[31 May 2024]: Jumu'ah ("day of gathering") — Gathering Language

gathering language

May 31, 2024

Bismillah. We begin everything with the name of Allah. We say Bismillah to initiate an act to acknowledge the intention and the ethics we carry with all that follows Bismillah.

This is part of the newsletter’s Jumu'ah ("day of congregation"; gathering) strand.

Why this Jumu'ah series?

What is the Jumu’ah Series? Jumu'ah is when Muslims worldwide physically gather for community or congregational prayer. It occurs at midday every Friday and is followed by a khutbah or sermon from an Imam. I am unable to attend Jumu'ah, so instead of physically gathering, I will share a newsletter each Friday detailing a practice of gathering that does not include physical congregation.

What does the word Jumu’ah mean? Jumu'ah comes from the root jīm mīm ʿayn (ج م ع) occurs 129 times in the Quran, in 11 derived forms. This root means to collect, GATHER UP, to congregate, gather together, to draw together, muster, to reconcile, to connect, combine, to form a connection between, union, to compose, arrange, resolve, or settle something. Al-Jāmi' from the same root is one of the 99 names of Allah. In Fode Drame’s The 99 Name of Allah, he writes: “This gathering not only happens at the physical level but also at the spiritual level. God can unite the spirit of one who is alive, and from that union, a bond is created between them.”

“This gathering not only happens at the physical level but also at the spiritual level.” - Fode Drame

Why are you self-organizing a Jumu’ah tradition that thinks about “gathering” more expansively? Due to repeated violations by members of the community, I am an unmosqued Muslim. It is a slippery slope: avoiding Muslim spaces and gatherings can quickly lead to isolating myself from Islam. I feel safe within Islam; unfortunately, I do not feel safe in the company of some Muslims. Much of spiritual practice involves some level of social engagement. There is much to be said from a scholarly context about the why, but as a self-described “wooh-wooh b***h,” I believe the social aspect has something to do with the cumulative energy of people in close physical proximity.

The question now becomes how one compensates for the deficit in cumulative energy. There is no compensation, but there is an “otherwise possibility,” as Ashon Crawley writes, “and an affirmation of, imagining other modes of social organization, other ways for us to be with each other...enunciation and concept of irreducible possibility…to create change, to be something else…”

That otherwise for me, is by creating individual or bespoke rituals that allow me to attend to the spirit of Jumu'ah while simultaneously grieving the loss of physical elements. I approached this much like designing or gathering a personal curriculum — what were my learning goals, how will I assess to what extent I am meeting my goals, what are my course texts? And more than anything, what is the container?

I approached this much like designing or gathering a personal curriculum — what were my learning goals, how will I assess to what extent I am meeting my goals, what are my course texts? And more than anything, what is the container?

What are other ways to think about gathering?

What are these more expansive registers of “gathering”? As she eases into her thesis in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986), Ursula Le Guin offers the word bottle “in its older sense of container in general, a thing that holds something else.” When we gather, we create a context for something to hold something else — an occasion. Le Guin gifts us something else:

She suggests that gathering is the “human thing to do” — the gesture of noticing something and desiring to hold - touch - smell - see on more than one occasion; a thing worth repeated engagement needs to be captured, even if momentarily, only to later be released through a cycle of ruin and decay. There is a desire behind the gathering — a desire for things to hold a certain cohesion or affinity. In designing my own gathering ritual, I thought about a few different registers:

One might say that the mosque, room, or other architectural structure that forms a perimeter around worshipers is the literal container — matter holding other matter — and thus, the gathering’s dominant organizing logic is geographical and physical constraints.
Someone else might take suggest a more aggressively temporal route and suggest that the prescribed time period — that period hemmed in on both sides by the relative concept of the number of minutes in “noon” is the container — and thus, the gathering’s main organizing logic is not physical togetherness as much the perception of durational synchronicity.
And maybe some of my other “wooh-wooh b***hes” might consider that the collective choice to attend prayers creates a conceptual and thus immaterial container to host the Jumu'ah experience — the collective energy creates a bond that holds the space — and thus gathering’s organizing logic is located across material and immaterial conditions.
Gathering as Research — Octavia Estelle Butler refers to gathering when she discusses her “primitive hypertext”.
Gathering as Kinship Building — Mindy Seu says that gathering is “the tender and thoughtful collection of goods for your kin, and a moment for reunion, for celebration, and for introspection around those goods.”

Jumu'ah prayer is a gathering, holding, and containing — bringing dispersed x in a collective context, even temporarily.

So what is the “gathering” ritual this week?

= I GATHER ~language~

I was immediately drawn to creating a congregation or collection of disparate text as a meditative starting place. What texts could I bring into physical and conceptual proximity to create a spiritual experience worth repeating?

Gathering texts in the form of books seems easy:

Are books not sacks with letter sacks inside of word sacks inside of sentence stacks inside of paragraph sacks inside of page sacks inside of chapter sacks, inside of inside of inside of….something like Matryoshka nesting dolls, but not hollow — just liquid displacing other liquid? Language as engorged sacks inside of other engorged sacks — sacks inside of sacks — or as Le Guin says: “I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings.”