Huff Post: One of my friends undertook a lengthy and difficult journey this week, from Tennessee to Cincinnati, there to Frankfurt, to Istanbul, to Jordan, then a 14-hour wait at a checkpoint, before arriving in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem he headed straight for the Aqsa mosque at 3 a.m.
Why would a person spend close to 70 hours getting from Tennessee to a small mosque in an occupied section of Jerusalem? After all, isn’t God everywhere? To answer that question is to understand how Muslims are not merely monotheists, but devotees of the One God who seek to follow through the path of Muhammad to meet God face to face.
This week is a special one for Muslims, one in which we celebrate the most potential spiritual paradigm in Islam: the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to meet God face to face, and the choice to return home so that other beings can have their own ascension.
From Mecca to Jerusalem, and Meeting With the Prophets
The beginning of the Prophet’s ascension narrative start out quite ordinary: Muhammad had gone back to the Ka’ba to perform the night time prayer. He loved the solitude and peaceful nature of the Ka’ba at nighttime, and often used it as a time and place of retreat. This night, though, he would be visited by the angel Gabriel, who was to be his companion on an extra-ordinary journey. However, rather than being a straight journey “heavenward” from Mecca, as it were, the journey first goes to Jerusalem. Thus before the heavenly ascension proper (mi’raj) from Jerusalem to Heaven, there is first the night journey (isra) where Muhammad is taken from Mecca to Jerusalem. The isra emphasizes the commonality of the revelations of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses, thus reiterating the sanctity of all Abrahamic faiths. It was Jerusalem that served as the first direction of prayer for Muslims, before the decision to change to Mecca. The choice of Jerusalem as the initial site, as well as the ultimate redirection to Mecca indicates both the shared origin of Islam as part of the Abrahamic family as well as its own particularity.