Around 35 guests (incl. mayor, priest, teachers & councillor) from Cumbria visited Darul Amaan Mosque today in Manchester. The event was organised by Blackburn Jamaat and supported by MKA North West.

The guests arrived in a coach at around 11am and left at 5pm. You can see the attached programme for the day. There were some last-minute changes as the group agreed to join us at the vigil in Media City (Manchester). Other than this, the day consisted of a Quran Exhibition, Mosque Tour, Speech on the topic of “Service to Mankind in Islam”, a Q&A session and a presentation by MKA North West on their KEK activities.

The Quran exhibition was “an eye opener” for some as they found it very educational, we could see people taking pictures of various pull-up banners and also taking notes. One thing to note was that all ladies actually brought a head scarf without us telling them anything about it. The guests were eager to take literature with them and some shared their experience (and picture) of meeting Huzur Aqdas (atba) at the Peace Symposium and how “they don’t feel like shaking anyone else’s hands again after that” because they were extremely honoured and humbled by the opportunity. The guests were amazed by the simplicity of the Mosque and how it serves the community in ways other than just for offering Salah. The councillor enjoyed the food so much he asked us to take him to the kitchen to meet the chef. The feedback from all very humbling as they mentioned that they want us to come to Cumbria again so we can return the amazing hospitality that they have experienced but we responded that the people of Cumbria have already shown us so much love when we came for the Hike/Ride last year. When we played a video about the Jalsa Salana and invited everyone to join us this year, some guests were shocked to see how this event is organised and run purely by thousands of volunteers from within our community. The most informative part of the evening was probably the speech by Murabbi Sahib on “Service to Mankind in Islam” which consisted of many inspirational examples from the Life of the Holy Prophet (saw). The guests were very respectful and appreciative and are very much looking forward to a future event.

Although we faced some organisational issues and obstacles during the day, it was as if Allah was directly guiding us through the programme as we kept to the schedule and delivered the message of Islam in a way we could not have imagined.

We gave a gift pack to each guest consisting of the books “World Crisis and the Pathway to Peace” and “Life of Muhammad (saw)”, around 8 different leaflets on various topics and some swiss chocolate.