration and affirmation of the transcendental, this music for God. There is nothing like it that I have yet experienced in other cultures. It is unforgettable.
I was struck in part by the experience of shared beauty the adhan creates, across the entire city, and indeed across the same timezone. But there is also the shared intellectual experience created by the words. There is some variation in the words of the adhan in different branches of Islam, but a rough translation into English is:
God is greatest
God is greatest
God is greatest
God is greatest
I testify there is nothing worthy of worship except God
I testify there is nothing worthy of worship except God
I testify Muhammad is the messenger of God
I testify Muhammad is the messenger of God
Come to prayer
Come to prayer
Come to success
Come to success
God is greatest
God is greatest
There is nothing worthy of worship except God
It is one thing to be captured by an emotion; it is another, and ultimately much more powerful, to be captured by an idea or set of ideas that are in concert with the emotion. The adhan expresses both ideas and emotion powerfully.
I wrote these notes to help deepen my understanding of the adhan.
I was baptized Catholic, became an atheist at age 7, and have remained an atheist ever since. While I "believe in [the value of] belief", as Alan Watts has pointed out that is not at all the same as actually believing. I have only ever lived in Christian-dominated cultures, in Australia, Canada, and the US. And although I am an atheist, there is of course a sense in which I am culturally a Christian. I am extremely ignorant of Islam, cannot speak Arabic, and am reliant on third-party sources and understanding Muslim friends to correct misapprehensions. I know it's conventional to say "Any remaining errors in the notes are my own", but in this case I'm unusually aware of the fact!
I will discuss the adhan in the variation that, according to Wikipedia, is used in the Hanifa Sunni School. This is, I believe, the largest of the Sunni schools, and is also the one most widespread in modern Turkey. However, there are variations in the adhan in different branches of Islam. Those variations would make a good study. But to limit my scope I have focused on a single version. It is also obviously a great limitation that I am considering an English language translation. Small steps!
"God is greatest": This remarkable statement places God above the local big shot – your Sultan or King or Lord or Master. What's more, it creates common knowledge among the entire community that God is above those local powers! That's an extremely powerful act. It also places God above the local Imam. It places God above self. Above your own success. Above family. Above friends. Above the Earth. Above the Universe. Above wealth. Above status. Above fame. Above love. Above sex. Above pleasure. And, again, as with all the lines, it is making these facts common knowledge among the entire community.
Repetition: The line "God is greatest" is repeated twice. Many of the other lines are also repeated, often twice, sometimes four times. The mere fact of the repetition is extremely interesting. In ordinary writing, repetition is often a sign of lazy thinking, and good writers (and speakers) work hard to eliminate repetition. But great writers and speakers will use repetition, especially very obvious repetition, as a tool to emphasize what is important. Consider Martin Luther King thundering over and over "I have a dream!" It starts to become our dream, too. The repetition in the adhan tells us that there are no inconsequential lines. It is almost hypnotic or – a very different thing – meditative in nature. It is so obvious, so deliberate, that I find myself forced into some relationship with the fact of the repetition.
Of course, those local repetitions are themselves within a larger repetition. The adhan is recited five times a day, every day. That's more than 1,800 times a year. By their 10th birthday, a Muslim will have heard the adhan more than 18,000 times! The adhan is, according to Wikipedia, often the first thing spoken to a newborn baby. And it may be recited at other important life moments. In short, the adhan is an incredibly deeply ingrained part of life, like the sun rising in the sky.
This perhaps creates some issues – I wonder to what extent the words become taken for granted, heard, but not truly listened to, perhaps never truly metabolized. I do not know. I'd love to hear from people who've lived in Islamic cultures how easy they find it to remain meaningfully connected to the words. In Christianity, the closest analogue is perhaps the Lord's Prayer, and my impression is that many Christians do learn the Lord's Prayer by heart, but rarely stop to deeply ponder what it is saying. To remain consistently, freshly engaged with something repeated often is challenging, like mantra meditation.
"I testify there is nothing worthy of worship except God": This is similar to the first line, but has novel overtones. It establishes that not only is God greater than everything else, nothing else even comes close. You aren't to worship Muhammad, or the Sultan, and certainly not money, or your self, or your own success. No, God is above all else.
