The first stop on our trip was at
the Islamic Center of Raleigh. The Center serves not only as a worship site for
Muslims, but also as a learning center for children up to the 8th
grade. We were given a warm welcome by the leaders of the center, and given a
background on the faith of Islam and they were explicit about how the general
population of preaches and practices a loving and peaceful lifestyle, and open
mindedness, while the media tends to focus on the negative use of religion to
justify actions of crime. We were also given a demonstration of the passion of
the children in their memorization of the Quran with several children reciting
chapters from the holy text, and also two children gave a presentation to our
group beforehand.
Our next stop was a Buddhist
temple. We were given a tour of part of the center by two nuns of the faith,
and were given a 40 minute information session on the faith that included
history and explanation of certain beliefs, including the Dalai Llama. While we
ran out of time, we were still able to see some important features of the
temple, such as the suppa.
The second to last stop was the
Hindu temple. The temple was under construction while we were there, but the
parts that had already been constructed were very beautiful and articulate. Our
tour guide led us into the temple, and gave us background stories and
information on the religion and showed us the priest performing a ritual and
other rituals being performed. The tour guide was very friendly and attempted
to answer all of our questions and provide the best experience possible.
Our last stop was the synagogue of
Judaism. We were spoken to by a rabbi and he was very energetic. I particularly
enjoyed him explaining how Jews are not aggressive in the spreading of their
beliefs (maybe due to their historical persecution and attempting to avoid
reasons to be persecuted and hated), but will explain and attempt to prove
others wrong. My fascination with Judaism is the difference in translations between
the Torah and Bible and Quran, and their justification and argument against the
other two texts.
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