Exquisite Faith

Jamkaran mosque

Qom, Iran, is a world apart from the rest of the country. The world center for Shi’a education, Qom is populated by seminarians and clerics; devotion to study of Qur’an is the way of life. The fundamentalist clerics who have ruled Iran since the revolution were all educated in Qom and Ayatollah Khomeini based his opposition to the Pahlavi dynasty from there.

The women of Qom do not openly challenge the covering that is a mark of the Islamic Revolution as they do in Tehran and Isfahan where most women wear their hijab on the back half of their head. In fact, the women of Qom almost all wear the more conservative chador that covers from head to toe.

I was worried that we would not make it to Qom, and I don’t think that many of my traveling companions shared my desire to go to the world’s most important center for Shi’a study. It was the last full day that we would spend in Iran and there was hope that we might have an opportunity to meet with former president Mohammad Khatami. But as we had already learned all too well, simply because our hosts told us it might happen, there wasn’t that great of a chance that it would actually happen. So, I and a few others lobbied for the opportunity to go to Qom. It was not too far from the Imam Khomeini International Airport, and there were religious studies professors there waiting to meet with us.

Center for Religious Studies

The visit to Qom’s Center for the Study of Religions was not a disappointment, even though just about every member of our delegation was completely exhausted and looking forward to the end of the day when we would board the Lufthansa jet for our trip home. There was the obligatory tea with the professors telling us of the importance of the center for the study of the world’s religions. The scholars on Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism were present and they told us about the study of religions in an Islamic context, and they did a good job at dodging our group’s rather political questions. Then I got to spend some time in the library -- this was why I really wanted to visit Qom. Two students worked with me to try to find the texts I was looking for, but after a very short time, our host came and told me that the bus would soon be leaving for a mosque.

I said my goodbyes to my new friends. (Mahmoud was studying Christianity and he asked if he might be able to email questions to me. I said “Of course.”) Exchanged email addresses and they walked me to the bus, saying goodbye with the traditional three-cheek kiss.

As I was the last one on the bus, there was already discussion about our next stop. One of our delegation members was reading the description of the mosque to the group from her Lonely Planet guide. She tells us that the Jamkaran Mosque is revered as a very holy place in Shi’a Islam and it is said that the Imam Mahdi (the twelfth Imam, or the messianic figure of Shi’a Islam) is said to have visited the site on which the mosque sits. Millions of faithful visit the mosque each year, and on Tuesday nights as many as 300,000 will visit for prayers.

Hill mosque

Driving the back roads out of eastern Qom, we see incredible mosques along the way. Each one raises the hope that it must be our destination. One mosque -- all lit in green -- is on top of a very high hill. As the sun is about to set, we see groups of people (including women in chador) climbing the rather steep trail to reach the mosque. But no, the bus keeps going past this, and several other spectacular sites, until we see a huge mosque on the horizon. As we get closer, it looms above the landscape and we can see that there is new construction for an even larger set of minarets and a massive dome. This is it - the Jamkaran Mosque.

As we disembark, we are greeted by Afzali, our guide. We are told to stay with the guide and not to wander off. As we note the size of the complex and the crowds of people, no one has any desire to break away from the group, and we comply (albeit for the first time all trip).

The call to prayer has begun. It is a beautiful lilting chant. With this aural backdrop, Afzali tells us briefly about the history of the Jamkaran Mosque.

He also tells us that the mosque is a popular spot for the faithful because their prayers are answered here. “If on your first visit to Jamkaran, you ask for something with a pure and faithful heart, Allah will grant it to you.”

Soon we are walking across the great complex to the front of the mosque and the chant on the loud speakers changes to the takbir, stated as “Allah Akbar” (God is the greatest). There are two voices: a tenor repeats the takbir and a baritone is making longer prayers. The women are separated from us and taken to their own entry into the mosque. We sit on the steps and remove our shoes. Then we are ushered into the great mosque.

The Jamkaran is already full and I see the origin of the two voices for the first time. Two men stand at podiums at the front of the gathering of men. At the entry, there is a large vat of the stones that Shi’a faithful put on the ground in front of them as they pray. We know from previous discussions that this is a reminder that we are from dirt -- a close connection to our ashes on Ash Wednesday.

There is a large partition down the middle of the mosque and we know that the women are on the other side; this experience of prayer is the first time that I have had a single-sex religious experience (there was the Orthodox Synagogue in Tehran, but the women were not out of sight, simply sitting on the other side of the room). To see a room full of what must have been about 2,000 faithful men moves me in a way I had not expected. I long to participate in the prayers, but instead I sit with the rest of the men as a religio-tourist in this deeply spiritual place. Later, I find out that the women actually participated in the prayers. One of the women in our delegation tells me that for the first time she welcomes wearing the chador because it takes her from the communal to the personal as she knelt down becoming wrapped in a cocoon of prayer.

We were told that we could not take photos or video inside the mosque, but I ask our guide if I can record audio. This is not a problem so I set up my microphone and record the prayers (and the coughing of our government guide). As I listen closely to what I am recording, I am struck by a few things. In the middle of the sea of men is a man who is trying to calm his toddler-aged son. The child is crying, and his loving father has stopped the motions of standing and bowing and kneeling so that he can sit and bounce his son on his knee. No one seems fazed by the crying. Then I am struck by the sound of the takbir. In a strange way, there are parts of it that sound like the chanting of the Gospel. It doesn’t seem foreign to me whatsoever. I am struck by the different levels of vocal participation of the men during the prayers. It reminds me of the Prayers of the People, and how different people respond to the opportunity to make their petitions out loud. Some mutter, some speak in audible tones. As I look around, I am struck at how the others in my group are completely mesmerized by the moment.

Then I decide to turn off my reporter mode and simply be in the moment. I stop, sit quietly, and begin to go into a trance. The previous two weeks come rushing over me like a waterfall of experiences. Meeting with Armenian Christians in Tehran and Isfahan, attending Orthodox Synagogue in Tehran,  walking along the muraled wall outside the former American Embassy, listening to Persian sitar on the street outside the Tehran Conservatory of Music, interviewing a religion writer for the Tehran Times, sipping tea in a carpet shop in a bazaar in Isfahan, striking up conversations with clerics on the street, meeting Ahmadinejad’s spiritual advisor, sipping soup in the world’s oldest hotel, walking the streets of an ancient Zoroastrian village, visiting Khomeini’s home, touching the tomb of Hafez - all come rolling over me in a wash of experience like an ablution from all of the assumptions that I arrived in Iran with.