Minorities in any part of the world face difficulties and challenges related to their identity and struggle to preserve it without isolating themselves from the surrounding society.

My curiosity during my trip to Ireland prompted me to visit a mosque or an Islamic center in Dublin, and I chose the Islamic Cultural Center for no particular reason for choosing it over others, as the options are limited in number.

The journey from the city center where I was to the center took about 40 minutes by public transport.

The center was established with funding from Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum and was inaugurated by the President of Ireland Mary Robinson in 1996, the first woman to assume the presidency of Ireland.

The nice thing is that the center is not limited to a mosque for worship, but includes a public school, a school for memorizing the Qur’an, a nursery, a restaurant, and a store to serve the Muslim community and the residents of the area in general.

On the prayer times bulletin board you can see how difficult the timing is, as the five daily prayers are linked to sunrise and sunset, and since sunset is around 9:30 pm and dawn is a little after 3:30 am, which increases the difficulty of the matter, it seems that they settled on performing the Isha prayer directly after sunset. The difficulty of fasting in Ramadan if it coincides with the summer came to my mind, which I have heard a lot about from colleagues in several European countries and experienced myself for years in America.

It is clear that the center is receiving good care, as it seems after about three decades of its establishment, even the restaurant, which I did not leave before tasting its food, was good, both in terms of cleanliness and quality of food, and I came across an Irish family who came to eat at the restaurant.

The more challenges increase, the more minorities unite to preserve their identity, and it is no wonder that Ireland itself has faced many challenges, but it has clung to preserving its identity over the years, and that is another story that I learned about closely at the Irish Emigration Museum.