Source: The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/01/AR2009040101179.html
Yaser Jaleel didn't know whom the group behind him was during his evening prayers last week, young men sitting quietly along a back wall of the mosque as Jaleel and other worshipers bent and bowed eastward. When he discovered it was a group of Jewish students from a nearby synagogue, his face broke into a broad smile.
"That is how God wants it," said Jaleel at the close of prayers at the Muslim Community Center on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring. The travel agent from Hyattsville began welcoming the visitors, shaking the hand of each as the students left the carpeted hall. "As the Koran says, 'I created you into nations and tribes that you may know each other.' "
Building a little firsthand knowledge between religious tribes was exactly the goal of the field trip taken last week by members of Temple Beth Ami in Rockville. At the invitation of two Muslim exchange students spending a year in the Washington area, the temple's ninth-grade comparative religion class came to the Silver Spring center to see a mosque.
The two-hour visit included sunset prayers, a tour of the library, a question-and-answer session on Islamic customs and beliefs and an overview of the center's women's health outreach program, which serves 6,000 uninsured county residents a year at a state-of-the-art clinic.