Sixteen years after 2 acres near Roxbury Crossing were designated for use as a mosque, the area’s growing Muslim community has quietly begun using the building for regular worship.
Every night since the start of Ramadan this month, hundreds of Muslims have been gathering for evening prayers at the mosque, now called the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. Officials of the Muslim American Society, which is overseeing the project, say they plan to gradually add activities throughout the fall and winter and hope to hold a formal opening of the building early next year.
The worshipers gathering at the mosque are ecstatic to finally be able to use the building, which has been delayed for years by fund-raising troubles, controversy surrounding various mosque supporters, and litigation. Last year they held three Ramadan services in the building, but it had no walls or concrete floors; now they are in the building nightly. Mosque officials say they have raised, through donations and noninterest loans, $15 million toward the $15.5 million they need to open the building, and the construction work is largely complete.
“This is such a happy occasion for the Muslim community - this has been a project in the making for decades,” said Hossam Al Jabri, president of the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter, which has taken over management of the mosque from the Islamic Society of Boston, which runs a mosque in Cambridge. “It’s strange, but I’m thankful that we had to go through the difficulty, because it forced us to come out of an isolation that we were comfortable in, and helped us to see that we have a world out there that is interested to know who we are. And it helped us to make so many friends.”
Worshipers at a recent service echoed the sentiment.
“This will be a spiritual draw - it will bring together communities that live around here,” said Hussein Dayib, 55, of Hyde Park. “It means a lot to us to be here.”
Determining the size of the Muslim population is an inexact science. The Muslim American Society estimates that about 120,000 Muslims live in Massachusetts; a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found the population to be less than 32,000.
The population, reflecting that of the overall Muslim population in the US, is made up largely of three ethnic groups: people of South Asian descent, people of Middle Eastern descent, and African-Americans. The local population also includes a relatively high number of Somali immigrants, mosque officials said.
The mosque has been controversial for years. A conservative Israel-advocacy organization called the David Project asserted that some of the mosque’s founding leaders had links to terrorism. In 2005, the Islamic Society filed a lawsuit against the David Project and two media outlets, saying that those allegations were defamatory, but dropped the suit last year after another suit, challenging the mosque’s construction, was also dropped.
Although mosque construction has proved controversial in many places around the country, it has been particularly contentious in Boston, according to a national watchdog group.
“Usually we find there’s some level of resistance, but the situation in your area was unique in its level of vitriol and viciousness,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It was atypical in the level of controversy that was generated by those who were opposed to the mosque, and I don’t mean legitimate controversy, I mean fake controversy. There’s an effort by some minority of people in any community who seek to marginalize Muslims and demonize Islam, and that’s what we saw in this case.”
The leading critic of the mosque, Charles Jacobs, said he continues to have concerns about the mosque’s leadership, but that “our concerns were never with the rank and file of the Muslim community.”
Jacobs was president of the David Project until leaving the post in July.
“Our concern was with the leadership, and the ties that that leadership had, it seemed, to terrorism and the teaching of hatred,” Jacobs said. He said he has ongoing concerns about the Islamic Society of Boston and the Muslim American Society, both of which, he says, have expressed extremist views. He said “it’s been estimated that 80 percent of mosques are radicalized” but that “it’s very difficult for American citizens to speak about these things, because they don’t want to be labeled as bigots or Islamophobes, so that has allowed these connections to go much unspoken and unreported.”
But other Jewish community leaders are taking a more conciliatory approach to the mosque.
Rabbi Eric S. Gurvis, president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, said, “I know there are those who have concerns and fears about the funding of the mosque, and the activities that are going on, but I believe we need to build some bridges of understanding.
“To be sure, there are those in all communities who hold ideals and ideas that are different from the mainstream,” said Gurvis, who is the senior rabbi at Temple Shalom in Newton. “But we live in the same community, and we want to build this community for the sake of our children. I think there’s a lot more that we can do together, rather than raising suspicions, and I look forward to having the opportunity to visit there.”
And Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, said the Jewish community is divided “between those who are alarmist, fearful, and vigilant,” and a second group, which he describes as “hopeful, but also vigilant to a certain degree.”
Waldoks puts himself in the hopeful camp, and he has been participating in a new theological dialogue between local rabbis and imams, as well as in an interfaith mediation effort by Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School. “There are some general issues within the Jewish community about how to deal with the reality of Muslims in the United States,” Waldoks said. “The people I’m working with [in the Muslim community] do not express any desire for this to be a hub of extremism, and I’m looking forward to giving them a chance to live up to their ideals.”
Mosque officials say they are aware that everything they do is being scrutinized by their critics. They said they have been checking all donations of $5,000 or more against a Treasury Department list of terrorists and drug traffickers, and they are trying to be attentive to events at the mosque, but they are also concerned that they can’t control every remark anyone makes on the premises.
“We definitely feel the pressure,” said M. Bilal Kaleem executive director of the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter. “I feel that everything we say is overanalyzed and overscrutinized to a degree that’s certainly unfair, but I feel that it’s also an opportunity in disguise, which is that people are asking, ‘What do Muslims think? Who are Muslims?’ And even though the questions are coming in a very pointed, accusatory sort of way, it’s still a chance to speak for yourself.”
Muslims gathered at the mosque for a Ramadan worship said they believe the controversy has strengthened their community. “The struggle was part of it - it’s representative of the struggle that we’re going through right now as a community,” said Najiba Akbar, who is the Muslim chaplain at Wellesley College and works with Tufts and the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization.
“The hardships, the suspicion, the anger, the mistrust - all those things are part of the American Muslim story right now, and I feel like we’ve grown a lot through experiencing that,” Akbar said. “The bad parts, the good parts, the solidarity that came out of the interfaith community supporting us during the struggle - those all kind of made this experience harder, but at the same time more special, and more powerful.”