New View in Peterborough

Today we went to Peterborough to visit the Mosque. I started the day with very little knowledge of Muslims and their religion, but by the end of our visit I felt a lot more informed. The extremists we hear about on the news aren’t the majority of the religion. From what we heard they are a much more peaceful religion. The man we talked to was open to all of our questions. This was a great opportunity to get first hand information on a religion I knew little about. The Islamic population in England is growing quickly. The Mosque we went to was built in 2007, and it was built mostly through donations. With recent extremist tragedies in the U.S. and here in England, I am glad I was given the opportunity to hear the other side of things instead of just what we see in the media. I think it is something more people need to see.

After our tour of the Mosque, we walked to the shopping area of Peterborough and broke off into groups to walk around. This turned out to be a little disappointing. It was a very commercialized area except for a small section by the Cathedral, which we will be going to on Saturday. We went into several stores and walked around the mall. There was no difference between the mall there and malls back in the U.S. except for the stores. We also found the British version of the Dollar Store, PoundLand.

The architecture of the Mosque turned out to be much more modern than I was expecting which is probably due to it being built in 2007.

 

Women have a separate entrance as well as a separate area to pray. This is so that neither women or men are distracted by the others presence and can focus completely on prayer.

 

 

This was in a central area of where we were exploring Peterborough. I am unsure of its purposes, but each time we walked by we saw a lot of people were relaxing there and enjoying a day without rain.

 

Tonight here at Harlaxton, it was trivia night at The Bistro which is a little pub inside the manor. The group I was in did not do so well on the trivia. We lost to the professors. Tomorrow’s day trip takes us to Stamford.

-Alyssa