The members of the Central Committee of the Pipeline Mosque should be commended for their new initiative.
The new initiative introduced by the committee allows only four speakers, that is, two from both sides: the bride and bridegroom in a typical wedding ceremony.
According to a member of the said committee, Mr. Badou Faye, each speaker would henceforth be given a maximum period of 10 minutes to address the gathering.
To us, this is a welcome development and a laudable initiative for that matter.
To that effect, other mosques in the country should emulate the Pipeline mosque, thus limit their number of speakers during wedding ceremonies.
In fact, this should not be limited to wedding ceremonies alone, but other social-cultural gatherings, such as naming ceremony, initiation, funeral etc.
Time factor should always be considered in our gatherings, since time is precious and, as a result, it should not be wasted.
What makes this initiative unique and welcoming is that people do go to ceremonies with different problems, such as poor health, other commitments to fulfil, among others.
Managing time is always good in programme planning and we hope such initiatives would be adhered to by all those concerned. We should respect time, at all times. It is sad to notice that, on most occasions, the time people normally spend on addressing the audience is often more than necessary.
Another issue that requires public attention is the use of mobile phones in our mosques. Despite numerous notices in our mosques, still some people ignore the information by allowing their phones to distract others.
This should not be allowed to continue, since mosques are holy places, meant to worship Allah. Ringing of phones will, no doubt, undermine people's total submission to Allah.
We also wish to use this opportunity to appeal to all Muslims, especially the salary earners, to consider initiating a special fund for imams in the country.
Such an initiative would, no doubt, boost the morale of our imams, considering the fact that most of them do not have sources of income.
Once again, we commend the Pipeline Mosque for this recent move.
