inevitable that my search for meaning would bring me, sooner or later, to test the waters at a local mosque. Little more than a storefront on an out-of-the-way street in South Philly, the building seemed the antithesis of all the religious sites I’d been to before. Christian and Jewish houses of worship were ornate as a rule, especially their cathedrals. This place could not have been plainer: walls painted white, with the front of the room adorned by a chalkboard that faced the assembled. There was also a flag featuring a white star and crescent in a bright field of red, with a letter in each corner: F, J, E, and I—Freedom, Justice, Equality, and Islam.
It was a summer night and midweek, so the gathering was small, yet Brother Minister, a dark-skinned man in navy suit, glasses, and bow tie who went by the name of—was it Benjamin? Benjamin X?—preached passionately. The captive audience punctuated his every sentence: “Uh-huh!” “That’s it!” “Teach, bro minister! Wake ’em up!” His baritone was smooth, colored by that ubiquitous Southern accent I was to find later in almost every mosque I visited, whether north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. His message was not.
“Brotha . . . I say to you here and now, the white man is the devil! Why, when you look at how this man has stolen millions of our people from Africa, sold our mothers and fathers into slavery in the hells of North America for four hundred years; beat us, abused us, lynched us, and tortured us—well, how could any man be anything but a devil?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Preach it, Bro. Minister!”
“Our leader and teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, teaches us, brotha, that the devil’s time is almost over!”
“That’s it, brotha!”
“Wake ’em up!”
“I said, ‘The devil’s time is almost up!’ Why, look all around the world—from Vietnam to Detroit—and you’ll see the white man catching hell! Am I right, brothas?”
“That’s it!”
“Uh-huh!”
Minister Benjamin X spoke for what seemed to be hours, and after his lecture, a collection was taken.
Returning home, I reflected on the similarities between my Baptist and Muslim experiences. I was struck by how the Muslim minister—though his mouth vibrated with the rhythms and cadences of the black South, and though his message was shaped in a way that spoke to my ethnic, historical, and cultural realities—sounded for the most part like a Christian in a bow-tie.
The main difference, perhaps, lay in their views of evil. Where the Baptist spoke of a metaphysical devil, the Muslim preached of a living one. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that the white man was supernatural, even supernaturally evil—if anything, they were sub-naturally human, I thought to myself. Yet it seemed as improbable that they were devils, as gods. The search would continue.
Thoughts on the Divine
An interviewer once asked the Mahatma Gandhi: “Gandhi-ji, it seems that you worship sometimes in temples, sometimes in churches, sometimes in mosques. What is your own religion?” Gandhi replied: “Follow me for a few days. Watch what I do; how I walk, what I say, and how I conduct myself generally. That is my religion.”
THERE ARE AS MANY religions as there are cultures, and equally many names for the divine presence that is the heart of each. The energizing influence of belief keeps them apart, for to each adherent they contain truth that, from his or her perspective, is the only truth. All the same, it seems they flow in one direction, like many streams seeking release into one mighty river.
My youthful search for meaning revealed that no matter how differently the Infinite was clothed in the garb of a certain religion, it was there. In each, I found a new perception of the greatest good, that is, a belief in God or some other personification of the divine principle. I found, as George Bernard Shaw puts it, that there is “only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”
In Judaism, the ancient ancestral warrior is revered as all-powerful Yahweh, or Jehovah; to Christians, the Jewish carpenter Yeshuah is God yet also Man; for the Muslim, the ancient Meccan gods find fusion in one supreme being—Al-Lah, the God. In Hinduism, Lord Krishna emerges from a vast pantheon of ancient deities as a blue-black god who twirls and leaps in an eternal sacred dance. To the Buddhist, the insights of Gautama Siddhartha form the central core of a faith that holds the promise of enlightenment and the discovery of the true Self. In Santería, Condoblé, and Voudoun, the ancient gods of African antiquity have survived to smile behind the faces of the Catholic saints.
In the essence of each religion, then, we see a projection of the greatest good. For a threatened, nomadic desert tribe, what greater good than the worship of a mighty and powerful ancestor, a prominent warrior—Yahweh—who defended the clans? For the maligned followers of a Nazarethan carpenter, one crucified by the mightiest Empire of the age, why not the greater good of his victory over the tomb? For contentious Arab clans who saw each other through the lens of enmity and conflict, why not the clarity and simplicity of One God to reign over the throngs who crowd the K’aaba—One God to bring unity to a people, a region, a sphere of influence?
To Hindus, whose plethora of deistic personalities reflect the God-force that permeates all creation, Krishna—the beautiful, playful, dark boy-god who loves cattle and dances with other cowherds—turns the boring and mundane into a sacred act. For the Buddhist, Gautama’s attainment of enlightenment seeks the void beyond which no personality, human nor divine, exists. It bespeaks a greater good that sees past the soul to ultimate nothingness, a spiritual place of rest.
To millions of stolen and enslaved African peasants, for whom return to the grasslands, forests, and villages of the black motherland was physically impossible, their religion was the only means of a voyage home. Under a new, cooler sky, ancient gods and honored ancestors came to life once more and provided the greater good of spiritual survival, of an inner Self that could withstand the most dehumanizing assaults and empower the soul to remain sane. Even in the midst of a powerless existence, the world of the invisible pulsed with names like Yemonja, the goddess of the river; Obatala, chief of the gods; and Shango, the god of war and thunder.
Many of our ideas about God and religions simply mirror the traditions we have inherited from our forebears. They are imbibed with mother’s milk, openly, uncritically, freely—illogical human expressions, exercises in irrationality. Others are perceptions gained only by leaping into the dark arms of faith. God comes, in various faces, and numerous personalities, depending on our myriad perceptions, needs, and histories. Yet if there are any miracles left, it is that GOD IS ONE.
Night of Power
IN ISLAM, during the holy month of Ramadan, it is said that one night is holiest of all: al Qadr, the Night of Power. According to Islamic belief, it was on this night that the Qu’ran was delivered to the Prophet Mohammed, and it is thus the holiest of all nights. On this night, prayers are granted “for everything that matters.”
The Night of Power is so deeply ingrained in the Muslim heart that a short chapter in the Qu’ran is devoted to it. It begins, as do all chapters therein, with the exclamation, “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” and goes on thus:
Verily we have sent this
In the Night of Power.
And what will convey to you
What the Night of Power is?
The Night of Power is better
Than a thousand months:
The