Aniah Ames, Kimberly Pham, Tatiana Davis, and Gilberto Caceres

Islam
For the Islam Religion, our group made a site visit to the Bawa Muhyiyaddeen
Fellowship in Philadelphia, PA. There were two buildings, a house and the Mosque. On the
outside of the Mosque, there were two scriptures from the Quran, names of all the prophets who
delivered Allahs word, and the many names for the One God. After looking over the building,
we were taken into the house for a spaghetti dinner, followed by a question and answer session.
We noticed the name Bawa being brought up several times and we found it interesting how
important he was to the people of the Mosque. Bawa came to the United States from Sri Lanka
and was recognized as the giver of life to the true belief. They gave reverance to Bawa mostly
because he was the establisher of their current Mosque. After an hour of Q&A, we were all asked
to participate in the Wudu/ ablution, which is the ritual washing performed by Muslims before
prayer in the Mosque. All of the girls were asked to cover our heads upon entering the prayer
room. We were also asked to enter through separate doors from the men. The prayer room was
separated by a translucent screen to divide men and women. We all sat back and observed the
prayer which involved deep concentration and full submission to Allah. There were different
movements that went along with each section of the prayer involving standing, kneeling, bending
over, having ones face completely bowed and more.
The book, No god but God was not really useful for the ritual we attended. However, it
did give us an understanding of how important it is to worship only the one God, known as
Allah. We were also taught more about how Muhammed was Allahs last prophet. During the
Salat, there is a line which translates to There is no god but God and Muhammed is Gods
messenger. Aslan mentioned how Muhammed gathered supporters and received revelations

which were summed up in the Shahadah. However, Aslan also questions What does it mean to
be a prophet? (Pg. 21). We also shared this question at our Mosque visit, wondering if Bawa
was a prophet because of how they spoke of him. Aslan believes that what matters is what these
stories say about our prophets, our messiahs, our kings: that theirs is a holy and eternal vocation,
established by God from the moment of creation. (Pg. 21) This, as well as responses received
during the Q&A, let us know he was no prophet.
Moreover, the book talked a lot about the evolution of the faith and the history of Islam.
For example, the Kaba plays a big role in the Islam faith. It is referred to as The Cube which
is believe to be founded by Adam, the first man (Pg. 4, Aslan) and is the sole feature that
Muslims who go on the Haaj pilgrimage wish to see and touch. This significant symbol lies in
the Holy Mecca and is suppose to be the direction in which Muslims pray. The men at the front
of the Mosque where we visited were closer to the Ka'ba because they kneeled directly in front
of the Divine symbol (prayer focus). Although the book helped us to understand the religion as a
whole and where it originated from, it did not help us get an exact view of how the ritual we
attended would be. Aslans novel No god but God, explains the origins and evolution of this
religion. He heavily describes the Islamic history and traditions, but fails to mention the prayer
(Salat), the washing (Wudu), and the segregation of men and women; which we saw for
ourselves at the Bawa Muhyiyaddeen Fellowship. Though Aslans novel was not effective for
our experienced, it definitely contained a lot of useful information.