On Thursday August 2, Day 14 of 30 Masjids, CBC Reporter Priya Sankaran (@CBCPriya) joined me as I was en route to the FCP Musallah for Dhuhr Prayers.
This prayer space I had only ever heard about. It could be a pretty good subject for a brief item about 30 Masjids for CBC Radio One.
However that’s not the story that ended up airing every half hour Friday morning on CBC Metro Morning.
This was . . .
Followed by a brief online item:
A Toronto Muslim who has pledged to cycle to 30 mosques during Ramadan has been forced off the road.
Himy Syed had received a new bicycle as a Ramadan gift from his brother and sister-in-law so he could blog and tweet stories about the various Muslim communities.
But after attending early morning prayers at a downtown Toronto mosque recently, he walked outside to find his bike had been stolen.
“It is the ideal way to do Ramadan, going to different masjids because you have to pray at 4:00 – 4:30 in the morning. Prayer ends if you stay till the end past midnight. You can’t do this on transit. So bicycle allows one to just zip in, zip by. I can just pray here, I can go here. It was a good bicycle,” he said.
Syed says he went to Toronto police to report the bike stolen.
He says he’ll still continue visiting mosques during Ramadan, but he’ll have to find a different ride.
— CBC News
Though I had recorded a video and took photos of the aftermath, I struggled with sharing the news that my bike got stolen from outside of Masjid Toronto on Wednesday around Sunrise.
When my brother Amir gave me the bike, he said,
If anything happens to it, I don’t want to hear about it.
For Thursday’s interview, I asked Priya Sankaran to meet me outside the CBC Mothership on Front Street at the famous Glenn Gould Statue.
Almost immediately upon seeing me and exchanging greetings, she asked if I had biked to our interview.
Well…. If a Muslim tells a lie, it will break their fast. I had to tell Priya the Truth.
It was stolen.
Outside of Masjid Toronto.
Wednesday after Dawn Prayers.
We continued walking towards the Financial District and all the while Priya just couldn’t believe someone had stolen my bike….
ummm….
