On Prayer and Proxemics

How does our relationship with God affect our spatial navigation?

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the term social distancing has come into use. We all automatically space out about six feet away from one another to reduce risk of infectious spread. It is interesting how quickly one perceives the subtle change in this distance between oneself and another. I remember a colleague of mine saying that she felt a woman jostle too close to her in a queue, so she coughed loudly to remind her to stay six feet apart. Or another example: I was watching the film The Verdict the other day, and I kept having to correct myself that the jurors were not sitting too close to one another.

Social distancing has made me start thinking about how we as Muslims navigate space. Proxemics is the study of how humans navigate spaces with other people as a form of nonverbal communication. The founder of the term, Edward Hall, originally defined four types of so-called proxemic zones: intimate, personal, social and public distances. Each zone (an object of study in and of itself) is a spatial area of comfort depending on our level of relationship with one another. For instance, social distances might be waving at your new neighbour raking his lawn: you get close, but not too close. A public distance would be the distance within which we all comfortably stand with one another. Of course, such distances are affected by context, necessities, and so on. 

One obvious difference between Muslims and many other people is how sex officially factors into our interpersonal space. I am sure that many others can relate that with the pandemic ushering out handshakes, there is one less thing to worry about within male-female interactions in professional interactions. Perhaps it is just me, but when I go out with mixed-gender friends to a restaurant who are not Muslim, I have to quickly plan how to sit in order to reduce my proximity to the men in the group. (In a 2x2 table, this is hard!) Among other Muslims, such a calculation is usually mutual and expected. Among non-Muslims, I sense that I am usually the only one who has such a consideration.

What interests me about this topic in relation to being Muslim, however, is not the issue of gender interactions. Rather, it is this: as Muslims, there is always another "person" in the equation. We are never truly alone. How do we communicate nonverbally with God, or how do Islamic cultural and religious norms relate to our spatial navigation vis-a-vis God? (I mean this, of course, conceptually or in one's imagination--God is not physically in any space. I also use the term "person" not to mean "human being," but to refer to beings with personality and intelligence.)

Islamically, there are many religious habits that deal exactly with our use of space and interpersonal communication. We are constantly navigating space in a way that directly links us to God. For instance, God states in the Holy Qur'an (13:37, tr Abdel-Haleem):

Do not strut arrogantly about the Earth: you cannot break it open, nor match the mountains in height. 

This same idea is stated with regards to advising others in the sage's Luqman's advice to his son (31:18 tr Abdel-Haleem):

Do not turn your nose up at people, nor walk about the place arrogantly, for God does not love arrogant or boastful people.

This advice is not just with regards to how others perceive you. Even if there is no-one around, one cannot walk around like a hoity-toity king. This is because, I gather, one's spatial navigation is always perceived by and in relation to God. How can one dare to walk arrogantly on the Earth when there is another Person Who is more powerful and more creative than he?! 

This applies even to mundane acts like stepping into the washroom or leaving one's house. In the former, Muslims are advised to step in with their left feet and in the latter with their right feet, as per the tradition of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Or when we sleep, we try to sleep in a way that our feet do not point at the qiblah. When we put a copy of the Holy Qur'an down, we always place it on the highest shelf out of respect. All of our spatial navigation, including how we place objects, is always with relation to God and sacred spaces.  

One might say that this is not communication, though. It is hardly "proxemics" because, the objection might be, it is not interactive. We are perceived by God, and thus we act accordingly. But there are very common cases in which we directly attempt to enter God's intimate zone and this is directly related to how we navigate space. 

The typical namaz/salaat is a prime example of this. (I say typical because of course the physical aspects of namaz can be modified for people who are unable to perform it in the enjoined manner.) During namaz, we are constantly modifying how we relate to God spatially. First, of course, we literally direct ourselves towards the House of God (the Kabah). We then perform various movements--we stand, we semi-prostrate, we fully prostrate, we sit, and we end with petitioning--in order to mediate our relationship with God.

