Edmonton mosque offers shelter during deep freeze
Anna McMillan | CBC News | Posted: February 6, 2019 11:16 PM | Last Updated: February 7, 2019
‘That’s our duty as Edmontonians and as good citizens’
An Edmonton mosque has opened its doors to those in need as the cold snap lingers.
People will be able to sleep and get a warm meal at Al Rashid Mosque for as long as temperatures remain dangerously low. The mosque, located at 113th Street and 132nd Avenue, opened to the public Wednesday at 6 p.m.
"In such harsh conditions, we have to rise to the occasion," said Noor Al-Henedy, communications director for Al Rashid. "That's our duty as Edmontonians and as good citizens, to help our fellow citizens who are going through unfortunate circumstances."
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The mosque worked with the Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council to gather volunteers to work overnight.
"It's fantastic … for the Al Rashid Mosque to open up their doors and provide another mechanism [of] support for those who are in need to help so many other fantastic organizations who are doing such a great job to fight this battle of this frigid cold," said AMPAC President Faisal Suri.
Volunteers are providing food and warm clothing to people in need, Al-Henedy said.
"That's what we owe anybody that lives in our society," she said. "We owe them our help, we owe them our compassion, we owe them our assistance."
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There isn't a significant homeless population in the neighbourhood, Al-Henedy said, but community members have noticed a few people sleeping outside in the area. She said it wasn't clear how many people would sleep at the mosque Wednesday night.
"It could be as small as one, it could be as big as 50 or 100," she said.
The gesture comes 11 days after the mosque was visited by a group known to police. On Wednesday morning, AMPAC shared online that a hateful letter had been left at Markaz-Ul-Islam, a mosque in southeast Edmonton.
Al-Henedy said Al Rashid has a history of supporting the community, and the incidents have nothing to do with the decision to open the mosque to the public.
"We would not let any kind of negative media or negative people or haters or people who come from extreme backgrounds or extreme thoughts to influence what we do here," she said.
"We're always here to help. We're always here to support, no matter what."