…it feel good to be back !! As one worshiper put it.
I am a trustee and a coordinator at Hendon Mosque. Let me put something into perspective under lockdown everyone has been waiting for the shops, restaurants, gyms and other places to open up. You can’t help but notice the queues outside places like TK Max, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s etc and even some stores inside Brent Cross Shopping centre.
However, but maybe Very few will have noticed the somewhat relatively low key smaller queues that have began forming outside our places of worship, especially outside our Hendon Mosque. For those who religion or faith is not retail I can’t begin to explain to you all the look of joy on people’s faces attending our mosque.
For us as volunteers and custodians of the mosque, we have never felt so much happiness in opening our doors wide for the first time since lockdown started. There has been a huge amount of behind- the-scene effort & work and thinking that has been needed to take place before we reached the decision of opening our doors. But I can tell you this much …it has been well worth it !!!
I think when we closed we never thought it would be so long before we would have to reopen. And we never thought that we would have to change so radically our whole approach.
There is immense sadness as well in opening our doors as we are missing congregation members who are no longer with us in this world today as a result of Covid.
Unlike some other faiths our mosques are predominantly about group worship/prayers. We have had to manage this very very carefully and we have had to introduce a booking system in place for our large congregational prayers. Of course like anything new when first been introduced we too have teething problems we have technical hitches and we have human resource issues. But we’ve managed!!
We have managed the challenges as well as the expectation from the community to deliver and we will continue to resume congregational prayers in the safest possible environment in which we can do this.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very heartfelt warm Eid Mubarak celebration message and assure you all that as trustees we take our responsibilities very seriously of the safety of everyone who comes and walks through our doors.
Eid Mubarak
Nayim Kadri