Holy nights

Sunset tonight marks the beginning of Islam's holy month of Ramadan. Also known as the month of the Qur'an, Ramadan is the month during which Muhammad* (c. 570 – c. 8 June 632) had his first encounter with angel Gabriel in the cave, Hira. 


Islamic scholars assert that at age 40, Muhammad, who had often retreated into the desert caves to pray, received his first of many revelations from God through the angel. His messages were not well received at first. Finally, three years later, despite much public ridicule, he started preaching these revelations publicly. Today Islam is the second largest religion in the world with 1.62 billion followers, comprising about 23 percent of the world's population.


Muhammad's primary and overarching message is "God is One," and only complete "surrender" to God is acceptable to God, adding also that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God.


That first experience in the cave launched a six-month period of daily meetings with angel Gabriel during which he was given messages from the angel to mankind.  

Hira Cave in the Jabal al-Nur mountain, only 3 km. 

from Mecca -  3.5 m long and 1.6 m wide)

The initial rationale for these additional visionary messages was to right some of the Christian Church's errors, which had begun centuries earlier with the suppression of much of the early Christian teachings, the Gnostic gospels and other now lost teachings of the followers of James, rather than Paul, and the final cementing-in-stone of the Roman-sanctioned deviation from the early church at the Council of Nicea in AD 325.  Soon after the fall of the Roman Empire, c. AD 402, western Europe began its decent into the dark ages, a time of raw and bloody prejudice, fear, poverty and corruption on all levels of civilization, including the church.    


Perhaps it was into that dark dismal state of world spiritual poverty, a kind of proverbial Platonic cave, that the angel wanted to reignite the light of spiritual wisdom and restart the mission Jesus had begun and taught in His early teachings, much of which was in the Christian canon but was in greater clarity in the suppressed gospels which would later surface in an Arab desert at Nag Hammadi.

Fast forward 16 centuries and the world still sleeps in darkness, fear, prejudice, corruption and poverty even while the divine light is flickering among us like an Aurora Borealis. Students of Christianity and Islam may find some beautiful similarities as well as some obvious discrepancies between the Gospel and the Qur'an. Human visions or experiences of the divine are filtered through our cloudy and often limited spiritual perception, yet - despite our opaque vision - some of the presence and revelation of the divine in the living grace of God comes through. 


We have to sift and seek discernment and wisdom through all these pearls of wisdom.  The Qur'an, the Gospel, the Torah, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita ( a 700–verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata) and other texts and legends of divine revelation all contain some of the truth. My hope is that we would look at what we share, rather than the differences, what separates and divides our common humanity. I think God is at the center of the wheel of humanity and it is there where I look for God.


Islam's contribution to the world's understanding of God's truth through Muhammad's visions offers an important message for the world today. God is One. We are all part of God. God is love, mercy, charity and power. In prayer - said at least five times a day - we enter into that submission to God, that awareness of the centrality of God in our lives - God and God alone is all that is real and everlasting.


As a friend to a large Muslim family, we often engage in conversations of sharing between our two faiths.  I come from Christianity, enfolding in many respects all various streams of that ancient beauty - despite her historical flaws - and in the spirit of Christ, the transformed Jesus, who called us to love our neighbors as we would love ourselves. Today I am entering into a time of sharing Ramadan with my friends.  How can I understand their passion for Allah unless I also walk with them through their holiest time, their time of remembering who they are in the universality of God's self revelation among us?  


As a Christian, I also say that God is One, that God is all merciful, all loving, all giving, all powerful and that only by complete submission to God, who is in everything and creator of everything,  can I know God. There is no other way. And, in these things I completely share with my Muslim friends their love and submission to God. We can leave all the other details in the wake of the love we share for God. I hope one day they will participate with open hearts and minds in Christian holy days.  I wish we could all learn from each other while retaining our own unique spiritual pathways to God.


But, until then, on this new moon, this beginning of the holy month, all of us who say we love God might join together to remember what we share with one another and put the plough to work loosening the drought-hardened soil of prejudice, and plant new seeds, seeds of life and love and mutuality where fear and greed had stifled what God has planted and always wanted for His people:  brotherhood.
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* Peace be upon him.
**^ "Executive Summary". The Future of the Global Muslim Population. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 22 December 2011.


Photo: Aurora Borealis