Juma in Khobar; an analogy between 2 kinds of preachers

It is somewhat different than attending a Friday prayer in Amman; the message of the preacher (al Khotba) is different, how is it conveyed is different and last, but not least, the audience listening are completely different.

In Amman, Jordan in general, the Preacher is on fire. He ascends the Minbar (platform) and almost immediately captivates his audience. The Preacher in Khobar ascends unnoticed and descends unnoticed, and fails to capture the audience. The preacher in Amman rarely reads from his notes. The Preacher in Khobar rarely preaches without his notes. The message of the Ammanite Preacher is relative and concerns the society, while his brothers in Khobar have less relation to the communities and speak of generalities.

The manner, in which public speakers address their audiences, is very important. The non-verbal language decides if the person is worthy of listening to or not. Unfortunately, the Preachers here in Khobar lack the charisma and fail to get my attention. On the contrary, sometimes the way they speak may distract me as they read, with heads buried in their notes, in a constant hypnotizing rhythm; it’s rising tones have lesser significant than its lower tones. Moreover, when they want to reach conclusion their voices screech and wail without having any significance. Preachers in Amman speak from the heart truly! It’s a pure pleasure to have listened to them make point after point while having the full audience’s attention.

I think the reason to blame here is the kind of audience themselves. The cultural synergy found in the Ammanite society, I believe, is simply unmatched in the region! Some people might disagree with me on that but it is true even when we have divisions of poor and rich and come from somewhat different heritages. We, the Ammanites after all live in a small homogeneous society. In comparison, Khobar has fragments of different societies living together and only bound by a popular Saudi culture. There are no concrete coherence of-course because of the different backgrounds of cultures, languages and habits. Therefore, when they gather for a Juma ceremony and listen to the Arabic preacher preaching in Arabic, they are reluctant to give an ear. In my opinion, this lessens the holiness of the occasion. I do not by any means deny them audience as this is their right, but I just simply wanted to draw an analogy between the 2 cities in that respect.

This is the Juma Masjed in Khobar.