Mosque Tour - March 10th

It's been over 100 degrees F. for the past three days straight here, so I am forced to finally stay indoors and keep up with my posts which are way over due!!! So, here we go.... By the way, we have added another feature to our posts: the beauty of music. We hope you enjoy the attached Muslim call of prayer that WE are exposed to every day, five times a day.

One of the "Chevron wives" organized a very interesting tour of two of Doha's mosques...yes, the locals' place of worship. I know, even I was of the idea that expats or foreigners were not allow to enter such places, but we were wrong. They were more than happy to have us learn about their culture and customs. They day started off at 8:30 am at the Qatar Guest Center. The Qatari women that volunteer there were very friendly and super attentive. We were served tea (with or without "milk"), and a variety of small treats. The most surprising thing to me is that they, also, had a great sense of humor, cracking jokes and even posing for pictures.

Afterwards, we proceeded to hop on a bus to tour the first of the mosques, but not before being "cleansed" with perfumes and oils that the women were more than happy to shower us with. The smell wasn't so bad, at first, but after a few minutes inside of a bus with 17 other women wearing the same thing, it got to be a bit too much. I felt even worse for the two young men that had joined us on this exciting tour. They were college students here on Spring break visiting each of their families. All I can say is that they were real TROOPERS throughout the entire thing! This mosque was one of the oldest ones in Doha, still being used. The pictures show the times of the day when prayer is recited. The tour guide mentioned that each mosque has a live prayer leader for each of the scheduled prayers. Very interesting....as there are several hundred mosques throughout the town.

Then, we were off to a second, more modern mosque. Here we even had live demo of prayer rituals. The building was very pretty, not at all what I expected. Before we entered, though, we had another live demo from a man showing us the cleansing routine. Yes, here is a picture of my bear feet on the carpet of a mosque. Clearly, I did not have the op to take part in the traditional cleansing ritual. He stated what parts were included in the routine and why; and clarified that the cleansing may also be done by what is called a 'dry' cleansing if a worshiper found themselves, at prayer time, in the middle of somewhere with no water available. Imagine that happening here in the desert!!

We later moved on to the cultural center where we were exposed to more of the culture and had our names written in Arabic. We viewed some artifacts and a Quran or two. The tour by this time was talking longer than expected, mostly because it was interrupted by prayer time and we had to wait for our tour guides to finish with their prayers. It was passed lunch time, so as soon as that was over, the bus took us to one of those meeting centers that they talked to us about before we came to Doha. It was a "sitting/meeting" room for men or women only. Since we were in a group that included men, we were allowed to go into the room that was for men only; and we were once again served tea and dessert - yes, before lunch.

Once back at the guest center, large platters of several food combinations were brought out for us to enjoy. The women were very gracious and served us platefuls of lots of local dishes. The dishes were mostly a combo of rice with a meat. At this time, many of them were still asking us if we had any other questions/comments about their culture, but I for one was very satisfied with the wealth of information I had received. Then, we were ushered into another room, where the infamous SCIENTIFIC slide show began. Remember, we had started the day at 8:30 am, and had just had a huge lunch. The slide show was a way of demonstrating their Quran, proven by science, as the one and only answer to it ALL. Not really what I was interested in hearing, so it became a bit of information overload, by this time of the day - it was after 2 pm!

At the end of it all, we said a very gracious thank you and were each off to our home, where I for one, hugged my kids and embraced my life as a very happy Catholic living in this very different Muslim world.