Huff Post: by Megan Sweas.

With the Southern California sun shining off its white marble walls and tall blue minaret, King Fahad Mosque in Culver City is hard to miss. But I almost did miss it.

As I turned my car around, I thought about how easy it would be to keep going straight instead of going to the mosque.

Visiting a mosque for the first time is intimidating. Though I’ve known many Muslims and studied Islam, I still worried about offending my hosts. Was I dressed properly? I had a scarf in my bag, but I didn’t know what to do with it.

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As I sat in the presentation last year, though, I wasn’t convinced Open Mosque Day was the solution. Just then, afternoon prayer began. Boys streamed into the prayer room from Sunday school and lined up shoulder-to-shoulder with their fathers. I was struck at the variety of ethnicities standing side-by-side. It’s one thing to know that Muslims are diverse; it’s another to see it.

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