Muslim Imam to speak in Edinburgh church

On Sunday 4th June 2017, Shaykh Hassan Rabbani, the imam from Annandale Street Mosque, will join us at Sunday worship. Imam Rabbani will address the congregation during the worship service. This is an historic occasion in the life of Broughton St Mary's church and parish. I very much hope that you will be able to join us at this service.

The invitation was extended to Shaykh Hassan Rabbani by the church and builds on the interfaith dialogue and co-operation between the church and mosque. In 2013, during Ramadan, about 40 church members visited Annandale Street Mosque on the invitation of mosque leaders. We observed evening prayer before sharing a meal with those present. A few months later, the church reciprocated the invitation and welcomed about 40 men, women and children from the mosque for an evening service and supper in the church.

Other shared initiatives have followed including Feed Edinburgh, a Muslim project to serve food to the poorest in the neighbourhood. The church offered the garden room for this community initiative. The local MP attended the inauguration of this initiative in 2014. Feed Edinburgh developed into the Foodbank and the mosque, along with others in the community, have been instrumental in supporting this initiative.

In more recent times, church and mosque have participated in Scriptural Reasoning. This brings together Christians, Muslims and Jews to read texts from the Bible, Quran and Torah and to share with each other the significance of the text. Both the Alwaleed Centre at Edinburgh University and Edinburgh Interfaith Association have supported this meeting at Annandale Street Mosque.

The friendship between the church and the mosque, developed through encounter and exchange, has led to the invitation to Shaykh Hassan Rabbani. Shaykh Hassan was born in Glasgow and has studied at Aberdeen and Glasgow universities. He is also a graduate of the prestigious Al Azhar University in Cairo. In addition to his role at Annandale Street Mosque he teaches the iSyllabus – described as a ground-breaking Islamic studies programme helping students live their faith through developing the themes of worship, belief and self-reflection, whilst simultaneously developing an understanding of the sacred sources of Islamic learning.

I hope that you can join us on 4th June at 10.30am for the historic address by Shaykh Hassan.

Best wishes,

Graham

Graham McGeoch (minister)
Broughton St Mary's Parish Church
12 Bellevue Crescent
Edinburgh
EH3 6NE

Website: www.bstmchurch.org.uk