The Liturgy Of Encounter

In Islam, prayer is the equivalent of the Mass. For Sufis, to pray, to remember God, and to engage in the liturgy of encounter with God is the touchstone of being a Muslim. Setting aside for a moment the debates on the precise meaning of the Qur'an on various issues, for ordinary believers the Qur'an is a glorious document they could never hope to have the training to understand. In that sense, the Qur'an cannot provide the answer to why Muslims are Muslims. Perhaps it is better to shift the answer to: because they sense themselves to be people of prayer, of remembrance, of liturgical encounter with God. It might be because Muslims have made much of the fact that they do not have priests that the search for understanding has shifted away from liturgy. Whatever may be the reasons...I will argue that the liturgical is the religion, for the simple reason that it makes all the rest valid. Muslims do encounter God in prayer; they do encounter God in dhikr (remembrance). This is the touchstone of the faith.

~ Earle H. Waugh, Visionaries of Silence, Cairo: AUC Press (2008), 4.