Doors Open Toronto 2009: Masjid Toronto

You can read my last year's post for some background of Doors Open Toronto

What is Doors Open Toronto? Simply put, Doors Open Toronto is an event where certain buildings which are usually inaccessible to the public open their doors and invite everyone to come inside. This is the second year running that Masjid Toronto participated in this event. What's the deal?

"Welcome to Masjid Toronto. I am your tourguide of the day" All smiles :) Hehe..

What's fascinating was the diversity of people who came: An old Russian couple whose wife's long lost descendants are Muslims; an Anglican Christian lady who is originally from Hong Kong; an agnostic Englishmen couple; a Muslim from Indonesia who is visiting here for a business trip; a couple whose husband is a Jewish and the wife is a Christian (they were fascinated to know that the Qur'an has a chapter on Mary); A young Indian lad with his Korean girlfriend (Ops.. May they recieve guidance, no? We only convey) and the list goes on... But that's just so Toronto.

Islam awareness is pretty high over here nowadays. Most of them know quite well that we pray five times a day, we fast during the month of ramadhan, we do pilgrimage to Mecca, and other pillars of Islam. So it was fascinating to throw at them questions like: Do you know that the Prophet s.a.w. was monogamous for more than 20 years? How does a banking system works without interest? Was the prophetic society really patriarchal or pretty egalitarian? Can a Muslim woman goes to war, be a scholar, be a merchant, etc?

So it was kinda cool. Anyway, here are some pictures:-

The mosque with Doors Open Toronto poster on the wall. See the open door?


The Big Akhi, Big Ukhti (Big Brother, Big Sister) poetry group reciting their poems in the mosque. MasyaAllah, they're awesome, the visitors liked them a lot.


This brother's poem is about him running away with his girlfriend from the prejudiced society - his partner-in-crime. We were wondering all through...
Who is she?
"She's Islam, and I'm in love."


Some visitors that we had.

P.S. Randy Pausch said, "if you're in the driving seat, that doesn't mean you have to run over people."