A couple of weekends ago I had the privilege of visiting the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton at the invitation of Imam Mamadou Toure. I've posted on Imam Toure before - he's an eighth-generation Sufi Imam from Senegal, an eminent scholar, and a truly wonderful human being. This was my first visit to Bilal - I'd been to the Muslim Community Center on MLK Boulevard in Portland a few times - and it was exciting to be able to attend the two-hour class that Imam Toure was giving.
My impressions of the local Muslim community, both at MCC and at Bilal, were entirely positive. They struck me as uniformly warm, decent, down-to-earth folks. If any of them harbored any anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiment, they kept it to themselves. The people I met with and interacted with are most certainly not anti-Jewish.
There's a lot of trouble out there in the world. You know that and I know that. We don't have to create problems where none exist. There are narrow-minded people and raving bigots in every place and in every religion. We don't have to be like them.
There is much more I'd like to write, but this is all for now.
