The Trip to the Mosque

The trip to the mosque on Thursday was very interesting (there I go using that word again!).  Figuring that I would not have gone there on my own, it was probably a good field trip for our class to take.  It was nice of the Imam to let us come and to give us such a long tour.

                  I thought the building itself was very interesting.  From the outside, I never would have guessed that the building was a mosque!  And it looks so small from the outside, but is rather large inside!  I thought that the architecture, especially on the new front, was very pretty.  I had forgotten that the pointed arches are supposed to be shaped to point toward heaven- that is a rather neat way to design architecture.   And did anyone else notice the lines on the carpet?  I think they were orientated in a way so that everyone knows which way to kneel.   Also, the fact that were no chairs, or very few, even present in the building very different from what I am used to seeing in any “social” building.

                  I thought it was very different how they separate the men and the women in the mosque, but I did think I understood better after the Imam explained why the women would not want to be praying in front of the men, and I agreed.  Still, it was very different to see a women’s “wing” on the one side of the building, separate from the men’s or main “wing” on the other side.

                  I was disappointed and wished that the Imam had allowed for us to ask more questions at the end.  I also wondered what everyone else thought about the verses from the Koran that we read.  It was probably the first time (or one of the first times) that most of us had read anything from it.  So what did everyone think?