Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland
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THE WORSHIPFUL ACTS t 235<br />
low Muslims were doing the same at Arafat outside Mecca, <strong>and</strong><br />
that they <strong>and</strong> others per<strong>for</strong>med the ritual hajj sacrifice in the Noble<br />
Sanctuary in Jerusalem.<br />
Muslim Devotions<br />
Christianity early institutionalized the veneration of its holy men<br />
<strong>and</strong> women. The martyrs were the first to be so honored, but with<br />
the end of the persecutions <strong>and</strong> the execution of <strong>Christians</strong>, the<br />
same veneration was soon extended to the “confessors,” those<br />
holy men <strong>and</strong> women whose lifelong pursuit of virtue proclaimed<br />
their sanctity as eloquently as the blood of the martyrs did theirs.<br />
They too might be venerated, though never adored, <strong>and</strong> it was<br />
permissible to request their intercession with God—<strong>Islam</strong> is particularly<br />
firm in its denial of intercessory powers to any human,<br />
excluding Muhammad—but the line between veneration <strong>and</strong> adoration<br />
is thin indeed. Augustine had warned about crossing that<br />
line, <strong>and</strong> the Church Council held in Nicaea in 787 made a careful<br />
distinction between the worship (latreia) <strong>and</strong> adoration owed to<br />
God alone <strong>and</strong> the respect <strong>and</strong> veneration (douleia) that might be<br />
paid to the saints. However complex the matter might be, there<br />
was a small attached rider: Mary, the Mother of Jesus, might be<br />
paid a kind of superveneration (hyperdouleia).<br />
There is nothing remotely like these Christian devotions in<br />
Sunni <strong>Islam</strong>. Its liturgy, principally the five-times-daily salat, is as<br />
fixed in per<strong>for</strong>mance as its Christian counterpart, the Eucharist,<br />
but is far less dramatic since the Eucharist is essentially a reenactment,<br />
<strong>and</strong> Muslim prayer a recitation. <strong>Islam</strong> has neither stational<br />
liturgies like the <strong>Christians</strong>’ annual ritual celebration of the events<br />
of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, nor commemorative liturgies like<br />
the daily celebration of the basic eucharistic liturgy in honor of<br />
some saint, the mass <strong>for</strong> the dead, <strong>and</strong> the marriage mass. Sunni<br />
<strong>Islam</strong>’s only “seasonal” liturgy—as already noted, Muhammad’s<br />
ban on intercalation rendered true seasonal celebrations impossible—is<br />
the time- <strong>and</strong> place-tied hajj. Despite occasional attempts,<br />
however, the ritual has not as a whole been successfully “trans-