So anyone visit a Mosque yesterday?

[Monty92]

I was washing my hair, sadly.

I reckon if you asked a scientist to create a Useful idiot in a Laboratory, he'd come up with the kind of person who would attend such an event.

[Burney]

I was washing my hair, sadly.

I reckon if you asked a scientist to create a Useful idiot in a Laboratory, he'd come up with the kind of person who would attend such an event.

No. Were we supposed to?

To be honest, the chances of me leaving the house on a Sunday to go somewhere I can't get a drink is pretty much zero.

[Sir C]

I was washing my hair, sadly.

I reckon if you asked a scientist to create a Useful idiot in a Laboratory, he'd come up with the kind of person who would attend such an event.

Nah, you're alright. I mean, I've got a wife, who's a woman, and gay friends, who are gay, and lots of people I know are christians and Sikhs and Buddhists, so I sort of hesitate to get involved with a bunch of people who would like to see them oppressed at best or possibly chucked off a tall building.

If I want to hang out with a bunch of nonthinking savages I'd go to The Emirates.

[Monty92]

No. Were we supposed to?

To be honest, the chances of me leaving the house on a Sunday to go somewhere I can't get a drink is pretty much zero.

Mosques around the country held Open Days. The Guardian's coverage was predictable, encouraging people to see the problems faced by Islam through the lens of their own western privilege and intolerances towards minorities.

I also think this kind of event gives Islamist sympathisers the perfect opportunity to use progressive liberal westerners as pawns in their power-game and as human shields to conceal their regressive world view while they point the finger at unreconstructed racist, bigoted whitey. It allows them to say: “See, look at all these open-minded white people who are willing to confront their own inherent racism and not just brand us all as terrorists. They're much better than all those right wing fascist sympathisers who voted for Brexit and Trump, and spend their days posting Islamopobic tweets. See, we don’t hate Western values, we just hate Islamophobes."

[World's End Stella]

Mosques around the country held Open Days. The Guardian's coverage was predictable, encouraging people to see the problems faced by Islam through the lens of their own western privilege and intolerances towards minorities.

I also think this kind of event gives Islamist sympathisers the perfect opportunity to use progressive liberal westerners as pawns in their power-game and as human shields to conceal their regressive world view while they point the finger at unreconstructed racist, bigoted whitey. It allows them to say: “See, look at all these open-minded white people who are willing to confront their own inherent racism and not just brand us all as terrorists. They're much better than all those right wing fascist sympathisers who voted for Brexit and Trump, and spend their days posting Islamopobic tweets. See, we don’t hate Western values, we just hate Islamophobes."

It strikes me as an excellent idea. Do you honestly believe we're going to solve the problem of Islamic Fundamentalism without improving the communication with their community?

[SWv2]

I only know of one Mosque in Dublin and if we had all piled up there after mass it would have been chaos.

All in all a bad plan from the off.

[Monty92]

It strikes me as an excellent idea. Do you honestly believe we're going to solve the problem of Islamic Fundamentalism without improving the communication with their community?

If it was part of a broader wide-reaching approach to move Islam towards reform, then I would be absolutely in favour. And I am sure the organisers themselves had only good intentions.

But I consider this kind of event part of an approach characterised by obfuscation and distraction and that encourages us to view Islam through the lens of our own racism, rather than speaking honestly about the problems inherent to the religion and that makes it so resistant to reform.

It is a token gesture that gives progressive liberals a warm fuzzy virtuous feeling but that ultimately glosses over the actual, grave problem at hand.

[Burney]

It strikes me as an excellent idea. Do you honestly believe we're going to solve the problem of Islamic Fundamentalism without improving the communication with their community?

But the problem isn't Islamic fundamentalism. The problem is Islam, its believers and what they actually believe - about us, about the world, about their place in the world and how things ought to be.
Me visiting a mosque isn't going to change the fact that Islam is fundamentally (ha!) incompatible with modern, liberal western society.

[Ash]

I was washing my hair, sadly.

I reckon if you asked a scientist to create a Useful idiot in a Laboratory, he'd come up with the kind of person who would attend such an event.

Walked past the one at Whitechapel. Had a look at it from the outside, but didn't see any Open Day signs inviting me in. Shame, I'd like to see what it looks like inside.

[Burney]

Walked past the one at Whitechapel. Had a look at it from the outside, but didn't see any Open Day signs inviting me in. Shame, I'd like to see what it looks like inside.

I went to one when I was at school and doing comparative religion. It looked like nothing much. Since representative art is banned by Islam, the decor was never going to be up to much.