Mobile phones in mosques

Reporting live from Taqwa Mosque- rudy Zman- subject: obile phones in mosques

In a stunning turn of events, a cell phone erupted in the midst of Maghrib prayer today. The participants of the prayer weren�t too pleased. Kareem Hajji, a regular congregational Maghrib member comments, �This was just awful. I didn�t expect in a million years that a cell phone would go off during prayer.�

The interesting part about all this was that it was the Imam�s cell phone that went off. The Imam was in the middle of reciting Surah Fatiha when his cell-phone started going off. He paused the Surah, turned his cell-phone on silent then continued the Surah as if nothing happened.

�I didn�t expect to hear �My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard� during this Maghrib prayer� said Hajji. The Imam simply replied that he did not know how to change ring-tones and that the back-up Imam did it as a �joke�. But this was no laughing matter for the Imam.

The Imam rants, �Changing the ring-tone to a song like that was borderline Haram but those people deserved it anyway. That�d show them for keeping their cellphones on during my khutbahs. What goes around comes around. Stupid-heads.�

The partakers of the Maghrib prayer were not amused and felt that corrupting the prayer was not a good revenge. An anonymous regular remarks, �This was the worst Maghrib prayer I�ve ever prayed in my life.�

Ongoing pranks isn�t a new thing for Taqwa Masjid. Once, someone from the community dressed up as a non-Muslim who was interested in Islam to fool the Imam. After a rigorous three hours, the Imam managed to �convert� the non-Muslim only to find out he was really Muslim the entire time. Since then the Masjid community has been split into two and nasty politics ensued.

However, since the Maghrib incident, an average of one cell-phone goes off during every prayer at Taqwa Masjid. The mosque board was nice enough to start a fund that whenever there was a prayer that was cell-phone-free then they would put $20 into a jar.

The jar is currently empty.

The faithful are one community, and He saves them in this life and the hereafter.

Whenever I go to the masjid for Jumaa the majority there waste their time before the salat talking or simply sitting as if they're waiting to go to the dentist instead of preparing themselves mentally for prayer. Afterwards almost no one remains to offer their sunnah prayers but rather rush outside to talk about trivial nonsense. The cell phone issue is just another symptom of this lack of seriousness toward solat.

rudy wrote: However, since the Maghrib incident, an average of one cell-phone goes off during every prayer at Taqwa Masjid. The mosque board was nice enough to start a fund that whenever there was a prayer that was cell-phone-free then they would put $20 into a jar. The jar is currently empty.

The board should penalize everyone whose phone rang during Salah $20, the Jar would be overflowing.