The Kuwait Church Souk
In Kuwait, as in most of the Middle East, in the shopping areas, shops that sell the same kind of goods are grouped together. “Souks” in the traditional shopping areas are small stalls, or open displays, thus all the vegetable vendors are grouped in one area, the perfume dealers in another, the cloth dealers in another. It is handy – when you go looking for something, if one shop doesn’t have it, another surely will.
I remember once looking for masonry screws in Doha; when the first stall didn’t have it, he left his stall – and all his merchandise, unprotected – and took me to his friend, who did have them. Sometimes a stall owner will send a helper to another store, and return with the item you are seeking.
Even some of the large malls seem to group similar vendors in the same spots. In Saudi Arabia, I remember entire floors devoted to shoes, or to abayas, or to accessories, or cloth and tailors.
So it gives me a big grin to go to churchin Kuwait on Fridays.
Friday mornings are sleepy in Kuwait. It’s a day off for the majority of the population, and Moslems go to the mosque for Friday prayers around noon. In the middle of downtown Kuwait, however, even early on a Friday morning, there is a hive of activity – at what we call the “church souk”.
It’s really a very clever concept, and also one that tickes my heart. In one area are many many churches. They are all Christian, and range from congregations of mainly Indian men, to Phillipino families, Nigerians, Chinese, Western, Baptist, Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, at least one congregation which has live musicians playing loud, joyful hymns and then more staid and traditional congregations.
I’ve often wondered how all these different congregations manage to work out a schedule – there must be at least 10 – 12 different meeting locations – for sharing the chapels, for managing the time needed to get people seated, and then to clear up and get people out again. It’s exactly these kinds of little bureaucratic quibblings that can stir up a hornet’s next of problems between “like minded” believers. If there are problems, the church leaders seem to work them out without acrimony. I wonder how they do that?
In my heart, I believe this is how we were meant to worship – and although our worship has different styles, it delights me that we all – hundreds of us, if not thousands – meet in the one area, every Friday, and have the freedom, here in Kuwait, to worship each in our own style. That’s a very powerful freedom.
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How about the freedom *NOT* to worship? do we have that freedom? Or do we have to pretend to worship, so that the rest of our rights are not taken away from us, or worse, so that our heads do not fly off our necks?
This is what Islam is about; if only other Muslim countries would understand Islam better things would have been better around 🙂
Anonymous – I don’t know. You would know the answer to that better than I would . . . I would guess that if you live alone, you have more privacy *NOT* to worship. . . where does the pressure come from? Family? Culture? Who knows whether another is worshiping or not?
True Faith – The same is true with Christianity . . . if we paid more attention to Jesus’ willingness to reach out to those he called “the least,” and less to our tendency to point fingers and think we are the righteous ones, we would be more in tune with the will of God/Allah. 🙂