When Noorah had ended her prayer and resumed the task of belabouring the white camel, she turned to me with a question, "Laish ma tesully anta?" which with Bedouin bluntness means, "You, why don't you pray?" The question set me musing half the night; not, I confess, about my own prayers, but about hers. Why did Noorah pray? What did Noorah pray? Did she understand that
Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of the eye when only God is near,
as well as the dead formalism of the mosque? How could I answer her question in a way that she might well understand? And if hers, too, was a sincere prayer, as I believe,—the prayer of an ignorant child of the desert,—did she pray words or thoughts? What do Noorah and her more than two million Bedouin sisters ask of God five times daily? Leaving out vain repetitions, this is what they say:
"In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate;
Praise be to God who the two worlds made;
Thee do we entreat and Thee do we supplicate;
Lead us in the way the straight,
The way of those whom Thou dost compassionate,
Not of those on whom is hate
Nor those that deviate. Amen."
It is the first chapter of the Koran and is used by Moslems as we use the Lord's Prayer. The words are very beautiful I think, don't you?
Whether Noorah understood what she asked I know not; but to me who saw and heard in the desert twilight, (as under like conditions to you), the prayer was full of pathos. The desert! where God is, and where but for His mercy and compassion death and solitude would reign alone; the desert, a world of its own kind, a sea of sand, with no life in it except the Living One, and over it only His canopy of stars—God of the two worlds! And to that God, than whom there is no other, and whom they ignorantly worship, these sons and daughters of outcast Ishmael bow their faces in the dust and five times daily entreat and supplicate to be led aright in the way of truth.
They ask to be directed into the straight way, but oh how crooked is the way of God which Mohammed taught in his book! Sadder still, what a crooked way it is that the Moslems walk! Impure words, lying lips, hands that steal and feet that run after cruelty—these are what children in Arabia possess. But I dare say that some of them are really sorry for their sins and when they pray like Noorah in the desert they want to have peace and pardon. Are they looking unconsciously perhaps for the footprints in the desert of One who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life"?
Alas, Noorah and her many sisters (your sisters, too) have never seen His beauty nor heard of His love! They do not know that the "way of those whom Thou dost compassionate" is the new and living way through Christ's cross and death. They are ignorant of the awful word, "He that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." Has God the Merciful then not heard Noorah's prayer? Will He not answer it? Is His mercy to these children of Abraham clean gone forever? How long they have waited and how many of the desert children are now sleeping in little desert graves! Do you not think God wants you to carry the gospel to them and send them teachers to learn the way of Jesus?
Think of Noorah's question, "You, why don't you pray?" Think of Christ's words, "Go tell quickly."
"ARABIA THE LOVED."