It’s been too long since I’ve posted on the OC Pilgrimage, but I’m committed to starting it up again this year. My goal is a bit more modest but also more manageable: one new religious or spiritual locale and/or event each month. This month Jana, the kiddos, friend Bonny and I visited the Orange County Islamic Society‘s mosque in Garden Grove.

The OC Islamic Society itself is hugely diverse. Not only do they embrace Muslims from the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle-East, South Asia, and Indonesia, but the mosque welcomes both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, and Shiites hold leadership positions in the predominantly Sunni congregation (the director jokingly referred to it as a “Sushi Mosque.”) On Fridays as many as 2000 people may gather to pray and to listen to sermons.

The visit was broken into three segments: an hour-long intro to Islam, a catered lunch, and observance of a prayer service.

Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi talked us through the powerpoint presentation. His soft-spoken demeanor belies his influence–he was in the spotlight as president of the Islamic Society of North America after the September 11th attacks and works tirelessly to promote understanding of Islam. He covered a lot of ground, but here’s a few of the things he chose to highlight:

• The root of the word “Islam” is the same as that for the Hebrew Shalom and means “peace.” (Islam itself mean submission).

• The Qur’an is considered to be the pure, unadulterated word of God as dictated to Muhammad. As such, translations from the original Arabic are not considered divine the way that a non-Hebrew, non-Aramaic, non-Koine Greek Christian Bible is considered divine.

• Allah simply means ‘God’–the same “universal, transcendant, loving, and merciful” God of the Jews and Christians. When the Tanakh is translated into Arabic, it is peppered with ‘Allah.’

• The five pillars of Islam were described (I asked Gameboy what these were in the drive over, and he was able to nail each one):

1. The Creed (shahadat): Entrance into Islam is very straightforward: you simply declare “there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet.”
2. Prayer (salat): All Muslims pray towards Mecca five times per day.
3. Almsgiving (zakat): 2.5% of ones’ valuables and savings are given to the poor (not to mosque). At this point Dr. Siddiqi turned to a Mormon friend, who said, “That’s a bargain! I’m in!”
4. Fasting (Sawm): From sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan, Muslims are admonished to refrain from eating, drinking and having sex.
5. Pilgrimage (Hajj): This refers to the obligatory once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca. Dr. Siddiqi described 4 million Muslims all moving through the streets of the Saudi city, the millions of lambs sacrificed, and teenagers who gathered at KFC and Baskin Robbins after prayer.

By this time we were all freezing and lunch was almost ready, so he hurried through the “Responses to Modernity” section. I thought this was a shame, since this is where current friction and hope for future cooperation lies. He emphasized that most Muslims fell between the fundamentalist and secular extremes, that most wanted genuine dialog and wanted to adapt to modernity without sacrificing core Islamic values.

After lunch, we went to observe the afternoon prayer service. Jana, Bonny and CatGirl were whisked off into the side hall, where they remained hidden for most of the service. GameBoy and I sat in the back and looked at beautiful copies of the Qur’an. He was able to pick out the script for ‘Allah’ in the text and soon we were seeing it all over the place–on the walls of the mosque as well as in the text.

At 1:20 the call came. About forty men and boys arranged themselves, shoulder to shoulder in a straight line. Soon they were kneeling, sitting, standing and fully prostrating themselves in unison. The choreography was punctuated with a soft “Allahu akbar.” The mosque was cold and space heaters swiveled as they went about their motions. GameBoy leaned over and said to me, “Dad, Mecca is that way.”

All in all, it was a worthwhile experience, if for no other reason that the foreign was made a little less so. I know that I am no more than a religious tourist, but respectful, inqisitive spiritual sightseeing can go a long ways to reducing misunderstanding and closing the distances between people.