Marathon Cerama (teaching)

Last night we also attended the big event in our kampung (neighborhood). It was kicked off with a women's group singing a few songs in Arabic. They did a good job even though the projector was right in their faces. After that a teenage boy read from the Al-Quran, and then a guest Imam (religious teacher) came and spoke on seven things Muslims today need to do. These included encouraging young people to be faithful in worship, conducting one's self appropriately with the opposite gender, remembering to say "peace be upon him" when using the name of the prophet, being good friends with other people of faith such as Jews and Christians, and several others.

He used a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from his hagi (pilgrimage) to Mecca which included a short video clip of the cave where Mohammad is said to have received his revelation, pictures of the massive hotels planned for the city of Mecca (one from Google earth), and a number of other video clips including several from the movie, "The Message" (Hollywood's version of Mohammed's life). We started a little after 8:00 pm and ended about 11:00 pm. I was amazed that the Imam was able to keep people engaged for that long! The original plan was to watch a movie about the revelation of the Al-Quran after the teaching, but that got scraped because everybody was too tuckered!