Lecture: The Man Who Goes to the Mosque (Spanish/English audio and notes)

The Man Who Goes to the Mosque: The Importance of the Mosque in Modern Society for Muslims and for the Da’wah A Reflection:

• What is the mosque?
  What is its importance or place in modern society?
• What is modern society?
  What does modernity mean?
  What characterizes it?
• What place does the mosque have for the Muslim?
  Or, perhaps more interestingly, for Muslims in the plural.
  What does the mosque mean or what place does it have for Muslims in modern society?
• What is Dawah?
  What do we call?

Main ideas

• The mosque as confirmation of Reality as opposed to the version of reality proposed by modern society.
• The mosque as the direction, quiblah, of the social and individual human project.
• The mosque as a place of coherence, sanity and brotherhood.
• The mosque as a call to Reality.

What characterizes modern society?

• Modernity is a version of reality.
• One address.
• Paradigm, from the Greek: model, pattern.
  A set of practices or characteristics that define a specific time and that defines and gives context to social phenomena.
  A full and meaningful period of time.
• Modernity is an incomplete project with a teleological dimension that aims at the rational organization of daily life in accordance with reason (Habermas, Kant)
• Modernity is a subject of discussion in terms of its beginning and its end.

Principles of the Enlightenment that define modern society

• Reason.
  Intellect.
• Intellect as a tool to understand the independent existence of biological reality.
• René Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum.
  I think, therefore I am.
  Dualism.
• David Hume: the intellect can only reason about that which causes an ‘impression’, impressions are caused by the senses.
  The only possible knowledge: that which reasons about sensory things.
• God, a complex idea (ideas are always linked to ‘impressions’) that can be dismembered into simpler parts.
• The intellect cannot concern itself with the metaphysical.
  Kant: the intellect is limited to the four dimensions (up, down, north-south and time): time and space.
• Scientists today speak of many more dimensions (11, 20)

Result of the Enlightenment: A Version of Reality

• If God cannot be understood rationally, then He has no place in the equation.
• God ceases to be a central part of the human project.
• Subjugation of church to state.
• The mosque (church, synagogue, etc.) has no place in society.
  The social and public are separate.
• R.F. = Liberté, equalité, fraternité = universal project.
• Modernity is a universal paradigm.
• Religion, belief, has no place in modernity.
• Nihilism: dislocation of the order of place.
  Abstraction of principles.
  Denial of these.
• Carl Schmidt defined nihilism as: “Dislocation of the order of a place.”
• Materialism: science, evolution, progress.
• Modern society has a direction that is reason which guides the social project.
• Public order is rational.
  In private you can believe whatever you want, as long as you leave it at home when you go out and close the door.

THE Version of Reality

• Being human is not a duality.
  There is no separation between body and soul in this world.
  There is no body without soul and no soul without body.
• The human being is subject to time and space.
• The universe is not ‘inert matter’ but an ever-changing possibility.
  Quantum physics.
• Reason/intellect takes place in Islam: recognizing the Creator and His Sunnah in the universe.
• Allah is outside of time and out of space, He is as He was before, He is not affected by change.
• Allah is the Living One, the Sustainer.
  He is the one who materializes each possibility at each moment.
• Prophethood, miracles, are choices of Allah who is not limited by anything.
• Man recognizes the primacy of Allah as an actor in existence and submits to it.
• Man has a direction: You are from Allah and to Him you must return.
• The human being has a meaning and an end.
• Ordering the social and individual human project based on this reality.

The mosque as an affirmation of THE version of reality

• The mosque represents the direction of society or community directed towards Allah.
  It means the first fruits of God as the center of the social and individual project. It means the acceptance of tradition, prophecy, and Revelation.
• It is the direction of the human being in his existence.
• The mosque represents another direction.
  The mosque is the direction of society, of the community, which at the same time has a qiblah, which is the Kaaba, “It is true that the first house that was erected for men was that of Bakka, blessed and guide for all the worlds.”
  (3-96)
• The mosque is the negation of nihilism: it is locating order in a specific place.
• It is the confirmation of this version of reality with other human beings.
  It is a social project.
• It represents the human project of living according to a shared spirituality.
  A reality that is real for everyone

The importance of the mosque for Muslims in modern society.

• Shared spirituality, not individual.
• Modernity allows you to believe in whatever you want, as long as it does not affect your public and social discourse, which is subject to reason.
• Value of prayer in Jamma’, 27 times higher.
  There are not two Jamma’s.
• Confirmation of a common project based on a shared spirituality.
  You don’t leave your house and leave the Deen behind the door.
• In this sense, the mosque represents for the Muslim the confirmation/acceptance of a reality shared with other human beings, it is sanity.
  It’s the direction in your life.
  It is sense and meaning, order in a space and place as opposed to nihilism.
  The whole earth has become a mosque (Hadith).
• It confirms an existential reality: the reality of Allah.
  A correct Aquidah, which is an understanding of how existence works.
• Confirmation of Prophecy, from Deen.
• “Never stay in it, for truly a mosque founded on the fear (of Allah) from the first day is more worthy for you to stay in. There are men there who love to purify themselves, and Allah loves those who are purified.”
  (9:107)
• “The shadow of Allah on the Day of Judgment will be over that whose heart is bound to the mosques and that when they come out of them they long to return.”
• “In houses that Allah has allowed to arise and His name to be remembered in them and in which they glorify Him morning and evening. Men who are not distracted by business or commerce from the remembrance of Allah, from establishing salat and from giving zakat. They fear a day when hearts and eyes are disjointed.”
  (24:36)
• It is coherence instead of hypocrisy.
• The affirmation of reality in community and the application to the life project creates a sisterhood: Futuwwah

The importance of the mosque for the Dawah

• To invite something, to call something, to what?
• Call to the recognition of Reality.
  The mosque represents this Reality in a concrete way.
  The call to prayer, to the Adhan.
• How?
  Going to the mosque, which is confirmation of this version of Reality, being aware of what it means and not leaving it anchored in the mosque, but carrying it with us at all times.
• Taking the Mosque as the direction in our lives, a concrete direction to which we turn and from which neither “business nor commerce” distracts us.
• Being coherent in the public and private spheres.
• And when you have finished the salat, call upon Allah standing, sitting and lying down.
  And when you are out of danger, establish salat; Certainly Salat is for believers, a precept at certain times.
  (4:103)
• By participating in society being aware of this reality.
  Participating in it but without letting ourselves be assimilated by it, doing it with criteria.
• Two possibilities: rejection or assimilation.
  Literalism vs Jawariyy.
  A third: Imam Ashari.
• Going out into the public arena being aware of what this means and inviting people to the mosque.
• Filling the mosque with activity that is a reminder of Reality, that it uplifts Muslims and non-Muslims and creates a brotherhood that permutes in society and changes people’s hearts.

The Man Going to the Mosque

• The Man Who Goes to the Mosque Confirms Reality
• The man who goes to the mosque acts in coherence with this reality and carries it with him
• The man who goes to the mosque forms bonds of brotherhood based on the confirmation of reality
• The man who goes to the mosque longs and wishes to invite the knowledge of this reality

Lecture given by Luqman Nieto, vice-president of the Mosque Foundation of Seville on the fifteenth anniversary of the Mezquit Mayor of Granada