Many moons ago, as a new ‘revert’ to Islam, I found myself sat in the passenger seat of a Somali friend’s car, being ferried through a misty night in South London, searching for a mosque in which we could perform the Ramadan night prayer. After breaking our fast in a restaurant with other acquaintances from the university Islamic society, harmless conversations had consumed the precious Ramadan hours, and, in an attempt to silence the sense of guilt that always accompanies missing tarawih, we were intent upon catching the last few units of the prayer. We usually prayed in the shell of an unfinished basement mosque between London Bridge and the Elephant and Castle, which was in the process of being built by the local Bangladeshi community. The inhospitable winter weather made praying in that tarpaulin-protected concrete enclosure rather uncomfortable, and, along with the fact that the restaurant had been located deeper into the South London urban jungle than we usually trekked, my friend had decided to explore a different mosque in the vicinity.
We pulled up outside a structure that was evidently built as a church. Its current function was indicated by a rudimentary, hand-painted sign attached to the rusting metal railings that separated the building’s grounds from the main road. The sign read ‘Peckham Mosque’. There was not much activity outside, which was unusual for a mosque in Ramadan. Having pushed open the heavy, ornate wooden doors and removed our shoes in a bitterly cold reception area, we stepped through another set of doors into a different world. I was first hit by the heat. The mosque was extremely warm, sweaty even. But my attention was quickly stolen by a number of curious sights. The mosque seemed remarkably colourful, vibrant, dare I say attractive. The walls were decorated with perfectly painted Arabic calligraphy, and multicoloured woven tapestries were hung in various positions around the prayer hall. My heart smiled. In the centre of the hall stood a relatively small circle of men, numbering no more than 20. They were wearing quite unusual clothes, a curious mix of long shirts and waistcoats, baggy trousers, and the most outlandish pointed hats poking out from beneath enormous green, red, or white turbans. The men were singing. Some were clapping. Some were frantically but gracefully rocking backwards and forwards in a standing position, pulling their fists up to their shoulders as they rose, almost as if they were lifting invisible dumbbells. They seemed to be enjoying it, if the screams and exclamations were anything to go by. The men were a mixed bunch, evidently not of a single ethnic community, and their long beards and distinctive appearance injected a sense of the mystical into the room, something I had only previously experienced while reading The 1001 Nights.
It was truly a mesmerising sight. So entrancing in fact that it took my friend and I a number of minutes to come to our senses. We were young and naive, pickled in an unthinking Wahabi vinegar that cared not for nuance, diversity, or purity. Reeling from a momentary defeat, my nafs quickly regained the reins, and rushed my friend and I away from this circle of Allah’s remembrance, back into the freezing winter night, the streetlights, the world, where it felt most in control.
“What was that?” my friend asked me.
“No idea.” I said truthfully, struggling to instantaneously reconcile the stern-faced, clinical Islam that had been taught to me with the joyous scene that had just unfolded before my eyes.
“They were Shi’a.” my friend announced with a substantial serving of animosity, and with that, turned on the engine, and drove us away into the darkness of the night.
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