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Comment by hgezim | Hacker News Reader

No, you probably won't offend anyone. I used to live in a small town in southern Alberta (Canada) and we had this guy come and pray there. After a while I learned he wasn't Muslim.. and people were mad that I asked if he was Muslim (don't remember why I did... I think I asked when did you convert).

Anyway, if you go up to any mosque and find a person you can ask, hey is it okay if I check this place out? Can I join in the prayer? Unless you meet an old uncle from the old country, they'll probably welcome it.

The mosque I go to now, in Edmonton, we have this guy that comes for the potluck. One day, the prayer is starting and I tell him, let's go pray (we were cleaning up) at which point he tells me he's not Muslim! Anyway, no biggie, he continued cleaning up while we prayed :)

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This is of course fine for white people visiting from overseas that don't look like they should know what they're doing.

There are some types of non-muslims (open apostates) that would be putting themselves in real physical danger by entering your average mosque in Islamabad and praying. We have a local ex-muslims meetup in London and stories of threats + actual physical violence from family and "community" are more common than not.

It also goes without saying that if there's no women's section and you have a vagina, you're shit out of luck.

This is a really good point.

I do not find it hard to believe that I'd offend Yemeni Muslims by making a haphazard attempt to pray alongside them at a mosque, because I can imagine what would happen if someone walked in off the street at my parish, got in line for a Communion wafer, and messed up that ceremony in a way that made it obvious they weren't Catholic.

Well that might be a bias based on the Catholic interpretation of scripture? For instance, in the church I was raised in you literally could not offend someone by attempting to take communion and being obviously not of their church. It was part of their creed. And I've had the pleasure of praying in a mosque when it was outright declared before hand that I was not Muslim.

Now that said, I'd buy you could easily offend someones religious sensabilities by praying an incorrect way, but you can also easily offend someone by not praying at all...

What are you some sort of hippy Unitarian? I hate to break it to you, but the real religions have rules. Catholics will just politely ask you to take the proper sacraments. Probably the same for most Muslims. I can imagine getting dumped in the desert if you accidentally attended one of the conclaved Mormon rituals.

Go and have a wander round a Sikh gurdwara.

The problem with a lot of liberal sentiment is that it can only ever work if you assume all religions are the same thing with slightly different colors and the same prayer said in a different language.

If something, like, oh, say islam's apostate laws, existed, it would be plain to everyone that you can't have freedom of religion and islam (not limited, of course, to that one religion). Only one of those can exist.

Of course that doesn't mean you can't just deny any of this exists, especially because there are liberal muslims (less than 1%, sure, but of course it doesn't look like that in San Francisco. But even in San Fran you won't have any trouble finding people who'll use violence against apostates either).

There's actually a lot of debate around apostasy laws, and a decent argument that the apostasy law actually refers to leaving Islam and committing treason against the Islamic state, not just leaving Islam. It's not as clear cut as you make out.

Inappropriate comment.

The tipoff is when you go back for seconds

You could also ask for barbecue flavor.

And then they beat them up if it's the first one doing that that day, or kill them if not. Or riot and destroy the entire town, burning down any house from anyone who doesn't have the exact right tint on his skin ?

No ?

Then, sorry to say, it's not comparable to what happens in the middle east at all.

And God forbid it's a woman were to try that.

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