Muslims and Museums

I met up with Hayak after Bosnia, feeling diseased but able to leave my bed, after about a 3 hour conversation we walked into the myf and the poster for 1001 inventions caught my eye, I pointed it out to Hayak and since she has time on her hands at the moment we made a spontaneous decision to go to the museum on Friday after jummah.

Friday came around and i walked into the ladies section, to see Hayak and Bangles deep in conversation. We met, prayed and left to make the journey to the museum, when Hayak informs me that ufakar is coming along, I thought great the more the merrier. We set off on the journey but as I discovered a hungry man is a cranky man. So we had to stop off and feed him before we severed ties. After our leisurely meal we walked to the Manchester museum, started off on the first floor and made our way around unhurriedly.

After a while Ufakr walks up to Hayak and I to point out that it was 4.30pm and that closing time is at 5.00pm so we better find the exhibition. We couldn’t find any signpost so we moaned a little about how there where no signs.

The conversation went something like this?

Hayak: I can’t see any signs, can you?
NM: No I can’t… typical the first Muslim exhibition and there no signs….how rude…
Hayak: let’s ask someone
Ufakar: seen any signs yet?
NM: we are going to ask someone

So we walked to the nearest person who worked at the museum and asked for directions. The two ladies, behind the gift shop counter looked at each other then looked at us.
When the shorter lady turned around to the taller one and said ‘everyone seems to be coming to the wrong museum today’ I think this was to ease the obvious blow that she was about to deliver to 3 eager looking people.

The tall lady turned to us apologetically and said ‘it’s at the science and industry museum, near the G-max’

Ufakar looked at Hayak, Hayak looked at me and I burst out laughing,

Earlier we had discussed the serious need for Muslims to visit the exhibition and support the immense work that had gone into organising such an innovative way of presenting our heritage.
So much for seeing our heritage!!! Ufakar asks Hayak how we got here, Hayak asks me how we got here I shrug my shoulders! None of us bothered to check we just assumed, spontaneous act my foot, Check your information before going gallivanting is the lesson here!

Ufakar’s parting remark ( I must point out that ufakar is a revert here) was
‘ This says a lot about how often Muslim visit Museum!’
Next week we are going to give it another go inshallah, second time lucky eh.