Our Muslim Friends

This past week we had the good fortune of being invited by our Muslim friends to their community centre for dinner.  When we arrived at the centre there were about ten students ranging in age from sixteen to midd twenties who had come to eat dinner with us.  They were students of the Imam, or what we would call the paster, who volunteer at the centre.  They have many programs at the centre such as a nursery school, sport clubs, radio station, a youth centre where kinds can hang out, a study centre where kinds can study the quran, and they also publish a magazine.  The students were all very nice and we had a good time visiting with them.

Before dinner we were invited to come and watch one of their prayers.  It was very interesting.

Prayers

They have to go through the cycle of kneeling to the ground for prayer five time and they pray five different times each day.  They explained the reason they kneel to the ground during prayer is because it symbolizes that before god we are like dust.  During the prayer time women will usually be in the very back row praying or they will pray in a different room.  When I was there, there was only one women there and she was in the back row.

After the prayer we all went into the other room to eat.  The meal was very good!  The Imam's wife had prepared the meal and it was called chicken korma.  Here is a picture of kind of what it looked like:

I did not bring my camera to the meal because I wasn't sure if it would be rude or not so I did not take this picture.

During the meal we all had a lot of time to talk and learn about each other.  The Muslim students wanted to learn about us as much as we wanted to learn about them.  We found out that our religion and their religion are more similar then they are different.  We also found out we had a lot more in than we had differences.  I wish that more events like this were happening all over the world so that we could eliminate a lot of the negative thinking about Muslims and we could eliminate any negative thoughts they may have about Christians.  I think this dinner was a good start and I also think I will have to get the recipe for this delicious meal.