A Mosque in Need

History to Reclaim

 

The Harvard Pluralism Project just sent out the following alert:

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sparing the main floor but destroying the ground floor area, which housed many of the mosque's books, artifacts, historical documents, old photos and filmed documentaries.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

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.

 

Sphere: Related Content