Islamic Center Visit

1100 Words5 Pages
I made a visit to the Islamic Center of New Orleans on 1911 St. Claude Avenue at about 1:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. I went with a man called Hilmi Hamid. Hilmi was my manager when I worked at Mona's Middle Eastern Restaurant. I went to visit him and asked if I could come with him to the mosque the next time he went, and he was very welcoming and very enthusiastic about it. He told me how it is a very simple place, but that he loved it because he had the opportunity to praise God in the United States. He is a Palestinian from Jerusalem, and he moved to the United States about eight years ago. He said that the only concern he had when moving here was that he wouldn't be able to find a mosque to go to. However, he said that he was very glad…show more content…
Hilmi took off his shoes, and I followed suit. Then Hilmi started washing his face, hands and feet, and asked me if I wanted to do the same, so I said I did. After we got clean we went into the prayer room. There were already about 15 people in there praying, and one man was chanting quietly for people to come to prayer. Eventually, many more people of every race and age showed up and in a span of ten minutes the prayer room was filled with men. The Mufti, Mr. Mogammel Houssain, started preaching in Arabic. I was concerned because I had no idea what he was saying, so I wouldn't have much material for my paper to write about. However, I knew Hilmi would try to explain as much of it as he could, because his English was not too good. However, the Mufti started translating everything he said into English, so I didn't have to ask Hilmi about it later. The Mufti was speaking about redemption. He was stating that God is most gracious and that if a person asks for redemption he will receive it. However he said that if a man asks for redemption, not from his heart, but because he knows he is about to die, that God can see inside the mans heart and that he will not be forgiven for his sins. He also stated that a man must ask for forgiveness of his sins committed during the day by the time the sun sets in the West and must ask for the forgiveness of sins committed during the night by the sun rise in the East. This was the end of the…show more content…
Everyone in the room lined up in rows, and the Mufti started praying out loud facing the shrine in the mosque, which was in the direction of Mecca. Everyone moved in bowed and stood up in unison. Hilmi invited me to pray with them, but I told him I would be very uncomfortable doing that and I would feel like I was disrespecting everyone in there, so I just sat in the back and observed. The prayer session lasted for about 15 minutes. And then people started getting up and leaving. However, some people stayed and prayed some more. Hilmi was one of them. I sat in the back of the mosque, and the Mufti, Mr. Houssain, came over and welcomed me to the mosque and was wondering if I was going to join the mosque. I told him I had to visit a mosque for an assignment and he thanked me for being interested in finding out about their religion, especially at these times as there is a lot of unrest in the Middle East and a bad taste in peoples mind when people talk about Arabs and Islam. We shook hands and he went to talk to other
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