n are highly prized in Muslim culture. The actual occasion was an aqiqa, or naming ceremony (Beeston, 1971). The young woman had very kindly asked permission to bring me as a guest.
Journal Days 7-9. The aqiqa seems to be one of the few ritual events to which Muslims enthusiastically invite non-Muslims. Muslim boys receive several names in a ritual designed for the purpose. The names have symbolic/tribal/family significance: ism (given name); laqab (nickname); kunya (compound ancestral form al-X or bin-X for "son of"); and nisba (surname) (Beeston, 1971). In America, this family adopted the Western practice of assigning three names: ism, kunya, and nisba. The laqab, if any, evolves informally.
Journal Day 12. The place: A large family home in Los Feliz. This turned out to be a rather expansive celebration, although the many women wearing headscarves lent an austerity to the occasion. There was no liquor, since alcohol is forbidden to Muslims. However, there were many fruit beverages and sweets, many of them brought by the guests as gifts (on the advice of my new friend I brought a vase of flowers).
The ceremony: brief but serious in tone, conducted in the great room by a Shi'a cleric who runs a mosque in Pomona. An older brother of the new father arranged guests, standing, in a semicircle, men separated from women. The cleric stood at a console table. On his signal, the mother came in with the baby and handed him to the father.
The father took out an envelope that contained (as I was later told) hair cropped from the baby. He put this on a decorative scale on the console table. The cleric read (in Arabic) from the Koran and whispered into the baby's ear the Islamic "call to prayer" (personal communication, December 2003). This is done by a father at a baby's birth, but the cleric repeated that. The baby's mother presented a plate of dates to the cleric. He took one and put date juice on the baby's tongue; that replicates put...