I recently renewed my MOT at a local garage in Bradford. It was run by Pakistanis and looked like any other small Garage I have ever been in apart from one thing. (Two, if you count that all the mechanics had beards!)
In the place of girlie calendars, there was a large chart on the wall, listing Muslim adherance to Dua.
Dua are supplications, personal prayers said to suit particular situations, something also common in many other religions. The chart was mostly concerned with ritual related to prayer time and ablution but despite having spent a year in Saudi Arabia I can't recall which prayer is which from the Arabic names. However, there were a couple that struck me as amusing. I haven't found any direct copies of the chart online (the one I saw had been printed in Mumbai), I may be remembering them wrongly (I only had a couple of minutes to look at it) and some of it may have been down to translation (the chart was also in Arabic and Hindi) but there was one related to entering a bus (thanking god for not being able to control the vehicle without his help) and another about barking dogs (and being protected from the foul devils).
All religion troubles me somewhat. I'm something of an Agnosic; I'm happy to accept a grand architect of the universe but I'm pretty sure s/he doesn't give a tinkers cuss about supplication and it is a conceit of humanity to think that the supreme being pays any attention to the goings on here on earth in Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca, regarding us with anything higher than polite indifference.
By all means, believe in your own invisible friend but please don't force-feed it to the gullible.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A word with God...
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7 comments:
I hope it's not me you're thinking of when you say, 'don't force-feed it'.
I would never want to do that.
Not at all Liz, it is the in-your-face unwanted evangelism that I object to.
Although we were taken aback somewhat by some C of E friends who told their young daughter that our David was going straight to Hell because he hadn't been Christened.
(More to be pitied than scolded...)
Strange that the prayers were next to the girlie calendar - I wonder what they werepraying for!
Oh my gosh! That is such a terrible thing to say! Apart from not being true. Pity them that they live by such rules indeed.
I think He would act pretty much as we would. When we get attention, we like it. When people do as we suggest, it's nice. When we're praised, it makes our day.
Ellie, I should have said "instead of the girlie calendars...", there weren't any (but there would have been in most other garages, including Indian ones).
I've noticed that there is strong peer pressure in Islam to out-holier-than-thou each other. (Indeed as an outsider it sometimes seems that Islam is a bit of a Mohammed Fan club, with the beards, names et al).
James, your view of God strikes me as a nice God, a masculine one but also somewhat anthropromorphic, a bit like Disney does with animals.
Again, I make the point that it is probably Mankind's biggest conceit that we think we are made in Her image...
Ig., I can only say I agree with you!
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