It was time for me to stop simply researching organized religions and figure out what the faithful know that I had been missing. During a conversation in Dr. Sadiq’s private office one afternoon, I reminded him of my interest in attending Friday prayers with him. He already had agreed to take me to the service, but I had not followed up. “Just tell me when you want to go,” Sadiq said with no hesitation. How about next week? I suggested. Fine.
The prospect of spending time in a church or synagogue had no appeal for me. I had fled those houses of worship decades ago. Attending Friday prayers was different. On Friday afternoon the following week, Sadiq and I walked into the nondescript side entrance of the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, a grand Roman Catholic church on Manhattan’s West Side. The structure brought elegance to a once dirty, dicey neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Paulist fathers had built this imposing, Gothic fortress in 1858.
Catholicism and Islam may seem a strange fit, but this is New York, where real estate is expensive, and institutions of faith are known to reach out to each other when space to worship is needed. As he had told me, Sadiq had approached the church about the possibility of holding Friday prayers there more than five years earlier.
The Muslim group Sadiq had put together had outgrown the space they were using in a small basement room at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital, where he ran the MS care unit. Since St. Paul’s was just a short walk from Sadiq’s office, this church offered the perfect solution.
Sadiq told me that when he went to church officials to make the request, he wore a jacket and tie but explained that the men and women who would be coming to the service would not be dressed the same way. They would be individuals of modest means, immigrant cabdrivers based in the area, and laborers of various kinds. Many had come from Senegal and Mali and other Muslim countries. They were folks who wanted to take a short break from their work and come together to pray.
“Most of them will look very suspicious to you, and you will be afraid that maybe they are terrorists,” he had told church officials. “But they are peaceful, and you will have nothing to worry about.” The answer came quickly. Yes.
Paulists are known for charting their own course, even opening their arms to gay and lesbian Catholics and reaching out to women who have undergone abortions. The fact that they opened their doors to a Muslim group in search of a venue to meet and pray is very much part of their tradition of independence.
We walked into the church on that cold, windy day, and I stood and watched the worshippers gradually enter the building. They were primarily Africans, speaking unfamiliar languages in quiet, respectful tones. All wore simple clothes. They seemed subdued and serious.
Sadiq and I made our way upstairs to the room set aside for the service. A plain cardboard box had been placed on a folding chair at the door. Participants left a dollar or two if they could as they filed in, a gesture of thanks to the church.
Everyone removed their shoes and left them at the entrance to the prayer space as they went into the room. Dirt is not to be tracked into the House of Allah. The ritual washing of hands, feet, and face that happens before a typical Muslim service was not possible because of a lack of facilities.
Sadiq touched my arm and told me I didn’t have to remove my shoes. He knows I cannot walk without shoes because my toes curl under my feet. Sadiq guided me to a folding chair propped against a wall. I wished I could join the others as they took to the floor to sit to pray, but that was not an option for me. Once I am horizontal on the floor, I am there for an extended visit. Besides, I would not have followed the others as they sat, stood, and laid flat, their foreheads touching the floor during the service. I am not a Muslim, and others might have been offended if I had tried to mimic their moves. I was determined to show respect.
While waiting for the service to begin, I looked around at the space. The room had seemed large when we walked in, but that changed as worshippers arrived in groups. I had wondered how others would react to me. I had the only white face in the space. The attendees were warm and welcoming, some approaching me to shake my hand before the service. I was totally comfortable.
The service was more muted than I had expected. There were the ritual prayers, most in Arabic. There was no singing, unlike in Jewish and Christian services. A soft-spoken young Yemeni physician named Marwan Alahiri, who is applying for a residency in neurology in the United States, offered the sermon. Marwan is a serious student of Islam who has memorized the Quran. The sermon was vehemently anti-violence. Marwan’s tone was unyielding. Though much of the service had been in Arabic, Marwan delivered the sermon in clear English.
For a while I lost sight of Sadiq in the sea of prostrate bodies. Following the service, he resurfaced and introduced me to Marwan, who listened attentively as I told him about this research into hope and what I wanted to accomplish. Marwan is a small man with a large heart who seemed to genuinely care about the health issues that had motivated me to embark on this investigation of hope.
Unlike most of the worshippers, who appeared to be from working-class backgrounds, Marwan was polished, even scholarly. He made clear he would be happy to sit down and talk about the role of hope in his faith. We agreed to meet the following week at the Tisch center, where he works in Sadiq’s lab.
The three of us exited the church together that afternoon, just a few New Yorkers ambling up Tenth Avenue, huddled against the wind and shooting the breeze. We had left our serious sides at the church door. I thought of how often religion becomes a wedge, separating us from one another. Yet I felt a real connection with these men.
The next week I arrived at the Tisch center to take Marwan up on his offer to talk. The staff shot me looks, wondering why I was there without an appointment. I mumbled something, offering a nonanswer. Why would I be visiting Marwan? I could not think of how to explain it, since I was not sure if anyone in the office even knew about Friday prayers.
I looked for Marwan, and as I was rounding the corner of one of the many corridors in the sprawling Tisch center, there he was. We exchanged smiles, shook hands, and ducked into the empty infusion suite, around the corner from the lab. Marwan asked me to tell him more about what I thought he could offer. Soon he was talking about the Quran and hope, exactly what I was there to hear.
