We’re in the month of Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight hours. Iftar is the traditional community meal to break the fast at sunset, and I was recently invited, along with colleagues from Newcastle City Council (my day job), to visit the Bilal Jame Mosque in Elswick for a tour around the Mosque and a shared iftar meal. I’ve been to the Mosque before, for the 2017 Interfaith Peace Walk, and I was happy to be back (you can see photos of this here: 2017 Newcastle Peace Walk). This time, I remembered to wear shoes that can be easily slipped on and off!

Fifty of us joined together for a tour around the mosque, guided by one of the imams and several of the mosque’s community leaders, including Cllr Habib Rahman, the former Lord Mayor of Newcastle. The mosque is a big building, and, much like our old Church of the Divine Unity, rather more complex than you might imagine from the outside. We visited the community rooms, the main prayer areas (men downstairs, women upstairs), washing areas, classrooms, dining halls – and the room for washing the dead. As always when one visits another’s place of worship, we see both our similarities and differences. In the Western tradition, it is no longer the responsibility of the relatives to wash and prepare the dead for burial, although it’s not that far back that most neighbourhoods had someone who knew how to lay out a body.

Should we be closer to death? The world isn’t the same for all of us, though it had its similarities, but as with my visit to the synagogue, I was reminded by the sturdy fencing and doors that ‘freedom of religion’ is experienced differently by our different faith communities. We are lucky to have it, and perhaps take it for granted too much.

The visit ended with a delicious shared iftar of samosa, bhajis, dhal and rice, and we all expressed our gratitude for the visit, delivered with great Geordie humour. Cllr Rahman commented that we should do this again; let’s hope it happens!