The long-awaited, much-debated new mosque in Roxbury Crossing is scheduled formally to open at the end of this month.
The Muslim American Society, which is operating the new Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, or ISBCC, has scheduled two days of events to celebrate the completion of the building. The building had a soft opening last fall, during Ramadan, and has been in use since then, but the events on June 26 and 27 mark its formal inauguration as the Muslim community prepares to expand programming in the building. Major inaugural events will include an interfaith breakfast at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, across the street from the mosque; a ribbon-cutting, call-to-worship, and prayer service at the mosque; and a celebratory dinner at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. The dinner will feature a speech by US Representative Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who is the first Muslim to serve in Congress; the breakfast will feature William A. Graham, Harvard Divinity School dean and a noted scholar of Islam, as well as a variety of local religious leaders. Mosque officials say they expect Governor Deval Patrick to attend the breakfast and Mayor Thomas M. Menino to attend the ribbon-cutting.
“I see this as continuing the historic role that Boston has played in the cultural and religious history of America,” said Bilal Kaleem of the Muslim American Society. “This is where the Pilgrims landed and where a lot of the country’s first churches are, and we really see Muslim history in America having one of its key moments here.”
Kaleem argued that the ISBCC is different from other mosques in America because it is located in the city rather than the suburbs and because in addition to serving as a mosque, it aspires to function as a community center with a mission of “integrating Muslims into active civic life.”
The 68,000-square-foot mosque has a capacity of about 3,000 worshipers and is already drawing about 600 to Friday worship, Kaleem said. The mosque has been in the works for nearly 20 years, has cost about $15.6 million so far, and has been riven by controversy and litigation over a variety of comments and organizational affiliations of mosque backers as well as over the city’s role in providing the land for the mosque.
Defenders of the mosque have suggested that the criticism is intensified, if not motivated, by bias; critics of the mosque have said they have legitimate concerns about the associations and ideas of its leaders.