Day 69: Mosque Visit

(This is for Tuesday 4 November)

For our Christianity and Islam class, we went to visit on mosque near Regent's Park. It's the first time I'd ever been to a mosque, which was especially interesting. There was a man who acted as our tour guide for our time there who answered any questions we had and brought us in during one of the five salat (prayers) of the day, which was definitely an interesting experience.

He told us a fairly brief story about how he became a Muslim and a bit about what he does, but I was disappointed in how impersonal he seemed. He was a nice man and seemed to be really interested in what we knew about Islam, but he wasn't very willing to truly answer our questions any further than on the surface, and he never really told us with any real personal element about his own beliefs. Our professor was telling us about the other guides they'd had when he'd brought other classes and how varied they were as far as being willing to answer difficult questions about Islam.

Nonetheless, it was a very worthwhile visit and I left with a better understanding of Islam and of Muslims.