Week Three--Making friends at the Mosque

This is going to be brief because finals are starting this week (for the first module) and I have to find 40 sources for my supervision by Thursday.

Monday--I don't recall much, it wasn't that memorable of a day
Tuesday--I went to formal hall at pembroke. It was wonderful. I sat next to two fo the programme assistants, and across from a student of Pembroke. We spoke mostly about religion and the mentalities of different religions, the educational system in the UK, and how British people perceive the influx of Muslim immigrants. The student of Pembroke is a strong catholic, and I really wanted to get to know him better, but I didn't have the chance before the dinner was over. It would be wonderful to learn how he came to believe in Catholicism in such an atheistic environment.

Wednesday--Plenary lecture on translating books into film.

Thursday--my second supervision was in the morning. I showed her some of the things I had found, and that I had arranged a meeting with Kacem Idrissi who volunteers for Muslim Education and Outreach Cambridge. She was happy about it. There wasn't really much to talk about, so the meeting only lasted for about an hour. After class, which was excellent unsurprisingly, I went to the mosque with two friends, Annie and Katie, but was too late for the prayer. Afterward, Kacem came out and took us on a tour of the mosque. It is a house converted into a mosque, so it is not big enough for the local Muslim population. We sat up in the woman's section upstairs near the curtain, all of us wearing head scarves, and spoke for two and a half hours about my subject, Islam in the UK, and Islam in general. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot more about the Muslim faith. Another man joined us, Faisal, and both of them were extremely fluent in English and quite able to explain Islamic ideas in a clear and precise way. Their children ran all around the mosque, and kept coming over to eat some of the huge dish of samosas that Kacem had obtained for us. I met his wife and three children as well, they're some of the cutest kids I've ever seen. That took until dinner pretty much, and after dinner I think I intended to do some readings though I don't know that I actually did them.

Friday--I went back to the Mosque friday in time for the prayers. A friend of mine, Kate, came along (different from Katie) and we were there for the whole ordeal of fridays. Mohammed, the guy I spent time with in Edinburgh, came also, though we didn't see him during the sermon. We sat in the woman's section, obviously, upstairs and behind a curtain. There were a lot of women visiting that day from interfaith outreach programmes of Cambridge, which I would like to write more on later, so the women filled up the section entirely. We actually had to remove the curtain so there would be more room for the women, and when they opened it it was sort of a shocker because there were at least 200 men directly in front of it. We had listened to a sermon over the intercom, about giving your alms to Allah and not spending your money unwisely, before they did the actual prayers. Kate and I stood in the back trying not to stand out. People had, several times already, mistaken us for Muslims because we did a pretty legitimate job on our hijabs. So I think they were suprised when we didn't pray with them. I met at least 5 women who were converts to Islam and born in the UK. Afterwards, we met up with Mohammed and Kacem, and Kacem gave us another tour for Kate. We then sat up in the woman's section again, and this time for four hours spoke with Kacem, Mohammed, and Faisal about Islam They asked a lot of questions about our faith, and we were able to make many comparisons of our similarities and differences. We learned a lot of how they perceive justice and mercy, compared to how we perceive it, and how they justify the idea that there is not need for a redeemer. We were talking for so long, that Kacem disappeared to the store and returned with fruit juices and fried chicken and french fries. Arab hospitiality (Kacem is from Morocco, though he has hardly any accent) is remarkable. We finished the tour and so forth around 5.30 and were then back at Kings just in time for dinner, which turned out not to be there because of a party they were having. Consequently, Kate and I went down to Sainsbury (the local version of Vons) and bought some dinner for ourselves. We then went to another plenary lecture. This one, again in the Union Society room (which I love by the way) was on how language plays a part in law. The speaker is a linguist and he discussed how he, as a witness for multiple cases, has seen the syntax of the word "approximately" or "substantially" can have literally millions of dollars riding on it. It was, unsurprisingly, a fascinating lecture.

I spoke with Dr. Kerry and Annie, her husband, and Dr. Cope for a while, then returned to Kings. It was late by then, so I went to bed pretty soon.

