Islam – another stop on our tour of faiths and cultures. We toured a local Mosque that fellow homeschoolers we know attend. They asked us to take off our shoes to keep the carpets clean and cover our heads. Two cute homeschool girls gave the introductory talk to the group about the 5 pillars of Islam: belief in one God and his last prophet, daily prayer, charity, fasting in Ramadan, and pilgrimage to Mecca if able. The girls described purification before prayer well. I had no idea. The bathrooms are specially designed for feet washing in the mosque. Prayers do not have to be exactly at a certain time, they have a few hours window. Then the imam talked to us and answered questions.
Berkeley mostly adored the plush fancy carpet and danced with her friends. Katahdin asked three questions:
Q: Why is there a dome on the Mosque?
A: An architectural style to represent the universe. Imam referenced the similarity to the head we each have as well.
Q: Do they keep the Holy Book somewhere special like the Sikhs?
A: (Not like Sikh, no one else does it quite like that!) But the Imam said they always use clean hands and never put it on the floor.
Q: Do Muslims practice baptism?
A: No, they whisper in a baby’s ear a call to prayer and put sweet in its mouth right away so it will have a sweet and faithful life from the beginning. To become a Muslim, you just have to raise one finger and honestly recite the profession of faith.
Take away points K learned:
-Friday is their Holy Day, like our Sunday. But American Muslims go to sunday school since they are all off. So they go to church two days a week.
-Mosque invites community to a party (Eid Al-Fitr) at the end of Ramadan. We are coming.
-Muslims believe in one God, like us.
-Muslims pray 5 times a day, like us (wake, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bed).
-Muslims try to memorize the Quran (we saw some students working on it).
-Islam means peace.
-Muslims have believe in angels. One on each shoulder writing down good and bad deeds.
-He wants to go back.
An interesting thing I learned was that Islam/Muslim means “peace” and I(z)lam / Mu(z)lim means “warrior/killer”. They prefer the (s) pronunciation and can be offended by the common American pronunciation. Muslims are just as horrified as the rest of the world by the radical groups that mistreat women and kill others. I knew this already from having known Muslims, but they reiterated this in the tour. It is a peaceful religion. Killers are not really practicing Islam.
I asked about the distinctive “May Allah’s praise and peace be upon him” phrase they say after they mention the last prophet. It is a special distinction for Muhammad only. Other prophets are honored with “peace be upon him/them” or salawat. I found a cute video clip to explain this. Youtube
A woman told us a story of God’s mercy relating to angels that record us. She said that Angels record our good thoughts once and our good deeds ten times, but does not record our sinful thoughts at all, and our sins only once each.
We have a lot of things to do to process all we learned. We borrowed 8 books and they gave us some coloring pages too. A neat way to put scope of religion into focus is to imagine a representative village with 100 people: 22 would be muslim. I’ve heard good reviews to the book If the World Were a Village.
Two brave girls explained the 5 pillars of Islam. They were so excited to share – beaming and knowledgable. Notice how the carpets arches point to Mecca and the prayer times on the digital clock on the wall. Imam in the background.
Minaret – call to prayer.
Dome represents the universe.
Lincoln Mosque.
Happy homeschool moms telling the poor child taking the photo to push the skinny button. Thanks for the good time, sisters.
Girls and woman waiting for prayer to begin. Women pray separately for modesty – Islamic prayer posture puts the bum high in the air, as well as having people stand shoulder to shoulder. Gender segregation makes them more comfortable and able to focus on prayer. This mosque has a high gallery, others have women in the back or the side.
They fed us a yummy lunch.
Cute playground behind the mosque where Berka-bonk unfortunately got a concussion by walking into a swinging kid.
K comforting B as we get into the car and head to the ER. She was fine a few hours later after a nap with daddy and dinner in the hospital. She needs a mosque do-over for sure.