What is interesting about namaz, I think, is the symbolism of beginning with standing and ending on prostrating. It is as though we have gone from a relationship of perceived equality (to stand) but in reality judgment (standing before God, standing before a judge), to one of self-subjugation and petitioning during prostration (a peasant before a king), to one of moderate positioning in sitting, as self-respecting yet inferior creatures (God's viceregent before God). 

But it can also be conceived differently. One can say that one is seeking permission to enter the intimate space of God. One begins by standing and addressing Him as in a public distance. Then we greet Him and enter a social distance during the takbeer. We prostrate and semi-prostrate as acts of recognition and requests to enter His intimacy. Through prostration, we know some aspect of Him that allows us to finally (finally!) sit and make dua to Him, as though we have entered an intimate zone but always as His inferior but intimate confidantes. Thus, we slowly enter into a relationship of intimates and our spatial sense changes accordingly. 

(I have attached this picture in case the terms are confusing. Unfortunately I don't know who to cite for this excellent image.)

Prayer is entirely interactive in Islam because we learn through prayer to relate to God as a Person, and because He is such, our sense of proximity with Him can vary. Martin Buber's concept of I-Thou is similar: we are entering in God's presence as a Person with Whom we dialogue.

There are yet more persons than God in the Islamic cosmos, however. Consider angels: after we finish praying, we turn our heads to greet the angels recording our deeds on our shoulders. This particular spatial navigation reminds us of their presence and our navigation relative to them. 

Even the dead have a presence: we deal with their graves as though dealing with people, not with objects. Most people, I imagine, naturally feel the need to incline their heads to pay respects to the dead. We maintain a respectful distance for those whom are acquainted with the mysterious tomes of death. 

To return to God, however, a brief use of the common terminology of "vertical" and "horizontal" might explain the point about our proxemics with God more succinctly. Vertical refers to our relationship with God and horizontal to our relationship with His creatures. The constant presence of God modifies horizontal space by populating it with One crucially important Person, which our religious norms remind us of in subtle yet consistent ways (through prayer, zikr, how we place our feet, how we carry ourselves on this Earth, how we place our books on the shelf). I have to navigate space knowing that there is another Person always present--a Person with Whom I can have "varying" levels of distance, depending on my devotion and the travails I am experiencing. My goal is to enter an intimate distance with God, not just at the end of prayer, but in my daily life. This is God's command to us too, and it is done partially by navigating space in a way that is mindful of His presence (50:16-18, tr Abdel-Haleem):

We create man--We know what his soul whispers to him: We are closer to him than his jugular vein--with two receptors set to record, one on his right side and one on his left: he does not utter a single word without an ever-present watcher.

The Islamic world is populated with more persons than a typical secular world. It includes the djinn, angels, and most importantly God. Thus, our non-verbal communication (our "proxemic zones") are responsive to their existence as well. Indeed, much of our religious norms are solely to do with what we are communicating to those people. When death comes, it is simply the lifting of the veil of this reality and, for many of us, the unfortunate realisation of the jarring proxemic zones of which we were heedless (50:19-22, tr Abdel-Haleem):

The trance of death will bring the Truth with it: "This is what you tried to escape." The Trumpet will be sounded: "This is the Day [you were] warned of." Each person will arrive attended by an [angel] to drive him on and another to bear witness: "You paid no attention to this [Day]; but today We have removed your veil and your sight is sharp.

It as though our whole lives, we were in the presence of a king who, unbeknownst to us, places food on our plates, builds a shelter over our heads, and mends the clothes on our backs. And yet the whole time, we acted unaware of his presence. One day, when he becomes visible to us, we will be ashamed of how disrespectfully we would bump against him, elbow into him, run away from him, waste the food and clothes he gave us, and ignore him. It would be the height of rudeness. Such is the importance of appropriate proxemics towards God. 

And God knows best. 

-- MM, Dec 5th, 2021

(image source: https://insidearabia.com/shahada-and-salat-profession-of-faith-and-mindful-prayer-in-islam/)