Hospitality at Mosques

I recently read this blog post by a young Christian woman who moved to a new town, and went through the process of finding a new Church for herself. Here’s one thing she said, about a particular church, that struck me:

In addition to plentiful food and conversation at the social, each time I’ve gone to church on Sunday, at least one person has spoken to me.  This doesn’t sound like much to write home about, but you may or may not be surprised to hear that I’ve been to plenty a church where not a single soul went out of their way to greet me.

I have been to a lot of Masajid. In all my years attending masajid, I have never been greeted or made to feel welcome the way the woman above described. At 99% of the masajid I’ve visited, no one ever spoke to me, or introduced themselves, or asked me if I was new. Even at the Masjid where I was raised, when I go back and visit, only the people who recognize me talk to me.

I suggested to a friend, who had moved to a new town and was trying to meet other Muslims, if she had visited the mosque, she said: “Why? what would the mosque have for me?” I had no response for her because the truth is, the mosque has nothing for her. If anything, attending the local mosque could have driven her further away from Islam.

I have family members now who don’t like to attend mosques anymore because almost every visit, someone yells at them, talks down to them, or lectures them. At best, no one makes them feel like they want to come back.

If masajid want to attract the younger generation, they should start out by being welcoming. Why aren’t volunteers or staff recruited and trained to act as greeters and welcomers? why aren’t community members taught to welcome and talk to people they don’t recognize at the Jummah or Halaqa?

Here’s what really hit me in the above mentioned blog post:

not only are we all welcome to worship, the church is actually willing to meet the diverse needs of those who desire to strengthen their relationship with God

Not a day goes by that I don’t yearn and dream for such a Masjid to attend. That’s the whole point isn’t it? strengthening our relationship with the Almighty. How many times have our visits to masajid resulted in us feeling less spiritual or connected to God? I’ve lost count.

Thoughts on Valentine’s Day

So as a Muslim, there’s always the obligatory “Is Valentines Day Haram or Not” discussion. My favorite piece on this is from the debate in Indonesia from a few years ago:

MUI’s edict department chairman Ma’ruf Amin said Saturday that Valentine’s Day, which falls Monday this year, should be received as an “ordinary get-together”, or silaturahmi.

“The meeting [for Valentine’s Day] is like a silaturahmi,” Ma’ruf said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Saturday.

“We will forbid it should the meeting go against Islamic teachings, such as by involving inappropriate action, liquor, frantic dancing or casual mingling between different sexes,” he said.

Ma’ruf asserted that Islam didn’t recognize Valentine’s Day, but that the religion respected the value of silaturahmi.

I’ve often heard some Muslims make a vociferous case against Muslims celebrating Valentine’s Day. Usually their rulings and opinions stem from a complete misunderstanding of what most people actually do on Valentine’s Day (which is eat a lot of chocolate and complain about being alone).

However, Valentine’s Day history shows it’s not always been a completely innocent event:

From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics “were drunk. They were naked,” says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.

The most thoughtful discussion I’ve seen about Valentine’s Day is about domestic violence and abuse. This is a serious problem in the American Muslim community that must be robustly addressed. It is not a “Woman’s Issue” that only women should work on, it is an issue that all American Muslims must work on, especially MEN:

It became clear to me (as it already was to Eve) that violence against women was not merely a female issue; it was a human dilemma twisting the lives and consciences of men as well; men whose voices needed to be heard in order for the dialogue that began ten years ago with the founding of V-Day to be complete.

In the months to come, we will be presenting — in this space — a series of pieces written by men with the hope of bridging this gender gap.

With V-Day celebrating its ten year anniversary, and the war on female violence nowhere near won, we can no longer afford to keep men’s voices out the conversation. Writing “Rescue” was life changing for me. I learned that you don’t have to be a woman to suffer from misogyny.