Today’s Ride to Mosque comes to us from Norm, who recently visited Abu Dhabi, the capital and the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates in terms of population and the largest of the seven member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Norm writes:
Last November I had a business trip to the United Arab Emirates. We arrived in Abu Dhabi on Saturday and had a series of work meetings on Sunday (Saturday is the Sabbath — Sunday is a normal work day). After the meetings we decided to do a little sight-seeing on the way back to the hotel so we paid a visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Seemed like a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon/evening.
The mosque is named after the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan who was instrumental in organizing the UAE as a new country back in the early 70’s. It is the third largest mosque in the world. It has been under construction for five years or so and is mostly completed. The price tag thus far = $700M. It is an incredible structure.
Our tour guide for our visit was a beautiful young Muslim woman. I was impressed by her sincerity and by how devout she was. As we traveled through the country we saw countless smaller mosques, including small roadside mosques near gas stations on the highway where travelers could stop for one of their many daily prayers and mosques out in the country by the side of the road. These mosques were all much smaller and more humble, but they were always clean and treated with a great deal of respect. I was thankful that I was able to learn more about their religion and their faith.
We had just finished some formal meetings so we were all in suit and tie. All women, regardless of faith, had to wear a head covering to enter the mosque and men were expected to be more formally dressed (no shorts for example). As I have visited various religious shrines around the world, it always seemed jarring to me to see a bunch of people crowded in a cathedral or other holy place in t-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. I thought it was refreshing to see them ask for a more respectful form of attire.
![11-mosque](https://dovesandserpents.org/wp-content/gallery/abu-dhabi/11-mosque.jpg "Everyone looks here while praying since the wall (which contains the 99 names for God used in the Koran) faces Mecca. The highlighted one in the middle is \\"Allah\\".")
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing these!
Amazing pictures. I need to get there. It’s on my ever-expanding bucket list now!
Wow! Absolutely stunning.
Wow!
Thank you for sharing. This mosque is one of my favorite places to have visited. My tour guide was a young gentleman, who took two hours out of his day, instead of the allotted 30 minutes or so, and kept talking to us about Islam and the mosque. It was truly a spiritual experience.