Houston Musings with Delaware Buddies....

Today, I was the tour guide for my homies from Delaware. This tour blog is in tribute to our missing friend from Delaware, who couldn't join due to Mash and other Mushy reasons... I can't call him out by name, his dad may choke me (inside joke). Three friends have actually arrived from Delaware to join the Texas Dawah Convention: Malik, Mash, and Dr. Abu-Pain. Those who know them, know who I am talking about...
So, we did our little Masjid tour... went to the North Zone Masjid. My friends were amazed at the size of this Masjid, a few minutes away from the Houston's George Bush airport. Then, we were off to the "Laal Masjid" which is the breakaway tableeghi masjid, next to the original tableeghi masjid called 'Madrassa Islamia'. Mashallah, Madrassa is the most active Masjid in Houston--- about 40:60 Arabs:Desi. And the Imam, Hafiz Iqbal is a force of good in Houston. He's cool with everyone, and most are cool with him. They have a full time hifdh school at the Madrassa, and they have some amazing Qaris there. Most or all of the teachers/Qaris are from Pakistan, but that doesn't bother anyone.
Later, we met up the ISGH Main Center, which has been newly renovated. Looked quite nice. This was for the Muslims in Texas exhibition as described in the Texas Dawah prelude. From there, we were off to the famous restaurants of Houston. Darband, an Iranian restaurants serves delicious kabobs and chicken (all halal 'allegedly':)). We weren't really hungry, but Dr. Abu-pain was, so we joined him, and ended up getting too full again.
From there, we somehow ended up going to Galveston on that aweful ferry ride, which sounds like a really good idea every 5 or so years. And then as soon as you spend about 10 minutes on it, you remember how bad it was the last time. And it was too cold to be there, the wind-chill got to your spine (of course Houston's 55F nights are no comparison to Delaware's 30F, but the wind on a fast-moving ferry made it seem like 10F). Things did get a little interesting here. As were getting ready to get in line for the ferry, we were moved to a closed lane, and realized that we were 'randomly' picked for vehicle search! Random, of course. I have some choicy words for this random pickings, but I'll reserve it for myself. The only other random cars out of perhaps 30 of them, was a black guy. "Driving while black" syndrome still exists, but "Driving while Muslim" is surely taking over! Finally, after our "awesome" ferry adventure, we got home, late and tired. But this entry had to go in while the mind was fresh. Oh, the homies from Delaware did buy a flash-disposable-camera to take pictures of mosques and shayookhs... its my job now to get the sheikhs in the pics! Later.