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My experience of Visiting Vancouver Jamea Mosque.
12-30-2015
My local variety store owner is a Muslim. A devout and generous man, well groomed and a pleasant conversationalist. I admire him for his courage dealing as he must with the public, many of whom in this neck of the downtown eastside have drug and alcohol addictions and can be scary in the dead of night.
As a lifetime student of world religions and having had difficulty with the text of the Koran, I asked Younas, the storekeeper, if I could attend the mosque he frequents every Friday afternoon. Immediately, without hesitation, he informed me that the House of Allah would welcome me any time. He made me feel much less apprehensive and we settled on my going with him that coming Friday.
I washed up, put on my Sunday best, and prepared to join his fellow Muslims in prayer that Friday afternoon. We arrived at the Broadway mosque and upon entering we removed our shoes (thank God or Allah I used my Odour Off ). We squatted on the floor in a crowd clsoing in on 200 men, mostly young, who were awaiting the Imam’s speech and leading in prayers.
The Imam spoke of how Allah knows our hearts and minds and that Allah was the sovereign of our worlds, knowing all, even about our private lives and thoughts.The sermon reminded me of the text of the Baghavad Gita which the Hindus call upon as their Bible and which is the core book from the Vedic Scriptures.The title means The Song of God and it renders the words of Krishna who declares Himself as sovereign, all quite similar to what the Imam was describing as the attributes of Allah.
I mimicked the hand movements of the attendees which resembled the washing of one’s face – another similarity: this time to the native practice of washing one’s face (spirit) with the holy smoke. During the prayers,the men (all the women were downstairs) were seated on the floor, legs crossed. I couldn’t manage that position with my joint stiffness and was horrified at the thought I might experience painful cramps, yelping and howling in agony, and making of myself a source of noise pollution in this hallowed house. So I just kneeled on the floor there in my stockinged feet and bent my head down occasionally following the solemn prayers.
I was moved by the presence of these men, all devout, who were full of their faith and quiet and respectful of their Imam. The time for prayers was preceeded by a prayer-caller, Moaden, who in Arabic called out to the whole of humanity to come to pray. His voice had an eerie but wonderful quality to it and I swear it sounded like a desert wind, lonely but profound for its reach. How easily I could imagine being a nomad in the sprawling desert pulling my camel along and then hearing this lonesome cry beseeching the faithful come to the Mosque.The Koran was written in this beautiful language and I envision a day soon when I will hear it read to me, with the occasional help from an interpreter. All Great Books of faith have been written in a way that when heard one is fervently moved. Genesis of the Old Testament cones to mind.
Younas, like all devout Muslims, prays five times a day, facing Mecca. I consider this degree of devotion as a kind of evidence that these people are God-conscious, humble and loving.They take from the Koran moral instructions which help them to be privately compassionate and generally upstanding members of our broader community.They live their faith and abide by the laws of peaceableness of which the Koran speaks so eloquently.
Younas was kind enough to introduce me to the Imam after prayers and I was touched by the man’s aura of peace and what I can only describe as religious power. He was clearly a man of God and none of these men bore any resemblance whatsoever to the maniacal extremists who are rampaging in the Middle East perpetrating atrocities on the innocent and blowing themselves and everyone around them to smithereens.Those bloodthirsty cretins are losers and couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of the Younas’s in our community.
I am thankful to Younas for the venerable experience and I would be honoured to have any one of those men in my home for dinner and prayers any time because that afternoon in their company I knew I was closer to God.
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