The subject seemed so complicated to me. For starters, I needed a primer in Marwan’s religion, one that was short, sweet, and accessible. When I asked Marwan what Islam teaches about hope, he found a passage in the Quran that he thought would answer my question.
“Whosoever fears Allah . . . He will make a way for him to get out from every difficulty. And He will provide for him from sources he could never imagine.” (Quran 65:2–3) “Isn’t that what hope is all about?” Marwan asked. He seemed to think this passage would be instructive to me. It was not.
Doesn’t this mean you have to be a follower of Allah to find hope? I asked. “No,” Marwan answered. “That is a general principle for everybody. It’s a fact of life.” It sounded to me as though hope comes from belief in Allah, I countered. In this and any number of other verses from the Quran, it seems clear that divine benevolence goes only to those who love or fear Allah. What about the rest of us?
Marwan went on: “If you read the Quran, you will see many verses inspiring people not to lose hope.” But how? I wanted to know. If you are sick or starving or in terrible danger, and you don’t believe in Allah, what makes it possible to keep hoping? “The word patience is mentioned in the Quran more than ninety times,” Marwan counseled. “We have to learn patience.”
I have been hearing that word from doctors forever. I imagine most of us who grapple with serious sickness become impatient with the call for patience. Marwan was not giving up. The Quran speaks to that frustration, he told me. He was aware of my medical history and understood why I sounded exasperated. He quoted a passage that he thought would help put the call for patience into context.
“Do you think that you will enter paradise without such trials as came to those who passed away before you? They experienced suffering and adversity and were so shaken in spirit that even the Prophet and the faithful who were with him cried, ‘When will Allah’s help come.’ Ah, verily the help of Allah is near.” (Quran 2:214)
We were back to Allah and to my feeling that in Islam, as in other faiths, the goodies are reserved for believers. No, Marwan said, and quoted yet another passage he thought would interest me. Or shut me up. “So, verily, with every difficulty, there is ease: Verily with every difficulty there is relief.” (Quran 94:5–6)
If only I could believe that, but I am a tough customer when it comes to believing in the possibility of relief, since I have found so little over the years. Marwan went home that day without quite convincing me. The last passage he had quoted did stay with me, and I was curious about how he thought it might apply to coping with a serious illness.
When I emailed Marwan to ask, he responded: “This verse is part of a chapter of the Quran revealed when difficulties were weighing the Prophet Muhammad down and causing him distress. The words of God comforted and reassured him. Life is not either all good or all bad . . . God reminds us that with hardship comes ease. Hardship is never absolute.”
That is a nice thought, I replied, but I never have seen evidence that good follows bad. In the medical mayhem that has become my life, bad only seems to lead to worse. Such is the nature of a series of illnesses that feed off one another. Many systems in the body can falter. Many are interdependent. Are bad and good really cyclical? I just do not think so.
“The verse does not mean after the bad times come good times,” Marwan explained. “Saying that with hardship comes ease means that there is always something to be grateful for. God gives us strength and patience.” That gratitude is an article of faith, a core belief. Neither Sadiq nor Marwan seem prone to doubt or skepticism. They are smart men, indeed wise, who happen to be absolute believers. They are typical of the 84 percent of Muslims who say they are absolutely certain that God exists, a considerably higher percentage than among Christians or Jews.
Sadiq also showed patience with my endless questions. During one of my later visits to his office, I asked him whether he thought nonbelievers would be cut off from reaping the rewards of a good life. As always, Sadiq had an answer. “While alive, everyone is under the mercy and blessing of Allah, whether you believe in his existence or not. After death, only Allah is the judge and sole jury of whether you are a Muslim or not.” In my book, that is not due process.
As a non-Muslim, I doubt I can count on Allah’s mercy. And that leads me to yet another question. How can Allah or Jehovah, Yahweh or whatever god one worships, sit in judgment of someone of another faith? Or none at all? Am I wrong?
One day I told Sadiq that I didn’t understand what drives a person to worship. What is the payoff for prayer? I asked. “I feel like I am reaching my creator in some way,” he answered, showing his usual forbearance. “I get an inner strength and an energy.” Sadiq paused. “It makes me aware of my connection to God. I feel like I am a better person and a stronger person. The connection gives me hope.”
Sadiq is all-in. I know Christians and Jews who half-worship their god. They attend services a few times a year, mostly on predictable holidays. Otherwise they pack up religion and save it for a rainy day. For the observant Muslims I met, faith seems to be a way of life. Believers take a large view of faith and build it into their daily existence. For them, the currency of the realm is not hope but assumption. Their questions have been answered.
From what Sadiq said, Islam provides what he called a recipe for making this connection. “In the search for God, you follow the recipe,” he told me, “which means, in my case, you fast two days a week and pray up to six or seven times per day.”
Islam seems to be highly doctrinal. The Quran comes across as black and white. And I am uncomfortable with orthodoxy in any form. In Christianity, orthodoxy means, “conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early Church.” I escaped Sunday school decades ago and never had a wish to conform to anything. Why start now?
The idea that hope is owned exclusively by the faithful is one reason so many of us seeking spiritual self-determination find organized religion stifling. I believe hope is a very personal idea that has to grow from within. The search for hope is served by open minds and the willingness to challenge conventional thinking.