Media Coverage about ICCF:

Insight into Islam
Valley Muslims take pride in their new Cultural Center.

By Ron Orozco
The Fresno Bee

June 28, 2003

The shiny new copper dome rises to 35 feet and will grow another 31/2 feet into the northeast Fresno sky when the Islamic crescent is installed. Over the years, the dome will get the same greenish patina as the mosque on which it's modeled, Masjid-e-Nabawi, half a world away in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

The crescent has been ordered but not delivered. The mosque also is missing a full-time imam, someone whose sermons, or khutars, will stoke the spirituality of Muslims throughout the central San Joaquin Valley.

The new $1 million Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno is designed to change more than the landscape of a 1.7-mile strip of East Nees Avenue between Millbrook and Chestnut avenues, where there are five big Christian congregations.

Now they'll have to rename Church Row, where all the places of worship are huge, new and in the middle of Fresno's northward residential surge, but where one is not a church.

Rising from 4.9 acres, the 8,320-square-foot mosque is designed to change how the next Muslim generation lives out its faith beyond Friday congregational prayer, or juma.

The center is much more than just a mosque, with its classrooms and a main prayer/meeting room where Muslims and people of other faiths can learn about Islam.

"It'll serve every aspect of our community," says Forouz Radnejad, a member and programming coordinator. "We want this place to be the leader in this community, giving out information on Islam and clearing up misconceptions."

The mosque also alleviates crowding at Masjid Fresno on East Shaw Avenue, which has served the majority of Valley Muslims since 1987. There are 10,000 Muslim faithful in the Valley today, about double the number 10 years ago.

Center of it all

The center's focal point is the main prayer/meeting room, whose dome rises 34 feet, 2 inches above the linoleum flooring.

A large, Islamic-style chandelier illuminates the dome. An octagonal shelf of 24 pointed-arch windows 22 feet above the floor allows natural lighting and mysterious nighttime shadows that inspire worshippers.

The room will accommodate 288 worshippers, but until the congregation grows, prayers are said mostly in a wing of classrooms. Prayer is directed toward a niche in the wall that will house the imam's throne, or mimbar, and in the direction of qibla, the Saudi Arabian location of the main mosque area that includes Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad.

Right now, the domed room is a meeting hall with rows of folding chairs. It's been a busy place the past two months, particularly on Sundays, when people of all ages and faiths attend classes in Arabic and English about the Quran and the lifestyle of Muhammad. Beginning and intermediate Farsi, the language of Iran, are taught, too.

The first priority of the center is to give "our children . . . a place to go to learn about their faith and for people of other faiths to come," says Farid Assemi, a homebuilder who constructed the mosque with his brother, Darius Assemi. "It's open to all."

Ashraf Ebrahim, the Fresno architect who designed the mosque, says the center blends traditional and modern Islamic architectural styles. Passers-by see a tan-painted mosque with tinted, arched windows and 38 white pillars that seem to point toward the dome.

"It's a building that creates a sort of music, a little harmony, and it rises to the top," says Ashraf, who studied photos of the Medina mosque and consulted with other people to come up with his design.

Farid Assemi, who visited the Medina mosque on a pilgrimage, requested that Ebrahim model Fresno's dome after it.

Mosque meaning

Each mosque is composed of many parts, each of which has a purpose in worship.

Upon entering, you pass four white pillars on each side of the tile-floored lobby into the domed room. The pillars are an Islamic architectural design relating to the envi- ronment, Ebrahim says.

A women's entrance is on the opposite side, but women may enter by the main door.

Framed artwork adorns the lobby walls: symbols, mostly in Arabic, of the names of Allah and Muhammad or verses in the Quran. You won't find drawings of people or animals in a mosque, Ebrahim says, because they would be forms of idolatry, prohibited by the faith.

Written in both Arabic and English is a welcome to people of all faiths and a request that all visitors "refrain from any debates or demonstrations of a political nature." Says Ebrahim: "The mosque is neutral."

Although the mosque's grand opening won't occur until the imam's hiring, the center proved it's a welcoming place in April, hosting an interfaith meeting. There were representatives from Temple Beth Israel, a Reform Jewish congregation; St. Paul Newman Center, a Roman Catholic parish; and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno.

Washrooms

Washrooms are more im- portant in a mosque than in other places of worship. Usually visitors head straight there after entering to wash themselves in a purification rite before worship.

Men's and women's washrooms are at opposite ends of the mosque.

The faithful sit on stools in a tiled area while soaping all parts of their body that are exposed. Some go into another area to take a full shower.

Before heading into the prayer room, some males also change into loose trousers, or shalwar, and an extra-long shirt, or kameez. Some worship in walking shorts and sandals.

Females are required to wear a head covering, or hijab, as a sign of respect. Muslim males in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh also wear head coverings, but they don't in the United States, Ebrahim says.

Shoes are removed and left on racks outside the prayer room, where worshippers prostrate themselves, faces nearly touch- ing the floor. "The idea is to just have a clean place," Ebrahim says.

Prayer/meeting room

The 35-by-38-foot central room is designed primarily for prayer, which is a major part of Muslim life.

Islamic teaching calls for prayers five times daily and attendance at Friday prayer at a mosque.

Adorned with framed gold stitchery of the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem and verses of the Surafathia, with words similar to the Lord's Prayer, the room is for prayer and for people to come together to learn about Islam.

July's speakers include Mohammad Ashraf, founder of the Muslim Society of Central California and a Madera cardiologist, who will discuss building a successful Islamic organization, and Ehsaan Akhtar, a recent Edison High School graduate, who will offer a youth's perspective of Islam.

Simeen Mansuri, 17, a Clovis West High School senior, studies the Quran and the life of Muhammad in the mosque's classroom wing, hoping one day to teach.

"My parents were born in Iran, where our faith was really stressed," says Simeen.

"I'm growing up in a liberal society. This center is a like a refuge, where I can get a good understanding of Islam and it can shape me. So when I grow up, I can pass on the traditions of my faith."

Teacher Samira Saffarzadeh says Muslim teenagers are subject to their parents' traditionally strict dating policies, so the center provides a safe setting where they can get to know each other while sharing their faith. Behind the mosque is a courtyard to play soccer, basketball and other games.

"We want to get young people together, to unite them so they'll feel comfortable with who they are," Saffarzadeh says.

A media center will be set up with TV sets, newspapers, computers and Islamic books.

Core goals

Dr. Ali Rezapour and his wife, Aurora, say it's important that parents can bring their children to "a village," where courses and activities are based on Islamic values.

The couple have a daughter, Sabrina, 9, and three sons, 10 months to 7 years old.

Says Aurora Rezapour of Sabrina, "We try to teach our daughter a sense of modesty and to carry herself with grace and dignity, and to use her religious values as the center of her life."

The mosque leadership wants the imam they hire to relate well with teens.

But Farid Assemi says there's a key role for seniors, too. He hopes they'll frequent the center to share Islamic traditions with young Muslims.

To help attract an imam, center leaders promise to build a 3,000-square-foot rectory on the grounds.

Also in the future, when there's a big enough congregation, is a 10,000-square-foot meeting hall behind the center.

Ali Rezapour uses a popular phrase among Muslims when that day will come -- "In sha Allah" or "If it's the will of God."

The reporter can be reached at rorozco@fresnobee.com or 441-6304.


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