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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Devastation at the Mother Mosque of America
Floodwaters entered the oldest mosque in America in mid-June, sparing the main floor but destroying the ground floor area, which housed many of the mosque's books, artifacts, historical documents, old photos and filmed documentaries. The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has organized a fundraiser to help raise money to repair the devastation at the mosque. For further information, or to donate to the recovery effort, please visit the Mother Mosque's website: http://www.mothermosque.org
![[ Image: Mother Mosque of America flood ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tU9EnebBOaG5ChSEvIJcCyhqaUUYdn0aGCIRQKMvVPGUcz5GZjTiowPyfChtphFq_7jrt23OMcOUdbQxH7Sk_BbNvOL4n8Zf2rNtroMfeabTxsdYNFxuKtGWWTpogsrC8l=s0-d)
It really isn't the Mother Mosque.
But by all means contribute to the Mosque's restoration.
Albanian and Polish Tatar Muslims built Mosques in the USA long before Arabs, Turks, and South Asians did.
From Mosques in the USA:
The first mosque in America was probably build by Albanian Muslims in 1915 in Maine. By 1919, they had established another mosque in Connecticut. Polish-speaking Tatars build a mosque in Brooklyn, NY in 1926, which is still in use. African American Muslims established the first Mosque in Pittsburgh, PA in 1930. The Lebanese Community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, opened its first mosque in 1935. The State Street Mosque in New York City was established by Sheikh Dawood Ahmed Faisal in 1955. This mosque represents a special point in the development of the American Muslim community. The Dar-ul-Islam movement began from there.
The claim by Lebanese Muslims about the Mother Mosque seems to represent almost intentional forgetfulness
The Ottoman Empire was the pre-dominant Muslim power for centuries and the Ottoman elite consisted primarily of Slavic, Albanian, European Turkic, and Greek Muslims.
Polish Tatar Muslims constituted historically one of the most accomplished communities in E. Europe and were granted noble status within historic Poland in the fourteenth century.
The Polish Nobel Prize winner, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and the Hollywood actor, Charles Bronson, come from the Polish Tatar Muslim community.
The reluctance to admit that Eastern Europe has been the main center of Islam for the last four centuries or so parallels a similar reluctance to accept the primarily E. European nature and origin of Modern Rabbinic Judaism.
I tend to think of Medieval Judaism whether Karaite or Rabbinic as primarily Arab Islamic Judaism while I categorize Modern Rabbinic Judaism whether Karaite or Rabbinic as primarily E. European Roman Catholic/E. Orthodox Judaism.
In Why Study Yiddish Culture? I argue that studying Yiddish Culture is necessary to understanding Modern Europe. Likewise, I must argue that studying the Eastern European Islamic synthesis is necessary for understanding both modern Islam as well as E. Europe and therefore absolutely critical to comprehending the modern Western-Islamic synthesis.
3 comments:
I appreciate the info on the early American mosques, but nowhere in this article (nor on the Mother Mosque's website) is it claimed that this was the first mosque in America. Ms. Fox refers to is as the "oldest surviving mosque" and the Mother Mosque website quite clearly states that it isn't the first mosque. Rather, they say that it's the "only facility that survived and lasted to this day". I don't know if that's true, but it certainly doesn't contradict what you're saying.
I don't agree with your statement that "Eastern Europe has been the main center of Islam for the last 4 centuries or so", but it's way too late for me to form a coherent response to that right now. Perhaps in terms of political and military power you're right (until the last century, at least), but as far as Islamic thought is concerned they've had little impact on the Muslim world at large.
Eastern Europe as Center of Jewish and Islamic Scholarship
The Ottoman Empire was outside of the Shiite and schismatic world the main center of Islamic learning, and the majority of Ottoman Islamic scholars over the last 400 years were of Slavic, Albanian, Greek, Euro-Turkic and to a lesser extent Anatolian Muslim ancestry. Even if one looks into the background of important Islamic scholars in Egypt or in Syria one finds to a large extent the same ancestral ethnic mix because the central Ottoman Empire exported scholars to its peripheries and to non-Ottoman regions.
A similar pattern over more or less the same time period is found among Jews as well for the kolalim and yeshivot of E. Europe exported scholarly families all over E. Europe, N. Africa, the Levant and Mesopotamia.
There is a lot of evidence for religious ideas crossing ethnoreligious boundaries among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Because Ottoman scholarship was so important among Sunni Muslims throughout the Muslim world, such ideas quickly traveled to Timbuktu, where Bosnians built mosques, or to Bandar Brunei and Kota Bharu, where Ottoman Arabs became Islamic educators and leaders.
Because of the importance of Ottoman scholarship throughout the Muslim world, Indian Muslims under British rule were particularly enraged by the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire, and the Khilafat Movement lead by the Ali brothers was a response to the end of the Ottoman Caliphate.
As for the Mosque issue, as far as I know the Albanian and Polish Tatar Mosques still exist and have been in continuous use since their communities built them.
Interesting read. Thanks for sharing information about Balkan Muslims. Greek Muslims are still active and present in Greece and around the world and Islam is rising in other countries such as Germany, France, etc.
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