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it was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr<\/i>, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi<\/i>, the mosque of the prophet, in medina<\/p>\nit was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr<\/i>, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi<\/i>, the mosque of the prophet, in medina<\/p>\n
the elderly couple seemed iranian, they were both easily over seventy years old — the man held his wife’s arm and guided her to the ladies’ entrance to the actual masjid<\/i> itself<\/p>\n
unbeknownst to him, he violated the sacrosanct border of properness and, sitting in the shadow of a little outpost (wherein was drinking water from the holy well of zamzam<\/I> and seating for several — access limited the employees of the “custodian” of the two holy mosques), the arab guard barked out at him: “hajji! ya hajji!<\/I>”<\/p>\n
in his aggressive arabic, he went on to explain at the old man that beyond this point no male may pass — there were still fifty or so metres to the actual entrance of the building, an oppressive fifty metres over which women dressed in their black, synthetic abayas<\/i> had to tread under the glaring heat and beat of the sun<\/p>\n
the man tried to argue back, in his broken arabic and farsi, that he simply wanted to guide his wife to the building and give her guidance on how to perform the ziarat<\/i>, paying respects to the prophet mohammed<\/p>\n
of course, he would not be able to pass despite all his feeble protests, and so he told his wife he would wait for her, outside<\/p>\n
many laypersons were standing in the shade of the outpost, the real estate was choice, but there was none for the old man, and so he leaned against the outpost with the sun beating down on him<\/p>\n
one young man, seeing this, discreetly stepped out of the shade and into the sun, and the weak old man took his place — the unspoken thanks met an unspoken welcoming<\/p>\n
then a young policeman with a pious scrabble of a beard, having just taken a sip of the cool refreshing and spiritually rewarding zamzam<\/i>, emerged from the outpost with a folding chair which he placed directly in front of the old man<\/p>\n
forgive him for thinking it was meant for him — it wasn’t<\/p>\n
the policeman forced the man out of the shade and took up his place, reclining on the plastic, green cushion of the chair, exchanging platitudes and anecdotes with the religious guard whose duty it was to condemn young and old alike to stay outside of the ladies’ section and to stand in the blistering heat without any respite from the oppression of the sun<\/p>\n
the young man who had just, moments ago, given up his place in the shade to the old man looked on and shook his head<\/p>\n
here, in the city of the prophet, madinat-un-nabi<\/i>, madinat-ul-munawwarah<\/i>, the enlightened city, a simple, elementary and well-known hadith<\/i> of the prophet flashed in his mind:<\/p>\n you should not be sitting down while an elder is standing up<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n clearly, he thought to himself as the rage built up inside, inhabiting the enlightened city is not a guarantee of your own state of manners<\/p>\n as is most often the case, the would-be guardians of islamic behaviour are principally the ones who detract from it<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" it was barely half an hour before the afternoon prayers, asr, and the unforgiving arabian sun beat down on the sprawling complex of the masjid-un-nabi, the mosque of the prophet, in medina the elderly couple seemed iranian, they were both easily over seventy years old — the man held his wife’s arm and guided her […]<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,3,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nomes.malcolm-x.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}