Becoming Aware of Rhythms in the World


 In demonstrating that becoming aware of rhythms of the world is a way of adding to your rhythmic knowledge, we will have an observation of Islamic culture and society, the rhythm of Islam weaving through the lives of Muslim women and men. Examples of the rhythmic nature of Islam can be seen in all aspects of Muslims’ everyday lives. Muslims break their Ramadan fast upon the sun setting, and they receive Ramadan by sighting the new moon. Prayer for their dead is by noon and burial is before sunset. This is space and time in Islam, moon, sun, dawn and sunset are all part of a unique and unified rhythm, interweaving the sacred and the ordinary, nature and culture in a pattern that is characteristically Islamic.

There is no doubt that a Muslim feels and lives Islam and experiences time and space in interweaving rhythm. This is what immigrants in an adopted homeland must miss Islam’s rhythm. They might be missing it despite regular praying at home and in mosque, fasting, participating in Islamic community life. Even though time does not constitute one of the human senses like smell or taste, it certainly seriously experienced. Muslims experience time intimately and move comfortably in and out of Muslim space. Here in the States, in most schools, when students are given a break during class they would go to vending machines and bring back with them sodas and fast food. 

For example, Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif grew up in a culture in Egypt that humanizes time and collectivizes space. Even after several decades living in England, she could not locate the familiar markers of comfort in this different environment, one that mechanizes time and individuates space. Humans have been imposing spatial temporal order on the universe and on themselves for thousands of years. The order of the cosmos is conceptual. Human culture emerges as the great processor of time, as people sensed the orderly biorhythms of natural time, the beat of the tides, the coming of the rains, the swarming of worms, the movements of the moon. Our mechanical way of repatterining time has led to a way of knowing it that is totally divorced from the real world.

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