Saturday--Amelia, Cherry and I went to Oxford. We took the train, which was a complex procedure because one of the lines was shut down, to King's Cross, then via subway to another station, then from there to Oxford. On the first train, about a 50 minute trip, I spoke with an aging Irish man who spent the majority of his life in South Africa. He told me how the crime in South Africa drove him out of the country, after being hijacked 5 times (5!), but how he loved the people, and had spent many years creating various items to help with sustainable energy. he had designed light fixtures for telephone boxes, he had used LED to create a cheap and sustainable way to light a home at night, and had even built his own airplane from nothing (a picture of which he showed me). He had an obvious love of his grandchildren, who he also showed me on his phone, and a deep connection to South Africa which, I could tell, he missed. We had to stand the whole way because the train was crowded, so talking to him made the trip seem much shorter. The rest of the ride was not that eventful, and when we arrived in Oxford, we bought tickets to a hop on hop off tour bus. That took us to Christ's Church College first, which we spent a while touring. It is where some of the first 2 harry potter films were filmed. We also spent a while in the cathedral there, the only cathedral in the world also to be a college chapel, and I spoke with the Priest for a while. He was a retired Anglican Priest, and he explained how they do not believe that there is any one church that has a monopoly on truth. In fact, he said the only reason to be anglican over some other similar denomination is preference. That was eye opening because I had always wondered how the Anglicans justified their founding. He was a very kind man, and he obviously loved to talk about his faith. We went to the bookstore after that, and I purchased a copy of Alice in Wonderland from their store because it was pretty and because this was the school Lewis Carol had taught at and written his books in. We then went to the castle, built 1000 ad, and took a tour there. It was part castle, part jail (a working jail from some obsenely early time until 1996), and the creators had worked really hard to make it a lucrative enterprise. The building is one of the oldest in England and has some fascinating tales associated with it. We took the bus to the book store, to a place called the Scriptum (which, if I ever have enough money, I want to buy everything inside... it was wonderful) and finally to the Eagle and Child Pub where we had dinner. It is the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien met for their discussions on their books--the Inklings was their group's name. We sat all the way in the back under a converted greenhouse. These two teenage boys stared at me awkwardly the whole time. I determined they thought I looked like someone famous. I ate a lot of french fries (chips) with vinegar, salt, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Yum. Finally, we were able to get back to Cambridge around midnight. It was a crazy train ride back, because most of the help desks were closed so we really just had to hope that people around us knew what they were talking about. In the taxi from the train station to Kings, the driver got talking to me (probably because it was so late, he didn't want to fall asleep) and I finally wheedled out of him that he was muslim. He was really redecient to tell me where he was from when I asked. it was obvious that he was afraid of my reaction. I even asked twice, and both times he said something vague like "all over, florida, mexico" though he had an obviously south east asian accent. Anyway, when he found out I was studying arabic, he got really excited and started to tell me about his habits as a pious muslim. When we arrived at Kings, he gave me several pamphlets on Islam. Now I have like 20 of them.

Sunday--I went to church, which was really wonderful because I feel spiritually deprived sometimes in the mayhem here. I sang in the choir, then took the bus home with a friend. We ate plums we picked from a roadside tree, mostly because neither of us had thought ahead to buy anything to eat on Sunday, and the dining hall would not be open for a while. I went to an interfaith meeting Kacem had told me of around 4. The meeting was about why we should read each other's scriptures, mostly the Bible and the Qur'an. I spoke with several people who were surprised to learn I was Mormon, and asked me more about it. One of them is in charge of this organization, Building Bridges, and he is someone I will hopefully speak with more about interfaith outreach here in Cambridge. I ran off to attend a mass in Latin at the Church of the Virgin Mary and the English Martyrs. A friend, Alison, met me for it. The mass was almost 2 hours long, and, unsurprisingly, most of it was largely incomprehensible (though I could discypher some of what was going on). We had a leaflet which told us when we were supposed to respond and what to say. Most of the people there knew what they were doing, so it made it easier. When we all greeted each other, instead of saying "Peace be unto you" we said "Pax Toum" or something of the sort. The incense in the air, the tall, beautiful building and stain glass, the soaring music, it made it all simply ethereal. I really felt that God loves these people--the Spirit was pretty powerful, my friend commented on it too. I hope to go back to speak with the Priest at some point, asking him about the ceremony and what he says and why they do certain things and what it means. After the mass, I went home and wasted time for a while on the computer. Then I spent a few hours with Alison, just talking. I went to bed around 11.