hello and welcome to the edges of earth, my name is Brock. today i am in southern india - in tamil
nadu, in a small village. and i'm with Halekkul, and basically he's going to be my guide today.
he is going to show me what it's like to go inside a mosque. a muslim mosque. i've never
been inside one. i have no idea what to expect. i don't understand anything, so we have this guy
here to [I don't know] explain everything. you ready? yeah, i'm ready. all right let's do it!
so we made it to the top, but we have the wrong key. so now, we have to go back down. so yeah, this
is the main entrance of the mosque. so all the people are coming on here. so they'll go to the
ablution area. so we need to clean all your body for the prayer.
so this is the cleaning area. so you need to wash your hands, and your face, and your legs.
wash your hands like this. you need to wash your face three times. from here to here.
like, full hand from here.
like this. you need to lightly do a thing like this. then you need to wash through your legs as well.
People come here and sit down here. they wait for the prayer time. They just go inside and pray.
the students of this arabic school. so they just come here every morning and evening to study the arabic classes.
study arabic? yeah. Study Arabic, yeah. to know how to read the quran and all the stuff from islamic activities. how they do that.
you said you can speak a little bit of english. so maybe, what is your name?
what is your hobby? do you have a hobby?
music. music? what kind of music?
What kind?
Album. Album songs. Huh? What is it? Album songs.
what class, what grade are you in? i'm 8.
I am 5th grade.
I am 4th.
show me how you read the quran because everything is in arabic, right?
[reading arabic]
so this was music? this was a song? it's not a song. like it's not a song. It's not a song?that's just how you speak?
no. it's like.. they have a slang like that to read the quran.
interesting. yeah, it sounded like you were singing a song. no? that's just what it
sounds like to me. interesting. this is a prayer area here. so the imam will do the prayer, the
head of the mosque. like, all the people from the villages..they stand here they just finish the
prayer.. then they'll go out. so how many people are in this room at one time? so around like 20 to 30 people here.
are these like the spaces for the people? yeah yeah. their the spaces for the people.
so this is the main part for the...this one like.. member 1, so we call it..we can use
only on the friday prayer. this one, the imam will go upstairs, then stand and do the friday Gudba.
so like that's a special one, so, it's kind of an ancient thing. so we just follow from the ages.
run away!
We have 5 times of prayer a day. So it starts from...they call for the prayer at
like 4:55 am. people will come to the mosque. like they will come to prayer at 5:25 am.
so in afternoon, they call it saluka. so they just call for a prayer like 12:45 pm and they just
start the prayer at 1 o'clock pm. so in the evening time the prayer will call us at 4:25 pm. they call for
the prayer and then after the 4:40 pm they just start the prayer here. so it's 5 or 6 times per day?
6 times. the last one is like, friday, the special prayer. so they do a lot of
speeches over there in the mosque. like, around like 1 hour or half an hour. so they just
start the prayer at 1:30 pm. so that's a special one this called on friday. while everyone died,
we need to put all the bodies here. Casket? yeah, casket. so we need to take from here. from the house to
the cemetery. over there, just beside the mosque. a separate prayer hall for the women as well. it's
kind of bigger than the one for men. so we have a lot of women here in our village. so it can hold
around like 100 women here, for the prayer. so they will come for any festival prayer.
we call it Eid ul-Adha.
a big festival of muslim people. the women will come here for the prayer, for two times in a year.
if you have any special.. 2 times in a year?! yeah. so the men have to come many times every day. yeah.
the women can pray in their home itself. so if they are any festival or prayer or something like
that, they will come here to pray here. so when the women are in here and praying do
they all pray individually alone? or is there like someone in the front who is praying with them?
they just follow the imam after. the imam is the head of the prayer. they do the prayer
in the loudspeaker. right? so they follow the loudspeaker or they follow the imam. what does this word Kiblat mean?
Kiblat [Qibla] means the direction of the kaaba. this is the kaaba. we need to face the kaaba for the prayer.
so in india, we need to face the west side. so if you are in the USA, you need to face the east side. so
previously we had a pool over here to clean your body, like, before going to the prayer. so it's
kind of a lot of cost for maintaining cost, so we just demolished that. so we just put the floor
on that. so that's why we can use it for a lobby here, now. so while we are fasting time, we just
distribute here the food for the fasting guys. so who are fasting they just come
here for to break the fast. so where are we going now? we are going to the cemetery now.
the cemetery? yeah. okay. does every area that has a mosque have a cemetery? yeah. interesting. all right.
in every village, they have a separate place, the lock boy.
it's kind of different than the christians one. probably they have the headstones in the USA. like, but ours is somewhat different you can see.
in our culture, like, everyone has the same place here in cemetery. like,
no one has a special place something like for a king or for a leader or something like that. so everyone
goes to this place. like, from a poor man to the high society guy.. anything you can call it. so,
you can go to this place. like, same for everyone. so it sounds like when they bury you, everyone is
facing the same direction. your feet are facing the south. your head is facing the north. and then they
tilt your head to face the west? yeah that is the direction of the Qibla. ah, okay. it's starting to get a little
bit dark, so we have to sort of end the video now. but, it's interesting. i've never been in
a mosque before, so this was kind of a fun little tour for me. and then we had helpers. say "hello" hi.
anyway, that's it. I hope you enjoyed this small little tour. thank you
all for watching. remember, your time is running out, start living! take care.