بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum
Dear Friends
I pray that you have a blessed Friday.
Alhamdulillah, we have a spectacular Friday here in Seattle. The weather is simply splendid! SubhanAllah. Most importantly, we were blessed to be able to perform our Friday prayer with thousands of sincere Somalian and Ethiopian Muslims. When I entered the women musalla, for a moment I felt I was in masjid Annabawi, not the architecture, far from it, but the place was filled with Qur'an. The sisters (maybe about 300 of them) were very serious in their worship. Most sisters were reading Qur'an and some were memorizing the Qur'an while waiting for the imam to come to the pulpit. I could see the light and purity in their faces. I was the only "foreigner" in the crowd but I did not feel foreign with their warm welcome. MashaAllah.
I left the masjid, which was opened 6 months ago, with much amazement and with a smile in my heart. I came to know that the brothers and sisters struggled and worked hard together as a community to convert a casino into a masjid which now houses a few thousands Muslims for Friday prayer. The casino sign still stand, not sure why, but the whole idea of a casino was turned into a house of worship, only further proof that truth prevails and Islam is indeed true. Most of the brothers and sisters are not well-to-do but obviously they understood the meaning of victory comes from Allah alone and and the meaning of striving for the cause of Allah. They just did their part even with only coins in their pockets and purses!
Today I saw everybody contributed to a fundraiser towards building a masjid in Boston. It brought me to tears when I heard that the Boston Muslim community who contributed much to their fundraiser earlier on. SubhanAllah. And now they are returning the favor, with what they have, even only coins. As a community they could not forget their brothers and sisters, who once helped them build their place of worship. Indeed, these communities are our great examples of this time. United we stand!
Allah is the Planner. It was no coincidence that we had to switch our ride to a taxicab, the latter also came 30 minutes late and we would have missed the Friday prayer had it not the masjid address I had was wrong. When I gave the driver the address of the masjid to take us to, he told us that the address was an old address--that the masjid had recently moved, now closer to the hotel, SubhanAllah. I asked him if he is a Muslim and he said yes and we then gave our salaams. He decided to pray at the masjid since he would not have time to drive to another masjid he frequented, thus relieved us from having to wait for another taxi after Jumah.
So, how could our day today not spectacular and splendid? Allahu Akbar!
May Allah bless your day and make it spectacular. Ameen. Please don't forget us in your prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.
Wassalaam
