HH Sheikha Moza attends Friday prayer at QFIS mosque to mark its official opening

Photo+by+Shakeeb+Asrar

Photo by Shakeeb Asrar

Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies (QFIS) officially inaugurated its new building and Education City mosque Friday after a large gathering at Jummah (Friday) prayer. Her Highness Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser, chairperson of the Qatar Foundation, also attended the prayer in the women’s section of the mosque.

“We had a very simple vision for our opening and didn’t do any big opening ceremony,” said Remah Gharib, acting assistant dean of administration and finance at QFIS. “We wanted it to be very simple and we thought the best way of having our opening ceremony would be Friday payers.”

Hundreds of students and employees from Education City, as well as people from outside EC attended the prayer, filling the inside of the mosque. Lunch was served to the attendees after the prayer.

The QFIS mosque started operating in January 2015 with an indoor prayer hall and the outside courtyard that can accommodate up to 1800 people.

“The mosque feels grand and really unlike other mosques in Doha. It made no difference that there were women praying since that’s completely acceptable as long as they are out of sight,” said Hamza Abdurrahman, a student from Texas A&M University at Qatar, who attended the prayer. “The event had free food, that was good, but the event was kind of a big deal and I don’t feel it had been advertised enough.”

“The opening of a mosque so close to the dorms is really helpful and the fact that the number of busses has increased and there are variable times to go there is a really good option,” said Arsal Ismail Malik, a sophomore at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

Abdurrahman, however, said the construction in EC makes it really difficult to go to the mosque regularly.

“I don’t feel that the mosque is useful in terms of being able to pray there in daily congregation since its pretty inaccessible at the moment,” he said.

According to Gharib, who also serves as the coordinator of urban designing and architecture at QFIS, the event marks the official operation of QFIS from its new building. All classes, conferences and public activities of the institute will now take place in the new building.

“The building is unique in its shape and meanings. It’s very modern and gives the message of contemporaneity and originality, the same as our philosophy and teaching,” said Gharib.

 

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