A Muslim Wedding
Haj is in the center. You'll notice the African tradition of men holding hands. You'll also notice the beautiful head cloths or caps that many Muslims wear. Haj is our night watchman and we were invited to his wedding.
There was a procession from Haj's place to Auntie's home. Haj was driven by rented car the quarter mile. The wedding was outside and during the service the bride was never seen. Let me give you a bit of culture. In Swahili the verb "to marry" has an active and a passive form. The man marries (active) and the woman is married (passive form). The whole ceremony involved Haj getting married! The young lady (18 years old) was sitting on Auntie's bed during all this time, becoming married to Haj.
This is the core wedding party. Beautiful outdoor setting. Notice the people sitting on the mats don't have their shoes on. Note that the men and the women sit separately. Islam is a highly male dominated religion. The bride is in the house, sitting on Auntie's bed.
Notice the different dress of the ladies. The front row, with their backs to us, are playing hand drums. The sound was much bigger than you'd ever expect. The ladies singing were constantly on their knees but very actively up and down and bowing and.... Our Western tradition of doing most things indoors misses the beauty of God's creation as we tend to surround ourselves with the works of our own hands.
The men are sitting separately. I wonder if you'd be able to find Haj, the groom, if I told you he was between the men with the fancy head clothes, back towards us. Facing him are two men with hands raised in worship to Allah. They led the ceremony and the prayers in Arabic.
After the ceremony Haj and the bridal party enter the Auntie's bedroom and he receives his bride. My wife, Joy, asked, "Is she supposed to be this sad?" "No," they answered, "she's just scared!" We don't know if they'd ever seen each other before. Joy was allowed into the room because she had a camera.
When taken out to the public eye, the wife must be covered from head to foot. She's in black and the ladies are holding a cloth over them as a canopy. The black wrap puckers just a bit over her head and she can see her feet through the opening. I wonder how she's feeling?
There is a sadness about this picture. The image of marriage being the rejoicing time for the woman isn't here. Let me tell you a short story illustrating this sadness. When Joy and I were in Mwanza by Lake Victoria, I was preaching/teaching to a group in the church about Jesus' Second Coming. I likened it to a great wedding feast. I mentioned that it would be a great day! I mentioned how exciting it would be because Jesus would take us, as a groom takes his bride, to live in his father's house. I had my mental pictures and the Tanzanian women had theirs. We didn't match well. Keeping their faces towards me they turn on their benches with their backs to me.
"Holy Spirit, what's going on?" I prayed.
"They think that being taken into Father's House will be like when they were taken to the husband's father's house. They became the lowest of the women and did all the dirty and heavy work!"
I had a lot to explain. Christianity is really a beautiful thing! A loving personal relationship with a loving personal God. And we're permitted to show forth this beauty on the earth. Jesus said that we should pray that things on earth should resemble things in Heaven, not the other way around. Things in Heaven are really fine! Let the fine things become flesh on earth. It's really up to us!
