We had just been to visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. For many it is the St Peter's of Islam, a stunningly beautiful building of great simplicity and complex calligraphy. As we put on our shoes in the courtyard outside Said, a French journalist of Algerian descent was troubled. Our guide ushered us toward a nearby mausoleum.
It was March of last year, and we were among a party of 12 journalists visiting mainly biblical sites in that as yet vastly undiscovered country from which no traveller returns unenlightened. Said hadn't been inside a mosque for 15 years. As such, he was typical of the group when it came to religious observance. Italians, Hungarians, Spanish, French, a Dane, a Swede, myself - our interest was mainly in the socio-archaeological rather than the theological. But the roots of our Western secularism were beginning to show.
As we turned a corner outside the mosque en route to our new destination, I mocked Said about his unusual silence. With the others out of earshot, he said: "Patrick as he insisted on calling me, I want to pray." Any temptation to laugh at this incongruity was dispelled by his obvious seriousness.
He was bothered about trying to explain his feelings to the others, and not least because he was Muslim. If that was what he wanted to do then pray he should, I insisted. We went back inside the mosque.
Sitting on mats in the blue-tinged gloom,Said prayed; and I just waited, admiring that magnificent creation but feeling no sense of the sacred. However, I knew what he was experiencing - that presence which passeth all understanding. That which occasionally, unexpectedly lifts the heart and mind into the realm of awe and unfamiliar humility. I did not mind that I could not sense it there in the dark quiet of the Blue Mosque.
Being a creature of time and space, I realised that was a function of my own formation. Just as he probably could not have such an experience in a tiny oratory on a Greek island, in the gilded splendour of a South American cathedral, or in my own parish church at home in Ballaghaderreen with its myriad gentle ghosts and memories going back beyond recall.
It can be such a deep, personal, unpredictable thing, and it was at that level I understood Said felt driven by a wholly surprising impulse. The impulse simply to pray without question. When he felt ready, we left the mosque and arrived at our bus before the others returned. We hadn't even been missed.
Prayer is very important for the people of Islam. It is totally integrated into their lives because, unlike the experience of the West, they do not distinguish between the temporal and the spiritual. God is an ever-present constant. They pray five times a day, facing towards Mecca, birthplace of Mohammed. They pray in public and in private, without embarrassment. In Istanbul and other Turkish cities, it was not unusual to see men unroll prayer mats at midday or in mid-afternoon in parks or any vacant space and get on their knees.
Even as the Pope said Mass in Bethlehem in March last year, he was interrupted by a taped call to prayer from a mosque on the square yards away. This was hastily discontinued, to the amusement of everyone present, not least Yasser Arafat, who sat in a front-row seat at the Mass.
For an Irish person, the most remarkable characteristic of Islam is its similarity to pre-Vatican II Catholicism in this country. Anyone who can recall what it was like in 1950s/1960s Ireland - which in some parts of the country continued well into the 1980s - will recognise the same simplicities. There is the same uncomplicated, not to say uncompromising, code.
Absolute certaintities, with an emphasis on subjecting the individual will to the greater good, of all. Of God. The concentration on the next life, as opposed to this one. The denigration of the material, often at the expense of the flesh. The perennial struggle with the body, which is generally treated as inferior. There is also an old courtesy between people, such as was a particular feature of rural Ireland. A sort of formal distance rooted in respect.
And the ever-present consciousness of God, such as prompted Irish people in the past to drop everything at noon and 6 p.m. to say the Angelus. An awareness that prompted greetings such as "God bless the work" to people in the fields, or even "God bless the cow" to the man or woman milking.
And there was also the common attitude of old-time Irish Catholicism and Islam to women. She had her place - in the home. Her primary role was to have and rear children. She kept her hair covered at worship and sat separately from men. Her dress was a matter of concern, as she was seen as an ever-present potential distraction for men from the things of God. It was a distraction which, by the attention it inspired, could also take her own mind from the things of God.
Both religions claim that women are theologically equal to men in all things, even while they are not allowed conduct prayer/worship. But none of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of Islam were a feature of that old-time Irish Catholicism. Nor could such cruelty be said to be a feature of the various manifestations of Protestant fundamentalism either.
