9.11.01
ONE YEAR LATER
AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT
Sept. 11 - Sept. 10
U.S. mosque's turbulent times
Jersey City worship center -- and former base for jailed cleric -- stands as symbol of free speech
Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Jersey City, N.J. -- Since Sept. 11, the nation has grappled with what it means to be an American in the wake of a historic tragedy. Our staff is traveling across the U.S. and the spectrum of the American experience for American Portraits, which will appear through Wednesday.
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The Masjid Al-Salam -- which means "mosque of peace" in Arabic -- has garnered attention out of proportion to its size and membership.
Usually, no more than 300 people crowd into the third-floor space where Mohammed Mousa delivers his Friday prayers. Bigger, more established mosques can be found throughout New Jersey and even elsewhere in Jersey City, a multicultural hub of 240,000 people across the Hudson River from Manhattan.
To authorities, the mosque gained notoriety for serving as a former base for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind, bearded cleric now jailed for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
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But to Jersey City's sizable Muslim community, even those who don't pray at the mosque, the Masjid Al-Salam is a potent symbol of an important American value: free speech.
Many longtime worshipers at the mosque say they condemn the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Osama bin Laden's anti-West jihad and any messages of violence uttered by Abdel Rahman. But mosque members are critical of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and they say it's unfair to judge their anger. They are tax-paying Americans who have all the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, they remind people who visit the small mosque.
Masjid Al-Salam was first established around 1980 by poor and working-class Muslims who immigrated from Egypt. As more Egyptians moved to the United States and chose to settle in Jersey City because of its Egyptian American community, cheap rents and proximity to New York (some even jokingly call Jersey City "Little Egypt"), the mosque became known not just to Muslims in the area, but to Muslims in Egypt and other countries.
With donations from worshipers and other Muslims, mosque members were able to buy the mosque's building -- a dream of ownership that was fulfilled with dedication and hard work, they say. Anyone who is Muslim can pray there.
"This mosque," boasts Ahmed El-Ganainy, a longtime worshiper, "now belongs to the community."
The Masjid Al-Salam occupies the top two floors of an old brick building on a commercial street where liquor and music stores compete with restaurants and other establishments for shoppers' attention.
It's on the highest floor that Mousa, the mosque's current imam, orates to those who attend Friday prayers. Like Abdel Rahman, Mousa is Egyptian, studied at Cairo's Al-Azhar University and rails animatedly against immorality, frequently using the Arabic word haram ("forbidden") in his weekly talks.
But Mousa, who is in his 30s and has had the job for only a year, apparently prefers to keep politics out of his deliveries, leaving it to worshipers to voice their opinions about the Middle East, President Bush's war on terrorism and life in America since Sept. 11.
Sultan Al-Gawly, a longtime mosque member who owns a nearby grocery store, bristles when asked whether he supported Osama bin Laden. Just the question, he says, is offensive and indicative of the public's and government's presumptuous attitude about Muslims and the Masjid Al-Salam.
"The government here makes every Muslim a terrorist, but we're not," says Al-Gawly.
As evidence of this, mosque members point to the arrests last Sept. 12 of two Muslims who prayed at the Masjid Al-Salam and were suspected of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. Syed Gul Mohammed Shah and Mohammed Azmath were taken from a Texas-bound Amtrak train after authorities found them with box cutters, hair dye and several thousand dollars.
Shah and Azmath had taken a Sept. 11 flight from Newark, N.J., to San Antonio that was grounded in St. Louis before they boarded the train. A months- long investigation cleared them of any connection to the Sept. 11 tragedy -- they were on their way to look for new jobs in Texas -- although both were charged with credit card fraud and both pleaded guilty.
"There is such real hate against the Muslim religion," says El-Ganainy, a 53-year-old limousine driver.
Some members of Jersey City's community fear the Masjid Al-Salam is still a breeding ground for the kind of extremist views that Abdel Rahman uttered there in the early 1990s, when he was a regular speaker at the mosque. Men like El-Ganainy -- working-class, Arabic-speaking natives of Egypt -- went to see the cleric and listened to his fiery diatribes about overthrowing governments.
"He talked about jihad, and that everyone who has the ability to go to Afghanistan should go," said El-Ganainy, as he stood on the sidewalk in front of the mosque one recent day.
El-Ganainy, who has lived in the United States for 22 years, says he never considered going to Afghanistan, despite Abdel Rahman's implorings.
"No," he said, "if I went, I will get killed."
A year ago, hours after the Sept. 11 attacks leveled the World Trade Center buildings and killed thousands, an armed and uniformed Jersey City police officer stood in front of the mosque's doorway to make sure no one tried to retaliate against worshipers or the mosque itself.
The police presence continued for the next 40 days, though it didn't keep some passers-by from approaching members of the mosque and yelling out epithets like "killer" and "terrorist."
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, El-Ganainy and other longtime Masjid Al-Salam worshipers say they aren't worried about a re-emergence of those verbal assaults, but their sentiment is belied by the white, hand-lettered piece of paper that's taped conspicuously on the mosque's second floor.
"Warning," says the note, which greets anyone who climbs the stairs from the street-level entrance. "If you are not part of this community, you will be prosecuted."
Flyers are posted throughout the Masjid Al-Salam that advertise fund- raisers for Palestinian causes and show photos of leveled Palestinian villages and grieving Palestinian families.
The women in the photos all have their hair covered by Muslim head scarves called hijab, just like the women who attend the Masjid Al-Salam. The mosque's strict separation of men from women -- women worship in a room downstairs from the main prayer area -- is in accordance with the Salafi beliefs of those who help run the Masjid Al-Salam. Salafis advocate the Muslim law of sharia and want to return to a pure state of Islam that is close to that practiced by the prophet Mohammed.
Members of the Masjid Al-Salam say they ignore what they have to about the United States and incorporate that which will help their lives. All of those interviewed -- Mousa was among those who refused to talk -- say they prefer life in the United States over their countries of birth. Because many worshipers were raised in countries that prohibit wide dissent, they say they can almost tolerate the verbal sniping they endured after Sept. 11.
"If (the attacks) had happened in Egypt, Iran or Saudi Arabia, people would have reacted even harsher," says Salah Mansour, an Egyptian-born pharmacist who prays at the Masjid Al-Salam and whose store is on the same block. "Here in America, we have the opportunity to express our views."
They also have the opportunity to raise funds. At the end of Friday prayers,
Masjid Al-Salam members pass around a container for donations that will be used for upkeep and repair of the building and to establish Arabic and religious classes. Worshipers toss in small bills that mosque leaders count on the new green carpet that stretches across most of the third floor.
While every part of the upper level has been refurbished -- from the parquet wood to the mini-grandfather clocks that announce the time -- the second floor has misshapen carpet, the outside of the building looks neglected,
and even the mosque's sign could use replacing.
The Masjid Al-Salam is a work in progress, but members say they have time to make it better. America is their new and permanent home, they say. Their eyes reveal pride as they talk about the Masjid Al-Salam, and their words reveal a slice of the United States that is very much Muslim.
"I went to the mosque the first day it opened," says Al-Gawly, who immigrated from Port Said, Egypt, in 1968. "Islam is the same everywhere -- whether it's in Egypt or the United States."
E-mail Jonathan Curiel at jcuriel@sfchronicle.com.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
