Travelogue - Germany Part 19

After four days at Erfurt, we arrived at Berlin on September 16, 2004. We were brought to Masjid Bait-ul Mukarram, Keinitzerstrasse 98. The chairman of the Masjid was a Bangladeshi and the imam was from Sham. Almost 24 hours there were people joining us for i'tikaaf. They were brothers from Lubnan Palestine, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, etc and most of them had spent time in the path of Allah from 3 days to 4 months. We were brought to visits Muslims from the surrounding masjids.

I felt rather nostalgic arriving at Berlin since it is one of the cities that I had stopped by whilst euro-railing for one whole month during the summer holiday back in 1990 when I was studying in England. I somewhat hope that the journey in the path of Allah would in some way serve as a redemption to all the foolishness that I had made in the same city in 1990 (such as collecting fragments of the Berlin Wall as souvenirs for a symbol of regained freedom!)


We also stayed at Masjid An-Nur, Haberstrasse 3, Berlin for a couple of days. The Arab Muslim community here had bought a  desolated milk factory and turned it into a splendid huge 4-storey masjid complete with a shop, a canteen, a kitchen, IT centre, classes for children and even a gymnasium. Sadly, except for a nikah (marriage) occasion that was held here where many people-men, women and children, flocked in the masjid for a whole day and night, there were only a handful of mussalis that pray fard namaaz here.

At the occasion of nikah, we were utterly shell-shocked to see that the imam himself leading the others in singing songs (or praises) and the men then danced in the masjid in a big circle. Although the women were separated from men a the upper floor, and although the dancing and singing of praises might be an acceptable Arab culture, I personally felt that it was hideous and disgusting thing to do in any masjid. I am relating to you this story not to unnecessarily expose the repulsive and ugliness of the ummah or any specified community but rather to reflect that not all that we had seen and experience were all charming and delightful. The purpose is not to condemn but to ask forgiveness to Almighty Allah on behalf of the entire ummah in the matters that we had transgressed. And how much that I had transgressed! May Almighty Allah give taufeek to me and the entire ummah to practise only the blessed sunnah way of life of our Prophet sallalaahu alayhi wasalam.

And oh! At this masjid we managed to persuade Fairuz and Nazali Sham, the two Malaysian students that were together with us for the most part of our journey, to cut their hair short!