00:00I've decided to return to Cairo to try and understand who God is to Muslims.
00:07Islam believes in the same God as Jews and Christians,
00:11but I want to know if there are differences in how they think about the divine.
00:19Historian of Islam, Ahmed Ragab, has brought me to the Al-Hussein Mosque.
00:26And you can just come in here just like a Catholic church, so it's always open to prayer.
00:31Yeah.
00:32Do you want to come in here and just hang out with yourself and Allah?
00:37Yeah, absolutely.
00:39I'm just in time to hear what Muslims believe is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world, the call to prayer.
00:48Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.
01:05For the faithful, the song of the muezzin is a manifestation of God himself.
01:12Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest.
01:21So that's the end of the prayer is by saying As-salamu alaykum, much like you end an encounter with anybody.
01:29And it is because the prayer is essentially a meeting with God.
01:33Like, hey, you know, see you later, nice talking to you.
01:36Exactly. See you the next time.
01:42Prayer to Allah seems like a conversation with a person.
01:48But how do you speak to a person who has no human form?
01:52To help me understand, Ahmed has arranged a meeting with the mosque's spiritual leader, Imam Alamir Mahfuz.
02:02Thank you so much for speaking with us.
02:04Welcome.
02:05In the Christian religion, God is so manifested.
02:11But there is no such thing in Islam.
02:15So who am I talking to? Do I envision anything?
02:29You cannot imagine God. God is beyond imagination.
02:32Whatever you would imagine with our human minds, God would be different from it.
02:38One of the most heartening and beautiful sounds in the world is the Muslim call to prayer.
02:50What was the origin of that?
02:53It is said that one of Muhammad's companions had a vision while he was asleep where he heard this call for prayer.
03:02And then when he woke up, he went to Muhammad and told him about it.
03:05And he made it into this ritual of using it to call for prayers every day, five times every day.
03:13The muezzin, how is he chosen? Do you hold auditions?
03:26There are auditions where they would listen to people and the one who has the best voice would be given the position.
03:35Allah...
03:40I want to do an audition.
03:44You have to work on that.
03:48I have to work on that, okay. I get it.
03:51Mosques are designed to be filled with beautiful sounds and images that delight the senses.
03:59From elaborate architecture to verses of the Quran written in the finest calligraphy,
04:06many Muslims see this beauty as a manifestation of God himself.
04:11Islam sees God in all things that are beautiful.
04:15Because God has no physical form, he can be experienced anywhere with any of the senses.
04:22But these experiences only have aspects of the divine.
04:26God is always more than we can imagine.
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