Muslam me??
Salam you all! This will be the post to tell you about what happend with me inside the oldest mosque in Africa and Egypt. The mosque is called Amr Bin Alas , named after the general of the islamic army that conquered Egypt from the Romans in the year 642 AD. It’s a very nice mosque, with a huge capacity!!!
Ok, so basically what happend was, I entered the mosque at 15:00 to take some pictures and to do some sightseeing of the place. Everything was very nice and normal, and then they started to pray, so I thought, cool! good chance to take some more pics, so I waited and they started, but everyone was looking at me and some of them gave me some perfume a little hat fro praying and a “suek” (a pice of wood, that you peel and then chew so it becomes brushy, and with that you brush your teeth, so your prayers are become stronger). After the praying I was leaving the mosque, and some young guys approche me, asking me if I wanted to talk to them for a minute. I agreed, and we went to a place from the mosque transformed in a huge bedroom, because in the last 10 days of Ramadan, people stay overnight in the mosque praying. They actually live in the mosque for this last 10 days and almost don’t leave the place. The mosque gives food for free, and there were around 600 people staying there.
They invited me to seat on the floor, and after 35 seconds I was surrounded by 50 people all staring at me, many of them touching me and at least 5 talking at the same time. I was petrified, my hands sweating and my head spining! Horror!!! They notice and then yelled some things in arabic and almost everyone left. Pfff. The guy that was talking to me could not speak english, so there was another one translating. There was also a guy from New York, that had converted to Islam. We started talking about religion, they were asking me if I belived in only one God or in three in one (holy trinity), if I thought Jesus was only a man and a prophet or God itself, and plenty of things related. They gave me a Qur An in english, and then told me to repeat some phrase in arabic, I did and then one of them said, “do you want to continue?”
Continued?? With what? I answered. With your conversion to Islam.
What??????? I don’t want to convert to Islam! No way!!!
I explained that I meant no disrespect and so on, and everything was fine. They invited me to have “breakfast” (they are fasting and can only eat 17:30 to 05:20 aprox) and I accepted. then they invited me to stay with them for the night in the mosque and again I did.
It was a nice expirience, I got to met a lot of nice people, all very friendly and nice, and to see from the inside what Islam is like and to live some of it for a short period of time. I don’t regret to have done it, I’m thankful.
A very funny part of it was that every person in the mosque was saluting me, shaking hand with me, kissing me as they do to show affect between them, and congratulating me, I’m sure that they thought I had converted, and as I was wearing the robe and the hat, and had a Qur An in my hands…
At one point of the night I got tired from the whole thing cause I was sleepy and more and more people wanted to know me and talk to me, and they were making me read this booklets against Christianity, and were like brain washing me a lot! I said I was tire and wanted to sleep, so they left me alone, more or less, cause I would open my eyes and I had at least 3 persons lstaring at me! Then at 06:30 I said thank you and went away, but all of them were inviting me to stay another night, saying that they will miss me and that sort of stuff.
As I said I had a great time, but I don’t think I’ll repeat 🙂
And this is the story about that colombian guy who spend 15 hours inside a mosque talking about Islam and who almost without even knowing it converterd to it.
Amazing, right??
Tags: Egypt, Islam, Mosque, Simon Uribe Convers, Travel
simonuribe@yahoo.com
Hey hon – sounds like you are having a wonderful time! I so want to see the pyramids and go to Egypt!!!!! I am eagerly awaiting your photos, and in the meantime, wish you all the luck in the world. Stay safe! Lots of love, blair
I didnt read the msgs from egypt in the correct order but I couldnt help not comment your religious experience….Incredible!You are making history in Egypt !HIHIHI!Go on and may smily people be your giude!OH!I think I m gonna go to Brazil for Christmas!Youhou!
Giza pyramids is an excellent place to travel to. Sunset in the sands is something you should definitely see live.