A General Look At Rites

Worship and Senses

Man's perception is not merely by his senses, nor is it merely an intellectual and non- material reasoning either! It is a mixture of reasoning plus material and non-material feeling.

When worship is required to perform its func- tion in a way with which man interacts perfect- ly, and whereby it harmonizes with his charac- ter, worship is composed of a mind and senses; worship then must contain a sensitive aspect and a non-material intellect, so that worship will be compatible with the worshipper's person- ality, and the worshipper, while performing his worship, lives his attachment to the Absolute with all his existence.

From here, the intention, as well as psy- cholological contention of worship, always rep- resents its intellectual and non-material aspect, for it links the worshipper to the True Absolute, the Praised, the High, and there are other aspects of worship representing its material aspect. The qiblah, towards whose direction each worshipper must direct his face while praying;

and al-Baytu'l-haram, visited by both those who perform the pilgrimage and those who do the umrah, around which they both perform tawaf; and the as-safa and al-marwah, between which he runs; and Jamratu'l- aqabah, at which he casts stones;

and the Mosque, which is a place especially made for adoration wherein the wor- shipper practises his worship . . . all these are things related to the senses and tied to worship: there is no prayer without a qiblah, nor tawaf without al-Baytu'l-haram, . . . and so on, for the sake of satisfying the part related to the senses in the worshipper and giving it its right and share of worship!

This is the midway direction in organizing worship and coining it according to man's in- stincts as well as his particular intellectual and sensual make-up.

Two other directions face him: one of them goes to the extreme in bringing man to his senses, if the expression is accurate at all, treating him as though he had been a non- material intellect, opposing all sensual expres- sions of his in worship's sphere, for as long as the True Absolute, the Praised One, has no li mited place or time, nor can He be represent- ed by a statute; then His worship has to stand on such a premise, and in the manner which enables the comparative thinking of man to address the Absolute Truth.

Such a trend of thinking is not approved by Islamic jurisprudence, for in spite of its concern about the intellectual aspects brought forth by the hadith: "An hour's contemplation is better than a year's adoration," it also believes that pious worship, no matter how deep, cannot totally fill man's self or occupy his leisure, nor can it attach him to the Absolute Truth in all his existence, for man has never been purely an intellect ... !

From this realistic and objective starting- point, rites in Islam have been based on both intellectual and sensous bases. The person per forming his prayers is practising by his intention an intellectual adoration, denying his Lord any limits, measurements, or the like.

For when he starts his prayer with "Allahu akbar (God is Great)", while taking at the same time the holy ka'bah as a divine slogan towards which he directs his feelings and movements, so that he lives worship by both intellect and feeling, logic and emotion, non-materialistically as well as intellectually.

The other trend goes to the extreme in the part related to the senses, changing the slogan to an idenity and the hint to reality, causing the worship of the symbol to substitute what the symbol really stands for, and the direction 70 towards the hint instead of the reality it points to; thus, the worshipping person sinks, in this manner or that, in shirk and paganism.

Such a trend totally annihilates the spirit of worship and it stops its function as a tool linking man and his civilized march to the True Absolute, converting it to a tool for linking him to false absolutes, to symbols which change - through false intellectual stripping of the mat- ter - to an absolute. Thus, false worship becomes a veil between man and his Lord, instead of a link between both of them ... !

Islam has rejected such a trend because Islam convicted paganism in all its norms, smash- ing its idols and putting an end to all false gods, refusing to take any limited thing as a symbol for the True Absolute, God, the Glorified, or as a personification of Him. But it deeply distinguish- ed between the meaning of the idol which it crushed and that of the qiblah it brought, which meaning conveying nothing more than a particu- lar geographical spot has been divinely favoured by linking it to prayer for the sake of satisfying the worshipper's aspect related to the senses.

Paganism is really nothing but a deviated at- tempt to satisfy such an aspect, and Islamic jurisprudence has been able to correct it, provid- ing a straight path in harmonizing between the worship of God, as being dealing with the Absolute Who has neither limit nor person- ification, and the need of man who is composed of feeling and intellect to worship God by both of his feeling and intellect ... !