My wake-up call was the Muslim call to prayer blaring from minarets around us at 5 AM, like a snooze alarm, it's repeated at 5:15 just in case one has fallen back to sleep. Mosques are everywhere
and by the typical Muslim dress of long black dress for the women and long white robes for the men- obviously religion is a guiding, present thing for many people. At breakfast, I eagerly watch as women with only their eyes visible sit down with plates of food. How do they eat? Well, one removed it--just unbuttoned it and still her face was covered and she ate with her husband and another man. Another, eating with a small boy, would lift it everytime she wanted to put a bite into her mouth.
Today is our free day, and it is also Friday, their "day off" and their holy day. Close to our hotel there is a beautiful, blue mosque that, even though we can't go in because it's Friday, we walked up to look at. On the way, passing two Christian churches, as we walked in to peek, someone urged us to come in. It was like watching a big family gathering. People were walking around, talking, children were wandering back and forth between different family members, someone even took a cell phone call! Behind us, a priest was baptising babies. Each family unit was taking pictures of their baby as the priest blessed him, oiled his/her head and took the baby one by one in his arms and walked to the front of the church and behind a screen that was between the church audience and the altar. He walked back down the side aisle to the beaming parents, and repeated the process with another baby. My eyes would glance from the priests on the altar to the ornate decoration of the church to the babies to the children running around. It was a Greek Orothodox church and the familiar sit, stand, make the sign of the cross occured more than in my Catholic church and they make the sign of the cross in the opposite direction. A bit of Islam has creeped in with people bowing low to touch to symbolically touch the ground and make other ritual movements that I'm not familiar with. When it came time for communion, some people got in line for the procession to the front of the church where two priest were. People, including young boys were walking around the church with large baskets of all kinds of bread that had been cut into pieces. One stopped at us in our pew and urged us to share their ceremony. After taking one peice of bread, we were urged to take more, so we did. Yummy!! As we looked around, other celebrants were putting bread into plastic bags and taking it with them.
As the service ended, one of the grandmothers of a newly baptised baby come over to show us her grandchild as the mother smiled broadly behind her.
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Another man in the congregation took our picture and then gave us his business card which had the facebook page of the church on the backside and said we could "like" them on Facebook!
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Our guide offered to take us around even though our tour didn't start until tomorrow. He is very friendly, talkative and encourages us to ask anything about being a Muslim. He gave a long monologue about how Islam, Judaism, and Christianity were all the same belief and the same God and reiterated our common history of the same prophets. He told us what the Koran said about Christianity and how highly regarded Mary, mother of Jesus, and Jesus who is regarded as a great prophet, but is not thought to be the son of God. Great talk on tolerance and accepting other idea until I asked him was he a Sunni--pretty likely since Sunni comprises 85% of Muslims. He said, "of course". Then the following dialogue took place:
Nabil--would you think God could make a mistake about who he would chose to be the prophet?
Me--no, God doesn't make mistakess
Nabil--If you think God was looking for me, could he accidentally pick you?
me-of course not
Nabil--well, that what the Shiites believe. That God was actually looking for Ali, Mohammed's brother and he accidentally picked Mohammed. Ali was meant by God to be the great and last prophet and it was only a mistake that Mohammed was picked. The Shiites are not as educated or as smart and they just accept whatever is told to them.
So much for religious tolerance!!
A Coptic Church
Today is our free day, and it is also Friday, their "day off" and their holy day. Close to our hotel there is a beautiful, blue mosque that, even though we can't go in because it's Friday, we walked up to look at. On the way, passing two Christian churches, as we walked in to peek, someone urged us to come in. It was like watching a big family gathering. People were walking around, talking, children were wandering back and forth between different family members, someone even took a cell phone call! Behind us, a priest was baptising babies. Each family unit was taking pictures of their baby as the priest blessed him, oiled his/her head and took the baby one by one in his arms and walked to the front of the church and behind a screen that was between the church audience and the altar. He walked back down the side aisle to the beaming parents, and repeated the process with another baby. My eyes would glance from the priests on the altar to the ornate decoration of the church to the babies to the children running around. It was a Greek Orothodox church and the familiar sit, stand, make the sign of the cross occured more than in my Catholic church and they make the sign of the cross in the opposite direction. A bit of Islam has creeped in with people bowing low to touch to symbolically touch the ground and make other ritual movements that I'm not familiar with. When it came time for communion, some people got in line for the procession to the front of the church where two priest were. People, including young boys were walking around the church with large baskets of all kinds of bread that had been cut into pieces. One stopped at us in our pew and urged us to share their ceremony. After taking one peice of bread, we were urged to take more, so we did. Yummy!! As we looked around, other celebrants were putting bread into plastic bags and taking it with them.
As the service ended, one of the grandmothers of a newly baptised baby come over to show us her grandchild as the mother smiled broadly behind her.
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After church two young women invite us to join the congregation for coffee and tea. They start speaking English at 7 years old and easily communicate. Many of their friends joined us and they talked about how old they were and seemed very proud to speak English.
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Nabil--would you think God could make a mistake about who he would chose to be the prophet?
Me--no, God doesn't make mistakess
Nabil--If you think God was looking for me, could he accidentally pick you?
me-of course not
Nabil--well, that what the Shiites believe. That God was actually looking for Ali, Mohammed's brother and he accidentally picked Mohammed. Ali was meant by God to be the great and last prophet and it was only a mistake that Mohammed was picked. The Shiites are not as educated or as smart and they just accept whatever is told to them.
So much for religious tolerance!!
A Coptic Church
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