A Visit to the Islamic Cultural Center

By student Liz Wainwright

I really loved going to the Islamic cultural center. There are a lot of things that I did not know about. What I learned at the Islamic center in Quebec City was that some things that are accepted in my culture may not be accepted in Islamic culture. I just thought it was a little bit of a culture shock because I kind of expected to be able to worship in one room with my family and not have to worry about where everyone else went. But I did realize that I would have to worship in separate rooms from the men. 

I do remember the fact that there's two different types of Islam, which is Shia and Sunni. Also, what I remember is in one of the branches, God's not so much the leader. It's more God is like the one prophet, I guess. I thought it was a good way for them to organize the right time to pray daily, especially since they tend to pray about five times per day. 

I did also notice that they do pray more intensively than I'm used to. In my religion, we did not pray as intensively as Muslims do. I saw the children in the summer camp in the room that we walked into on the top floor of the mosque, and I saw the teachers, who were women, and the fact that they were teaching the class in Arabic.