"I testify Muhammad is the messenger of God": Interesting what is not in this line. It doesn't say Muhammad is the sole messenger of God (though perhaps it is implied?); nor does it associate Muhammad with the Quran; indeed, the Quran is not mentioned in the adhan. Still, it does tie God to something very specific in the world, in the person of Muhammad. The adhan otherwise could be taken to apply to almost any monotheistic religion.
"Come to prayer": This is the call-to-action, the immediate functional purpose of the adhan. The next line has the same form, but is not a call-to-action:
"Come to success": I appreciate the subtle implication that success is a consequence of coming to prayer. The line itself is interestingly ambiguous – I wish I knew Arabic and understood the connotations well, though I suspect the ambiguity persists. In English the line could imply many different things. I know people who use "success" to mean "make money" or "achieve status and recognition" or "make an impact on the world"2, while others' notion of success may encompass their community, or other living things, or alignment with God. Still, no matter the exact meaning, this line is a focusing element, especially insofar as the meaning of "success" is a meaning that would otherwise not be held instinctually.
"God is greatest" and "There is nothing worthy of worship except God": Returning to reiterate the points made at the beginning, another type of emphasis through repetition, albeit now in a changed context.
Comparison to Christ's greatest commandment: I noted above the similarity to the Lord's Prayer. There is also some similarity to what Jesus described as the first and greatest commandment: "Love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… Love God above all else." This commandment replaces the "worship" of the adhan with "love", and makes additional injunctions to love in three separate ways (with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind). I find the replacement3 of "worship" with "love" fascinating; the latter is, perhaps, a more equal relationship. "Love God above all else" is also quite similar to "God is greatest", although God is presented as simply being intrinsically worthy of that love, not because of any property they have, like being "greatest".
"Wasted" time, and the challenge of disengagement: I've heard non-Muslims sometimes wonder aloud how people can "waste" their time praying five times a day. One may invert this, and wonder if perhaps the questioner merely doesn't understand (or isn't very good at) prayer. There is an old joke about the master who, when asked if he modified his hour-a-day meditation practice when under time pressure, replies: "yes, when under time pressure I must meditate two hours a day in order to fit everything in". I suspect something similar is true of prayer. Still, as mentioned above, I wonder how to avoid the adhan and the prayers becoming rote? By comparison, the Christian notion of prayer tends to be more personal and conversational with God4, and it's perhaps easier to maintain freshness in this way. On the other hand, I suspect there are real benefits to having to exert effort to keep things fresh.
The structure of the adhan: It's very simple: reminder of relationship to God (first two lines); Muhammad's role as messenger; call to prayer; call to success; recurrence of relationship to God. Even more simply: the adhan reminds you of your relationship to God, that Muhammad is God's messenger, and makes an immediate call to action.
Variations: Here's four ideas for hypothetical variations on the adhan – I'm not concretely proposing these, but rather considering speculative variations to help improve my understanding of the current form. I suppose this perhaps sounds sacreligious, but it is coming out of a place of deep appreciation, and a desire to better understand. Often the best way to understand something is to consider how it would be if varied.
I'll leave the notes there. There is, of course, much more one could say. I have not discussed the history, variation, musical elements, the muezzin, the modern role of recordings and amplification, and so on. Perhaps for another day!
This recording is by a British recording artist named Yusuf Islam. He was known in the 1960s and 1970s as Cat Stevens, and had many hits, including songs still played today, such as "Moonshadow", "Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken", and "Wild World". He converted to Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. His first contact with the religion was, according to Wikipedia, while he was on holiday in Marrakesh, and he heard the adhan described, as I have done above, as music for God. Stevens, who was perhaps rather burnt out of the music business, responded: "I thought, music for God? I'd never heard that before -– I'd heard of music for money, music for fame, music for personal power, but music for God!?"↩︎
Curiously, people with these notions of success sometimes take it for granted that others must share their notions of success. For example, I have had (rather strange) conversations with people who did not believe that other people might not value money especially highly. They seemed to think it was a calculated pose or affectation or pretense. Ditto achieving status and recognition, or making an impact. I'm not sure what to make of this.↩︎
Of course, this is temporally anachronistic: the major Christian texts well pre-date the adhan.↩︎
This conversational form of prayer is an aweseome invention: a practice of clearly articulating your thoughts and concerns for a wise, benevolent being who cares deeply for you, and who is perfect, yet has compassion for your imperfection. My understanding is that the Muslim du'a is similar, whereas the prayers offered five times a day, the salat, are ritualized. Of course, some Christian prayer is ritualized too.↩︎