Today, interpretations which allowed for the killing of men and women in breach of the law of Islam, or the chopping off of limbs, is condemned as wrong by many Muslims, particularly in the West. And more and more Muslims live in the West, where Islam is one of the fastest-growing religions. There are an estimated 12.5 million Muslims in Europe, including one million in Britain; six million in North America (more than 200 were killed in the Twin Towers and 14,500 are in the military); 1.2 million in South America; and more than 100,000 in Australia and New Zealand. Elsewhere, 625 million Muslims live in Asia, 270 million in Africa and 39 million in the former USSR. In all, it is estimated there are over a billion Muslims among the world's peoples.
One of the West's best-known Muslims, Yusuf Islam, better known as pop singer Cat Stevens, said, following the attack on the US, that the Koran specifically declared: "If anyone murders an (innocent)" his parenthesis person, it will be as if he has murdered the whole of humanity." He continued: "Some extremists take elements of the sacred scriptures out of context. They act as individuals, and when they can't come together as part of a political structure or consultative process, you find these dissident factions creating their own rules, contrary to the spirit of the Koran."
And where strict, literal enforcement of an interpretation of Islam is concerned, such as is found under the Taliban in Afghanistan, he quoted Mohammed: "Ruined are those who insist on hardship in faith" and "A believer remains within the scope of his religion as long as he doesn't kill another person illegally." Muslim leaders have condemned the notion that suicide bombers are martyrs in Islam as an aberration of the law and have said that, rather than expecting the reward of heaven and 72 virgins on arrival, they are damned.
Islam (meaning "submission") was founded in the seventh century by Mohammed. He was born in Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) in 570AD and received his first divine messages, through the angel Gabriel, when he was about 40. These continued for the rest of his life and became the Koran (or Qur'an), not one dot of which has been changed as, in Muslim belief, it is the direct and final word of God to humanity.
Muslims also believe it completes revelation as begun in the Old and New Testaments, while also correcting misinterpretations of those by Jews and Christians. For instance, they believe Jesus is second in importance as a prophet to Mohammed, and consider the teaching that he is the son of God a heresy. They do, however, believe he was born of a virgin, Mary, who is venerated in Islam, and that he ascended into heaven. They do not believe he was crucified and rose from the dead.
Muslims (those who practise Islam) may not eat pork, drink alcohol, or consume the blood or flesh of any animal which is not slaughtered in a prescribed manner. Then there is the obligation "to strive in the way of the faith", known as jihad, commonly misunderstood in the West as an obligation to undertake so-called "holy war". Muslims insist the "struggle" referred to is spiritual, not martial.
The religion is based on observance of five "pillars". Believers must first express their faith publicly by declaring "there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet". Secondly, they must pray five times daily, at sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and at night. Thirdly, they must give alms to help the needy. Fourthly, they must fast during daylight hours in the month of Ramadan (not unlike old-fashioned Lent; it marks the first divine revelation to Mohammed in 610AD and, like Lent, is a moveable "feast"). Finally, those who can must undertake the haj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in their life.
To assist with the second pillar in Muslim countries, the call to prayer issues through speakers at the top of minarets attached to mosques five times a day. Few things are as impressive as hearing that tide of sound spread across great cities like Istanbul or Cairo, particularly from vantage points high above the squiggle of streets below. Prayer can be said anywhere, but on Friday believers go to the mosque.
By 634AD, Islam had spread to all of Arabia and, by 642, to all of Egypt. As those dates suggest, it spread rapidly, sometimes accompanied by force, not because of anything inherent in the religion itself - apart from the interpretations of some fanatics - but because of the temporal ambitions of adherents. In many ways, its spread then was not unlike that of Catholicism in South America under the Spanish Conquistadors.
By 1098, when it controlled Jerusalem and much of the Holy Land, it had gone too far for Christendom. Orthodox Christians in the East were deeply anxious as it encroached and so appealed to Rome. Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade and the Crusades continued until the 16th century, supported by nearly every pope, and future saints such as Thomas Aquinas, Bernard of Clairvaux, even Francis of Assisi, as well as five general councils of the Church.
Over those centuries, the Crusaders slaughtered all before them, including the inhabitants of Christian Constantinople, leaving a legacy of distrust towards the West that persists to this day. As we in Ireland know well, traditional societies have long memories.
In Iran last November, a man in Teheran spoke to me of the primitive barbarity of the Crusaders, who didn't know how to use knives and forks, who desecrated mosques and cities of great beauty, and who "smelled".
