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Thunder Bay Muslims open their doors to open minds (12 PHOTOS)

In the bouncy castle on the street outside Thunder Bay Masjid, children of all backgrounds played together through Saturday afternoon. They learned to write their names in Arabic and got Henna tattoos in booths against the outside wall of the mosque.
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Thunder Bay Masjid held an free open house barbecue on Saturday to display the religion and its cultures, as well as answer questions from a city with growing exposure to those of Islamic faith. (Jon Thompson, tbnewswatch.com)

In the bouncy castle on the street outside Thunder Bay Masjid, children of all backgrounds played together through Saturday afternoon. They learned to write their names in Arabic and got Henna tattoos in booths against the outside wall of the mosque.

Muslim women showed traditional dress from all over the world outside the front door while men held traditional prayer ceremonies inside. Traditional foods were served from across the Muslim world, made as diverse as the cultures themselves.

For organizer, Sabeera Azhar, the experience needed to be more than a free glimpse into the mosque.

It needed to be authentic.

 

"If you just sit people down and lecture them, that's not very effective," Azhar said.

"You learn by people's actions, by their character. When you see people on a bouncy castle, when you see people in traditional clothing interacting with the kids, that's character. That's where you learn what Islam is about."

The open house even hosted an imam to share expertise with the non-Muslim community who had questions about the faith, the fasting, the pilgrimage or other creative misunderstandings about the religion. 

Since Abdullah Syed moved to the city from Mississauga 10 years ago, Thunder Bay's Muslim community has tripled in size and can now fill the only mosque in town for Friday prayers.

When Syed was a student, his friends came to know his dietary needs, prayer schedules and seasonal traditions. When he left the university, he saw a much wider gap between himself and the community around him.

That's why he and Azhar decided to have the first open house in 2014, then build the support it had in the mosque to make it an interactive experience in its second year.    

"Being here, then wanting to stay here and my family came here -- we love Thunder Bay. Many people, we found, had misconceptions," Syed explained.

"You might see a different way of dressing but at the end of the day, they still have jobs. They're still doctors, they're still lawyers, they're still students. That was the idea: to break down barriers." 





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