La mezquita
Mar 9th, 2007, 11:31 pm
I went to the Centro Cultural Islámico Rey Fahd (King Fahd Islamic Cultural Center) today for jummah prayer. It was my third trip there. My first one was two Sundays ago, but no one was at the gate. And my second trip was yesterday, when I walked there in the pouring rain for a guided tour. Unfortunately, the guy at the gate told me they don’t give tours when it rains. Blah. But I was successful today, despite the security. In fact, I had to tell the guards I’m Muslim so that they’d let me in.
The masjid is enormous and breathtaking. The prayer spaces can accomodate up to 2,000 people. However, I doubt the place will reach anywhere near full capacity anytime in the forseeable future. There were only about fifty men (I didn’t see the women’s section). That’s tiny. That’s about how many people go to Friday prayers at the compartively miniscule masjid in Springfield, Illinois. You would expect to find a huge Muslim community when you see a masjid of such massive proportions.
Before the khutbah began, I met two guys from Bangladesh. They came from the motherland about a month ago to work, knowing zero Spanish. One of them had a Bengali to English to Spanish book, which I didn’t even know existed. The same guy also told me that there are about twenty Bangladeshis in Buenos Aires. Ever since coming to Argentina, I’ve really missed the company of other desis, especially Bangladeshis, so it was comforting to meet these guys. I spoke to them in Banglish because I suck at speaking Bengali, so I just mixed my two native tongues. It was especially hard for me to speak Bengali because I kept thinking in Spanish. Embarrassingly, I accidentally blurted out Spanish words a few times when I meant to say something in Bengali.
It’s quite interesting that Bangladeshis would come to Argentina to work. This country doesn’t exactly strike me as a land of opportunity. My guess is that it’s easier for Bangladeshis to get into Argentina than the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries. Argentina is much more developed than Bangladesh, so maybe that’s part of the draw. Still, I consider Argentina somewhere between the developing and developed worlds.
After praying, I checked out the masjid library because it seemed to be a happening place. There was a class, where the students were memorizing and reciting verses from the Qur’an. I decided to stay around for a bit to get a feel for the place. While there, I met an Argentine who converted to Islam two weeks ago. Pretty cool. I also signed up for a free, weekly Arabic class. I’ve wanted to learn to read and write Arabic for years, so I figured that I should take advantage of this opportunity. It should be quite an experience to learn Arabic through Spanish, my third language.
I was quite surprised to see a guy teaching a predominantly female group in a masjid. In the U.S., there would have be an uproar. Beards would be ripped, hijabs would be torn. I even felt sort of weird looking at a group of women (I was sitting up front, facing the students) in an Islamic place of worship. I don’t mind hanging out with girls at all, but this just wasn’t what I’m used to. Conservatism runs deep in immigrant Muslim communities in North America, where most masjids are heavily segregated by gender, often questionably. I think most of these students were Argentine converts, who mostly appeared to be in their 40s and 50s.
Now that I’ve met a few Muslims in Argentina, I don’t feel as alien in this unfamiliar country. I feel somewhat foreign around my American peers and even more foreign around Argentines, but, fortunately, I think I’ve found a great compromise.