As the Crusades progressed in Persia, they built in the desert the still-beautiful city of Esfahan, while in Shiraz the great poets Hafez and Sa'di wrote lyrical, elegant, passionate verses still venerated by the Iranian people. A visit to the tomb of Hafez last November also coincided with the arrival of two busloads of women in black chadors. They were wives, mothers, sisters of men killed in the Iran/Iraq war, brought south from the Caspian Sea area by the government to see the tomb of the much-loved poet. It was a special treat.
Writing in The Irish Times in August last year, in an essay entitled "A Time for East and West to Join Forces" (reproduced in the book Christianity, recently published by Veritas), Dr Zaki Badawi, who represented Britain's Muslims at the inter-faith service for victims of the attack on the US in London's St Paul's Cathedral last month, spoke of the obstacles to such a coming together.
There was the memory of the Crusades and the persecution of Muslims in Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. "On the other hand, Christians still subconsciously hear the war drums of the Turkish armies at the gates of Vienna," he said, referring to the Ottoman empire and the erroneous western understanding that it was Islam on the march.
The Ottoman religion was Islam, but it was an empire within which Christians and Jews practised their religions in comparative peace and were shown far greater tolerance than Jews and Muslims in Christian Europe. But it was fundamentally an empire, not a theology/ideology on the rampage.
Another obstacle to a coming together, identified by Badawi, was the Muslim view of the western world as having "in modern times imposed its will on all Muslim nations, plundering their resources, deciding their destiny, violating their laws and traditions and sometimes imposing upon them unpopular rulers". A history of Iran in the latter half of the 20th century is a good example of what Badawi was referring to.
Then there was the stance of the West in relation to the Palestinians. "This is regarded by the world of Islam as a complete negation of moral and religious principles," he said.
At the Dehaishe refugee camp near Bethlehem last year, I met a man who had been born there 37 years before. He had been reared there, educated there, and was then helping the UN run the camp. His family had been resident there since they were displaced from their village in southern Israel in 1948. His father had died in 1999, but the Israelis wouldn't allow the family to bury his remains in the home village. His mother was in her mid-80s, and her only remaining concern was that she be buried at home. He was not hopeful it would be done.
They were among 10,000 people in that camp still paying the price of the West's guilt at its persecution of the Jewish people over two millennia, culminating in the Nazi concentration camps. This guilt is fully exploited by Zionist elements who "see the Palestinians as a cumbersome problem to be disposed of in the manner of the genocide practises of the past", as Badawi put it.
Generally, he saw the sense of superiority held by each over the other, as yet a further obstacle to their coming together. The West saw itself as culturally superior, while Islam saw itself as religiously superior, he said. Indeed the West, particularly in the area of human rights, does tend to look down on the Muslim world, not least where women are concerned.
In Afghanistan, they are covered from head to toe and have few or no rights. In Iran, they may have the same rights as men and hold most offices of state, but they must also still wear the chador, undertake responsibility for the home and never shake a man's hand in greeting. In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, women may not vote, hold public office or drive and, as in Iran, may not sing or dance.
Badawi acknowledges this. He points out that Islam revolutionised the status of women at the beginning, but that now "not many Muslim societies live up to the high standard enshrined in the Holy Koran and the Prophet's tradition". So it is something of a surprise to find a woman such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, coming to Islam's defence on this issue and human rights generally. In another essay written for this newspaper last year, and also published in Christianity, she points out that "the principles of Islam relating to human dignity and social solidarity are a rich resource from which to face the human rights challenges of today. Islamic concern with human dignity is old; it goes back to the very beginning". It behoves us all to remember such words, to work at dispelling our - frequently unconscious - prejudices, and learn the actual truth about Islam and its history.
Similarly, the Muslim world should inform itself accurately about the West. Increasingly the peace of the world rests on the quality of our knowledge about each other.
To find out more about Islam, Discover Islam is available from the Islamic Centre, 163 South Circular Road, Dublin 8 (ifi@indigo.ie or 01-453 3242). The centre also supplies, free of charge, English versions of the Koran.
Some further reading:
Them; Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson (Picador, £16 in UK);
Unholy Wars by John K Cooley, and Reaping the Whirlwind by Michael Griffin (both Pluto Press).factory