A Visit to the Mosque

Today our group of students and staff members from Chowgule college accompanied by teachers Eva and Marie and 2 student from the Tullinge Gymnasium,including Badal, paid a visit to a Turkish mosque. We arrived there in cabs and the teachers’ cars. On arrival, we were greeted by a religious leader. After taking off our shoes, as per custom, we were joined by the Imam of the mosque who escorted us to the main prayer hall. We were then provided some insight into the past or rather the history of the founder and construction of the mosque.

Then we had a very fruitful interactive question answer session about the cultural integration of the Muslim community in the Swedish society. A few of the questions asked were as follows:
What was the mosque doing in order to draw the youth to it?....they had sessions where they youth could come and speak to the Imam if they had problems.

Did they face a problem of disintegration of their culture due to the Swedish/western culture?.....kind of, when the first generation of Muslims came to Sweden, they did face problems but eventually the second and third generation assimilated into the Swedish culture and the elders accepted it.

Did they have cases of religion converts from and/or to Islam?....yes, infact one of the lady leaders of one of their groups is a Finnish lady converted from Christianity.

What did the mosque do in order to integrate their youth into the Swedish society?...they preached to them the importance of accepting the Swedish way of living as they were living in Sweden for a long time and had to continue to do so.

Did they still impose restrictions on women living in Sweden?......no it was upto the women themselves to choose to follow the traditional rules or not, but they did pray separately.

The religious mindset of people and their feeling towards religion today….....if they choose not to pray, it was entirely their concern and the mosque could do nothing about it and if they chose to deviate from their faith,that also was the individual's concern.

After our interactive session, we ended our visit on a happy and joyous note with a group photograph taken by our very own Mr. Dange.