Yes you haven't read wrong, I mean it.
The most amazing thing about my colleagues is how we all mix nicely regardless of our believes, and that we have an almost equal number of sunny and shi’ite, a few none believers, and of course the un avoidable in Bahrain, the usual mix of India’s practices.
I tried so hard from day one to get every one to talk about anything and Have them bond, not on the so industrial automatic relations, but in an old moharaq neighborhood sort of way.
Back in the day and still, Moharaq the most symbolic city of Bahrain, had the greatest bond between all the ethnic diversities and so was the religious side of the things, sunna used to go the maatam in Islamic spiritual nights, shiiat used to attend the sunna Majleses and vice versa, even the foreigners like Iranian people, Omani's, Bulloch, Asians and also some of the American’s from Araif; that was also before the days when the Bahraini nationality was created and issued.
Back to the office, Me and my colleague Majed, pray together every day as long as we are in the office, I joked about it once when I asked one of our colleagues (Alawi) to join us in our prayer, but after I was done, the only thing that I could've thought about was why didn't we do it, and why can't this happen later if it didn't today or tomorrow.
I occasionally asked others to join us, including the first guy whom I've asked the most, due to the fact that he is the closer to me, but for almost 2 years it never happened, and with the way things around Bahrain have been going I kinda lost hope.
its been very stressful in the past few weeks, and the temper around the office have been off the roof, until this morning, for some very odd reason specially that Thursdays are known in our office to be unbearably fast.
today when I was washing up before noon prayer, a new member of the staff Mohamed from accounts, who also happens to be a shiie from Moharaq, due to the Moharaqi tongue that we both share, you tend to forget or get lost between what the other is, so I asked him if he would like to pray with my self and Majed, only then I remembered that he was shiei and apologized, but he said come on man its going to god any ways, "Khal nerka3ha" he said in the way moharaqi youth always said it.
I really hope, that I haven’t been dehydrated the whole day and I will wake up to very unpleasant surprise Sunday morning.
5 comments:
Acknowledging our differences and respecting them is the first step towards reaching unity, I hate it when people try to cover their origins or change their dialects and act up fake unity in a desperate attempt to achieve it!
Glad to see you back active in the blog, in hope of reading more from you, you do deserve some "No Sunni No Shi3i just B7raini" buttons ;)
Nice post Eyad. When I heard your comment today "finally, one mixed prayer", I did not realize it left such a deep impact on you.
It's nice to see that the Bahraini people are still with such good hearts. It gives one hope, really!
I never saw the point of shia and sinna people praying separately. Ok, so one prays with their hands down, the other with their hands infront of them, and a few of the prayers recited might be minimally different. Is that really enough for people to go pray in different mosques?
I've never found my prayer to be an obstacle; I pray in a shee3i mosque if theres one nearby, I pray in a sunni one nearby. Sometimes I get weird looks from people, which is really sad, but that doesn't really bother me.
But hey, its problems with people who make sectarian distinctions that cause our people to be weak. Take a look at Iraq; you think the people don't have the power to stand up together and fight all the violence thats going on internally? They can, if they were all united. But theyre not - they fight over the tiniest difference over the belief of something that happened over a thousand years ago.
I think there is nothing as powerful as the Prayer for the Dead. There when the coffin lies in front of mourners, EVERYONE lines up and the beauty of God is really manifested in that gathering. Then you will see (and I have and participated in one recently) all denominations joining the prayer without any thought whatsoever as to the "correct Shi'i or Sunni or even MUSLIM way of doing things!" In that prayer I was praying next to a Sunni next to a Shi'a and next to someone I think was a Baha'i.
That to me was the essence of Bahrain. When the chips are down, no one really thinks of petty distinctions, but everyone gels into a single entity to provide much needed comfort and solace to each other.
That was the most beautiful, soulful and saddest prayer I have participated in apart from that of my own father's funeral which witnessed the very same collection of disparate roads which all led to the majesty of Allah.
Respect for your efforts Eyad. If you want to go forward with this, invite those who oppose you to lead the prayer. That surely will soften their hearts and get their minds to think in at a different tangent, so that next time, they won't mind standing beside you giving grace to the God you both share.
Thank you for the comments guys.
I never understood the reason behind having a deferent mosque for each sect, a deferent time for prayers, and of course the usual separation in eid.
Let’s hope one day we manage to have them all united under one Bahraini roof, and all respecting each other boundary.
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