the Islamic call to prayer being shouted from a mosque in Turkey.
It completely fascinated him.
Thirty years later he would hear the call again and it would change his life.
When Bentz first heard the call as a boy, his family was living in Turkey where his father worked as a geologist. He would see the muezzin
(a man who calls Muslims to prayer) climb to the top of the minaret at the nearby mosque and recite the adhan at least five times a day.
“I was mesmerized,” Bentz said. “It was so beautiful.” Back then the muezzin called out the adhan in a loud voice. Today, the call is amplified with microphones and loudspeakers.
From the pulpit: Hope, light and love our common values
Martin Bentz
We are in the season of hope. Our Jewish brothers and sisters have just completed the holy week of Hanukkah honoring the trials and resilience of their faith, lighting the Menorah each evening. Christians are only a few days away from celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, the Light of the world. During the week following Christmas, African Americans of all faiths renew their commitment to universal principles rooted in African tradition, lighting symbolic candles over seven days.
The principles of Kwanzaa are not antithetical to Muslim tradition. Africans, brought to the Americas as slaves, were either Muslim or animist. A few of the Kwanzaa principles are derived from the Muslim traditions they carried with them, with some of the words in Swahili the same in Arabic. One of them is “nia,” or purpose. Muslims express their “nia” or intention before performing prayers, or fasting or giving