they are marginal in a world in which nothing is sacred. Educated and thoughtful people in the West do not think that the German of Martin Luther’s Bible or the English of the King James Bible is sacred, and they certainly do not believe that German or English is the language of God.
The question arises, then, if Islam should be considered a part of history, the common history of a world in which Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity developed in a similar, indeed almost identical way. I have the impression that many Muslims believe that Allah made a special intervention in history to create and preserve a religion that would not be subject to the vicissitudes of time. In the religion classes of my childhood, however, I was taught the same thing about the Roman Catholic Church.
I am now ready to consider the subject articulated in the title of this essay. The question of whether people who do not speak Arabic as their native language should perform their daily prayers in the vernacular is really a very simple one. The only consideration should be the efficacy of the prayers for the believer’s spiritual life. According to the principle taught by Jesus, that the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), we can clearly see that the human being was not created in order to perform a particular prayer, but the prayer was created to serve the religious and personal needs of the human being.
In nations throughout the world where Arabic is not the native language, the faithful who do not speak Arabic memorize pages of a language that is completely foreign to them, and then proceed to repeat what they have memorized during their prayers. It is obvious that that is not the way that anyone can pray from the heart; and it is equally obvious that God, whether we call Him Allah or use another name, values the prayer of the heart and not the prayer of the mouth alone. The heart of man speaks its own language which is not primarily verbal, and it is this language alone that is sacred, that we may rightly call the Language of God. Every prophet including Muhammad has taught this principle, and every sage and mystic has taught it.
I believe that the imams and scholars of Islam are aware of the problem caused by the universal adherence to classical Arabic in their religion. Their response is not like that of Martin Luther even though their aim is similar to his. Every responsible leader of the Muslim world would like to see sincerity in prayer, and true spirituality in the people’s religious practice. The tactic that they have employed is to teach Arabic to all Muslims, so that the faithful will eventually understand the Arabic prayers with their minds, and consequently with their hearts as well. The problem with this program is that, often enough, simple people may require decades of study in order to master an intricate language that may be completely unlike their own. Some languages, like German and English, share a common history, and many cognate words. The same cannot be said for Arabic and Chinese, or, for that matter, Arabic and English, despite a scattering of Arabic words in English.
Frankly, there is no time to learn a language if the religious life of the student must wait and wait until the language is mastered. True religion is a necessity of the human condition now and not tomorrow, and certainly not two decades from now. Accordingly, inevitably, I hold that the scholars and imams of Islam should allow Muslims to perform salat in the vernacular.
The Uncaused Severity of God
When I wrote this piece I felt the presence of St. Anthony of Egypt helping me to choose the words. Anthony lived from 251 to 356 CE and has been called the Father of Christian monasticism. Here he delivers a lecture as though he were living in the 21st century.
The phrase "uncaused severity" first came to me from a Muslim writer whose name I cannot remember. I would say that he was a saint except that Muslims do not wish to call any man a saint, for only God, Allah, is great. I would like to apply this idea to myself and not be called a saint. Even Jesus, a nearly perfect human being, asked "Why do you call me good? No one but God is good."
If you would know the truth, God is severe, but I consider His severity to be uncaused because it does not derive from any man's failings. In other words, He is not severe because of sin.
Let me say a few words about asceticism. It is a topic that is relevant to our discussion, for the God who is severe must be approached by someone who has become holy, insofar as that is humanly possible. The word "asceticism" comes from the Greek word meaning "labor". Everyone accepts the idea that labor is necessary to become proficient at a musical instrument, or to become a doctor, or to plant and harvest crops. It should be obvious, then, that we must labor if we are to find the Most High.
Asceticism is not a matter of harming one's body by depriving it of its legitimate needs. The labor that is necessary requires, more than anything else, that we overcome what I consider to be one of the roots of sin: sloth, lethargy, or laziness.
If lethargy is not the root of all evil, it is at least a root, for it is because of spiritual lethargy that the mortal man, the lump of flesh that we are, does not wish to be changed.
Let us consider how much damage we do to ourselves through lethargy. It is the practice in the modern world to virtually eliminate silence and stillness by a constant recourse to television, movies, and radio. For my part, I cannot conceive of a successful quest for God without silence, and silence is as fundamental for a child's growth as physical food. It is in silence that the spirit grows within the heart and creativity becomes possible.
Perhaps you can see that it is really because of mental lethargy that we do not wish to live with silence, because silence requires us to be mentally alert, aware of our thoughts, aware of our feelings, aware of what we are doing with our hands. It is because the parent is lethargic that he or she places the child in front of the television set.
You may object and say that the parent is too busy or too tired to guide the child in creative forms of play, and must use the television set. Somehow I doubt it. Humanity existed for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years, in silence--and suddenly there is a generation that says that it cannot survive without television.
I will not argue the point further because I am an old monk and I do not claim to know everything there is to know about raising a child in the 21st century. I do know, however, as an expert in monasticism, that the child that was raised without silence must one day learn silence as though it were a foreign language; and if he does not learn this language he will not speak the language of God.
It is the simple truth that God wishes us to be holy, insofar as that is humanly possible, for He is holy, and only someone who is like Him can know Him and become absorbed in Him. God does not require us to have all manner of psychic gifts. He did not ask us to use the power of thought to become wealthy. He did not ask us to have a website and innumerable followers. He simply asks for our holiness.
What is holiness but attention to the first of all commandments, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength." Here is a subtle point: there are some who have psychic gifts, wealth, and followers because God accomplished these ends through them. But it is hard to have these things without caring about them, and it is certainly easier to acquire them than to have the right attitude while acquiring them. That is why God told me that He prefers it if His sons and daughters have a "moderate poverty".
In every case it is presumptuous to think that "I am doing something important", when only God acting through us can accomplish anything worthwhile. I remind those who teach that one sentence from a Godly man or woman will do more to improve the world than ten books from someone with a prominent ego. The Hindu saint Ramana Maharshi is a perfect example of this principle. He asked the single question, "Who am I?" and that question and its answer taught the world more than an encyclopedia could have. When I consider him I wonder if I, myself, am far too wordy.
Let me summarize what I have said so far. If we would approach God, the God Who is severe, we must be severe with ourselves and become ascetics, which does not mean that we should harm ourselves but that we should overcome the cardinal sin of lethargy. In this sense, the "severity of God" is akin to the severity of science, of musicianship, of the military, of any field that requires excellence.
But our asceticism, our labor,