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Pokemon Go Is Attracting People Towards Coming To The Mosque

It appears that Ramadan, Eid festivities, and Jummah prayers aren’t the only reasons to attract people to come towards their mosques this year.

On July 6, Niantic developed “Pokemon Go” as a GPS-oriented, reality-based game for users to catch, train, and battle their Pokemon in the real world with the help of their location devices online. Released for Apple IOS and Android users, Pokemon Go uses cameras in tech devices along with the GPS in order to challenge and set the game up for players everywhere.

Alerting when and where Pokemon are nearby to capture, the app recently has been discovered to be a “hot-Pokestop” for trainers everywhere in nearby places of worship such as mosques, churches, and temples. These users are only one of many who have gone to places of worship such as a mosque in order to catch and train their Pokemon in the gyms found in these areas.

While some retort that going to places of worship could be considered as “offensive” in playing a game, as claimed by Twitter users.

Both sides of the argument show that although some may consider going to their places of worship just to catch Pokemon as wrong, it can be argued heavily that by going to the places of worship, is a gateway towards a brighter future in regards to making people come towards religion and spirituality. Some may argue: why not? If this makes people come, then why not let them and discover the essence behind the strength and beauty behind the mosque themselves while catching Pokemon?

According to the “Daily Beast,” now, even places like the Taj Mahal, Western Wall of Jerusalem, and Eksigoglu Cami in Turkey, being known as religious, holy and popular sites have been spotted as famous Pokestops, as places become crowded for trainers to come and catch their respective Pokemon.

Now that the popular game has been released in a few areas of Europe as well, famous pilgrimage sites and even mosques around the world such as the “Faisal mosque,” “Mosque of Cordoba,” “Sultan Ahmed Mosque” are all now Pokestops for people everywhere to find Pokemon and catch them. It is mentionable that the more publicity there is for mosques, the more understanding there could be towards Islam in diminishing Islamaphobic notions in our world today.

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Written by Noor Siddiqui

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Noor Siddiqui is a 24 year-old student studying Literature and writer based in the small town of Clemmons, North Carolina, United States. She has a passion for the arts, writing, reading, music, and loves to learn new things each and every-single day. During her free-time, she can be found biking, exercising, listening to music and knowing about every information you can possibly think of.