The Daily Routine: Islam and Moroccan Life

    Coming to this place for the first time, it was immediately apparent that things were different here: religion is everywhere, people’s lives are supremely governed by their faith, and I could feel the impact of the religious routines despite being an outsider in the area. 

This place was Athens, Georgia.

    Growing up in a household that did not contain religion, immersing myself in the world of Southern Christianity for the first time was a never-ending line of to-be-expected culture shocks that were still surprising all the same. Never before had I been surrounded by faith to this extent. I went from being friends with agnostics and some pseudo-Buddhists to now maintaining a circle of people quite devout to their faith, a faith that I always felt like an outsider around. I also began to feel this change in my own activities and routines: all of a sudden, my typical Sunday activities were now limited to a greater extent thanks to the greater acceptance of being closed for the Lord’s Day.  

    Now sitting in a country that has as much reverence for their faith as the South has for its own, I find it interesting to exist around the Islamic practices while maintaining both of these lenses. I must admit that I have never had much exposure to Islam back home, and thus every small nuance has been more of a new revelation for me than it probably should. Nonetheless, one particular part of Moroccan life tied to how strongly their faith connects to their greater identity is the regular calls to prayer that can be heard amongst the typical backing track of the city streets. These Adhan heard from mosques several times a day experience a range of reactions, with some acting more urgently than others. One night while walking Tangier, the nightly Adhan began to project itself throughout the city and I was able to witness first-hand this diaspora of reactions to the call. While most people on the streets at that time continued on with whatever they were doing, many others reacted quite quickly including a small group that bolted past me while actively taking off their shoes. As someone that often will remember the special meaning of Sundays in the South only thanks to a tragically mistimed craving for Chicken Minis, you could probably imagine how different it is to be around a culture where people may design their daily routines around these prayers (“The Call To Prayer”, n.d.). But it is in facing this routine previously unbeknownst to me that I reconsider some of our own regular activities and what that says about what we value: what does it say about our culture that Saturdays in the South are almost as important as Sundays despite the lack of any connection to a religion? So as I plant myself back in that same spot on the couch for the first time this season, the sounds of the Georgia faithful might be joined by echoes from Morocco. 

n.d., The Call To Prayer, Retrieved from https://pluralism.org/the-call-to-prayer