The Mosque: The Heart of Submission - Hardcover

by Rusmir Mahmutcehajic (Author), William C. Chittick (Foreword by)

The Mosque is an extended meditation on a dimension of Islam unfamiliar to most Western readers. The mosque, Rusmir Mahmut?cehaji?c argues, is not an analogue of the Christian church, not least because in Islam there is no priesthood and no institutionalized hierarchy. Rather, every Muslim is his or her own priest, andmost religious obligations are performed in the home. The function of the mosque is thus dispersed throughout society and, indeed, throughout the natural world as well. The Arabic word from which English mosque derives means literally place of prostration-the place one performs the daily ritual prayer of submission to God, so as to become a guest at the table God has sent down to manifest himself. That table is also the world's mosque, the world as mosque. Among the many tragic victims of the Bosnian genocide are its mosques; more than a thousand were destroyed. A part of the essential fabric of Bosnian life was changed. With this book, Rusmir Mahmut?cehaji?c seeks to rebuild the spirit and majesty of each mosque that was destroyed, the spiritual grace it lent the Bosnian landscape.Beautifully composed, elegantly written and constructed, this is a primary text of Islamic spirituality, by one of the most significant Muslim European voices of our age.

Author Biography

RUSMIR MAHMUTC ' EHAJIC' is Professor of Applied Physics at Sarajevo University, President of the International Forum Bosnia, and former Vice President of the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most recent of his books in English are The Mosque: The Heart of Submission and On Love: In the Muslim Tradition (both Fordham).

William C. Chittick is Professor of Religious Studies at Stony Brook University. His books include Me and Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabrizi.