Talk:Dar al-Hijrah

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developing and not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
To learn how to update the categories for this article, see here. To update categories, edit the metadata template.
 Definition Large U.S. mosque in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Falls Church, Virginia [d] [e]
Checklist and Archives
 Workgroup category Religion [Please add or review categories]
 Talk Archive none  English language variant American English

Sourcing challenges

Let me observe that I lived a short distance from Dar al-Hijrah for many years, including when it opened. There were some very interesting cultural clashes at the beginning, such as worshippers parking on nearby lawns if they could not find a parking space. They believed that their religious duty trumped all. Over time, however, the mosque leadership worked with the general community, as well as the police, and found at least some solutions to the traffic problem -- prime time Friday services always remained a problem, because the access road was too small, but some workarounds were found.

So far, I haven't found much online documentation. I thought there might have been some in the major DC newspapers, but I haven't found it yet. There were community meetings, articles in the local newspapers, etc.

Is there a way to handle this sort of first-person experience? If one thinks about it, we don't require experts to source their comments on routine techniques in their fields. The current interpretation of Signed Article seems to be third-party. Did anyone else live near Falls Church and Route 7 in 1991? (Actually, I was one block off of Route 7 in Arlington).

Incidentally, some of the traffic drove me more insane, but I had good friends in the congregation, who confirmed some of the newspaper reports that the politics of the imams didn't make much difference to them personally. Given the very specific Muslim obligations to pray, and the strong imperative to community prayer, they simply regarded the mosque as a place to pray, contributed to building upkeep, and just didn't get involved in the politics. The dynamics were quite different than some of the U.S. evangelical megachurches where the congregation listens to the preacher politically. Howard C. Berkowitz 13:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)