On Takbeerat, Meditation, and Internalized Inferiority

Yesterday, on the first day of Eid Al-Adha, we went to the mosque for the morning Eid prayer. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, think of it as the Muslim equivalent of Christmas Mass. To accommodate the numbers, the prayers were divided over multiple rounds: 8 am takbeerat, 8:30 prayer, followed by 9:30 takbeerat, 10 am prayer. We went for the second round.

Takbeer is a word that literally translates to “magnification”. In the Islamic context, Takbeer is what someone says to get the response Allahu Akbar (God is greater, or God is The Greatest). Muslims will do the call and response of “Takbeer!” “Allahu Akbar” when something great happens, or to cheer someone on performing a complex feat (think, scoring a goal or winning a race).

When I was younger, I would cringe if I heard Allahu Akbar in non-Islamic settings, mainly because it was co-opted by movies as a line that a terrorist would say before blowing something up.

In the Eid context, the takbeerat - Arabic plural for …