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The
Sept. 11 attacks have "cut both ways, positively
and negatively," Mamiya said.
Richard
Turner, coordinator of the African-American studies
program and an expert on Islam among blacks at the University
of Iowa, said since Sept. 11, Muslims have been attempting
to "disseminate positive information about the
religion, so the obvious outcome of that would be more
conversions."
Sunni
Islam is the world's most prominent branch of Islam.
The Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple,
other Muslim groups that attract many blacks, believe
in prophets after Muhammad, making them anathema to
Sunni Islam.
Rashad
Byrdsong, an elder in Pittsburgh's black Muslim community,
hopes the rise in interest in Sunni Islam will help
the Mumin Mosque collect money to expand their small
house of worship into a larger community gathering place.
The
new mosque, still in the planning stages, will look
more like a community center than a traditional minaret-topped
Muslim place of worship found in the Arab world.
The
expanded Homewood mosque will have a daycare facility,
a re-entry program for released inmates, a health clinic
and a program for entrepreneurs, features that are in
great need in the downtrodden neighborhood.
"First,
the spiritual aspects, the dawa, but also basic, physical,
fundamental needs," Byrdsong said.
In
the fourth year of its seven-year expansion plan, Pittsburgh's
tight-knit Muslim community has raised much of the $1.5
million (1.12 million) needed in the project's first
phase through book sales, telephone fundraisers, auctions
and banquets. It has purchased all but two lots it will
need, and already has the sketches for the future mosque
complex.
"Building
the mosque has always been a goal, idea, vision,"
said Yusef Ali, 63, emir of the Mumin Mosque. "But
as a community grows ... it's (become) a solid goal
with strategic objectives."
A
growing number of Muslims in America, especially blacks,
are building mosques that offer a variety of community
services, partly because the federal and state governments
do not answer to many of their social needs, Islamic
experts say.
These
complexes take the religion back to its roots before
the modern-day state began providing services to the
population.
"What
you have here is the creation of a true American Islam,"
said Edward Curtis, a religious studies professor who
specializes in African-American Islam at IUPUI. "Islam
has been a part of this country from its beginning,
and the forms of Islam that are successful here are
indigenous forms."
The
Homewood mosque, though unique, follows a model similar
to other black mosques in the United States, Mamiya
said.
In
Harlem, the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque has built apartment
buildings and townhouses, offers social services and
even owns a sanitation company used to provide jobs
to former prisoners, Mamiya said.
"The
African-American mosque has made itself different in
this way from other mosques around the world,"
Mamiya said. "Religious institutions in the black
community have always been their strongest institutions
and have always done more than religious functions."
Pittsburgh,
like some other cities on the East Coast and Midwest,
has long been a magnet for black Muslims, beginning
in the early 20th century, when more than 1 million
blacks moved from the South to the North.
Pittsburgh,
then a prosperous steel town, attracted thousands of
blacks seeking work, and became one of several cities
where Sunni Islam took hold. Today, black Muslims here
brag that in 1932 Pittsburgh became home to the first
chartered Muslim mosque in the United States.
Byrdsong,
executive director of the Community Empowerment Association,
was attracted to Islam while serving a 10-year prison
sentence for robbery. He said the religion appeals to
many, including those in prison, because of strict rules
banning alcohol and drugs and its success at keeping
people from deteriorating into a life of crime.
Pittsburgh
is home not only to black Muslims, but also a broad
community of immigrants who practice the religion. However,
until Sept. 11, 2001, the two communities were largely
isolated.
After
the attacks, immigrants - subject to FBI surveillance,
police raids and other scrutiny - began to reach out
to black Muslims in Pittsburgh, whose persecution they
could suddenly relate to, said Sarah Jameela Martin,
64, an active member of the city's black Muslim community.
"It
really was a time for us to come together," Martin
said.
But
Sept. 11 also put an end to any hopes the black Muslim
community had to collect money for their mosque project
from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries overseas,
because new U.S. laws put Islamic charities under greater
scrutiny.
Now,
as immigrant and black Muslims in Pittsburgh try to
improve the religion's image and separate it from global
terrorism, blacks are paving the way, Martin said.
Black
women, for example, have long worn the traditional head-covering,
or hijab, to work, while immigrants have been reluctant
to do so, she said. Today, Muslims in Pittsburgh are
far more visible, she said.
"Because
of our social tag ... we didn't mind," Byrdsong
said, pointing to his dark skin as an explanation to
why being openly Muslim has never been a problem for
blacks in America. "We can't hide it."
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