Prayer, biculturalism, and the value of religion

It took me 23 years, but I’m finally starting to feel that I’m having authentic and meaningful experiences on the prayer mat, so that prayer has now become what I always wanted it to be: a time for upbuilding and proper orientation towards life.

Maybe it was the way I was taught, or my disposition as a kid who was being taught, but Islamic prayer was always been such an intimidating thing to me, inspiring a constant low-grade feeling of anxiety. I remember, as a middle schooler at the local mosque, being intensely preoccupied with pronouncing the verses correctly and in the right order, lest my prayer be “disqualified” by God (an actual religious concept in Islam, and one that once took up a large space in the real estate of my mind).

Now, as I start to let those constraints and trepidations go, prayer is becoming a real source of reflection and development. When I approach the prayer mat, whether in the early morning as I anticipate my day or late at night when I look back on it, I genuinely feel that I’m standing in the presence of an absolutely sublime, unknowable creator, towards whom my principal duty is to present myself transparently and with full accountability. And when I get into that state, what results is the most honest self-dialogue I have ever known: a dialogue that’s perfectly balanced, proceeding perfectly between the…