So this cracker walks into a mosque…

Went to a prayer service at a mosque today.

I was sitting at home, door open, heavy metal blasting, and someone yelled hey while walking by my room on the way to theirs. The girl, an American, doubled back and asked me whether I had any interest in tagging along to a mosque with her tonight. An odd request, to be sure.

Apparently a German girl we both know is taking a class on Islam and Middle Eastern cultures this semester, and apparently tonight the class was meeting out at a mosque in Pasing, a part of the city where our university has a secondary campus. After very briefly deliberating whether I should skip my radioactivity class, I said count me in. (Turns out it was cancelled anyway! Rock!)

We hop on a train to Pasing and meet the German girl there, who inspects us to see whether we’ve donned suitable mosque attire. I’m wearing a metal shirt. Oops. So I zip up my olive green hoodie and say no harm, no foul. I pass inspection!

We almost walked by the mosque, because for one, it didn’t really look much like the Hagia Sophia, which I had inexplicably been expecting in Munich, and also the address was 18a, instead of the 180 we’d been told to find. Tricky. But we found it!

We were a little early, so we wait outside for a few minutes, then in the lobby for a few more, then get welcomed to have a seat in a room with many tables. It looked like a pizzeria or a cafeteria. More on that later.

6:10pm rolls around and we are called upstairs to the prayer room. The honkeys grab some benches from the against the wall and situate ourselves, while the prayer leader readies whatever it was he needed to rock house.

When the prayers began, there was a swift swelling throughout the room, a crescendo that felt not unlike a spirit entering. The acoustics were phenomenal. As the prayer leader sang his undulations, we visiting students sat up very straight on our backless benches. The worshippers knelt, then placed their foreheads on the ground, paused, rocked back onto their knees, stood up, and repeated.

Sometimes, while standing, the worshippers would whisper their prayers quickly to themselves, and the acoustics of the room were such that every whisper was everywhere, even behind us, who were watching the worshippers in front of us. It felt like someone was breathing his fervent prayers in Arabic into my ear. Unreal how utterly cohesive it made the ceremony feel. The prayers were everywhere.

It was nice to get to work on my Arabic, but I couldn’t decipher any of the actual prayers. All I gathered was that every single one, especially those used in the call and response from the prayer leader, began with “God is great, “God is good,” “God is mighty,” “all thanks be to God,” or even a combination of all of them.

I definitely wasn’t able to read the beautiful Arabic calligraphy adorning the tiled walls of the domed-ceiling room, but that made the experience that much more moving. It felt so much like God was there, that it made sense that I couldn’t read His word. He could have shown His face and I wouldn’t even have recognized it as a face.

Did you know that Arabic is often called the language of angels? (Here’s maybe why, it’s kind of interesting.)

After the service, a veteran of the mosque who had arranged the visit with the professor gave us a lesson on Islam. He intended to speak for 15 minutes, allegedly, but it quickly snowballed into an hour. Was quite educational, at least what I understood through his Turkish accent flavored with Bavarian.

We then adjourned and reconvened downstairs, where we resumed our discussions of Islam and what it’s like to be a Muslim in Munich. We were served delicious Turkish tea, much like I’ve had at my favorite döner shop near my place. (I hope that didn’t come off as irreverent in some way.) I learned that the mosque cannot register with the German state as a church, because it’s Muslim. Apparently they’re registered as a “society” or something, but not as a church. A church is Christian, dagnabbit.

I had such a good experience there, I wonder how receptive they would be to my returning there.

Fuck you, NSA. I do what I want.