Friday Prayers

I was supposed to write about this last Friday coz those two photos above were taken last week. But I was forgotten about it. Anyway, what is significant about those photos here?

Simple. It looks like a big gathering at an open space, at the side of the UNSW main walkaway. People who walk to the class using this main pathways will surely, clearly and definitely see this right after they cross the main road which is at the end of this pathway. But what is this all about?

Simple. It happened every Friday, from 1pm-2pm started during middle of Summer 2010* (I'm not really sure about the exact date.) At first, the weekly gathering was held in an enclosed area but starting middle of the Summer this year, it was not allowed to be held inside due to the reason which is again, I am not very sure about it. Who is involved?

Simple. Those who usually have to perform Friday Prayers. And this post is about Friday Prayers at UNSW.

My Explanation:

This week was the 3rd time I am experiencing this. The main reason is because we are not allowed my the authority of the uni to use the place that we used to have for Friday prayers. I am not sure about the main reason but mostly about the uni could not afford to give us a place for Friday prayers since we were disturbing the traffic at the old place that we used to have. Since the place before was near to the toilet, we are said that it would harm the safety of the people walking pass through the area especially those who wanted to use the toilet.

The committee of Islamic Society of UNSW is still keep fighting for the us, the Muslim to have a bigger and better place since the number of Muslim students here is getting increased day by day. They were fighting for the uni to actually give us a place for us to build up our own college here -Madinah College. The plan is for us to have an accommodation just for us Muslim, and there will be a mosque so that it would be easier for us to do our prayers especially on Friday.

From what I have understood regarding this matter, from the donations that were held during Friday prayers and from some noble individual, the amount of money for the project to be continued is already enough but the problem now is, the uni authority seems like refuse to give us a space for this dream to be taken into the next step.

Until today, many discussion were done between the Islamic Committee with the Dean and those high ranks people at uni, but there is still no black and white allowing for the project to start.

And that explains why we have to use that open space for us to do our weekly Friday prayers.

One thing that I found good about this is, many people could learn more about Islam and that might be attracting them to find out about what we were doing. It is actually an introduction for them to start the new exploration into the Islamic world.