(the Islamic Cultural Centre) noting that they were going to have a Ramadan event. They asked participants to fast for the day and that afternoon they would give a tour of some mosques and the new Cultural Village, answer questions about Ramadan, followed by an Iftar meal. Since I was already fasting I figured why not sign up, it would be a pleasant enough way to spend a Friday afternoon.
I'm not sure why I hadn't received a notice about this given that my Arabic lessons are at FANAR. Whatever.
So we met up at FANAR. There was about 20 people and before we left for the mosques FANAR provided abayas for the ladies to wear.
We got on a bus and headed to the new Cultural Village, Katara. Our first stop was the large mosque in Katara, known as the Friday mosque. About another 20 people who were part of the tour joined us there. The mosque is very colorful and has both Persian and Turkish styles.
After a brief talk there we went on a tour of Katara, going past the amphitheater . . .
(No, we are not in Italy, honest)
. . . to a room where they had a model of what the finished Katara development would look like.
It's massive isn't it? The area we were in (the buildings around the amphitheater) made up less than 10% of what would eventually be finished.
The massive structure at the end is actually not a mosque. The plan is for those three "minarets" to be full-fledged office/residential/hotel towers connected to a convention centre at the base. Apparently this element of the plan is still a bit controversial, with some arguing that mosque-like buildings should be mosques, so it is possible that the plan will change.
We were also given a brief showing of the new Opera house before heading to the second mosque, the Golden Mosque.
We sat in the mosque for about 45 minutes and a gentleman told us about customs in Ramadan and answered questions from the group. Then we had Iftar in the mosque: three dates, some water, and some milk.
(my friend with his Iftar meal)
At this point a lot of Muslims were showing up for prayer so I wandered around outside and took a few pictures. After the prayers were finished our hosts took us all to a nearby Egyptian restaurant for a full-fledged meal! I wasn't expecting that.
I forgot to mention that the tour was free and yet we were treated to a full meal. That was very generous of them. We chatted with a British and a Russian couple and had a great time.
After eating dinner my friend and I wandered around Katara for about 15 minutes, bought some karak (look it up here) from a stand, then caught the bus back.
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