By Rebecca Henely
In the same month in which controversy has raged over whether a Muslim cultural center should be built two blocks from Ground Zero, in the same week a cab driver had his throat slashed after he told his passenger he was Muslim and on the same evening a man desecrated a mosque on Steinway Street, another mosque mere blocks away shared a night of peace with its neighbors.
“It’s part of our duty to demystify or dispel the misinformation that people have,” said Isabel Bucaram, outreach committee member for the Dar Al-Dawah Mosque at 35-13 23rd Ave., a five-minute walk from the Al-Iman Mosque, which a man named Omar Rivera is accused of entering and then urinating on a prayer rug.
But at the Dar Al-Dawah Mosque on Aug. 25, Christians and Jews removed their shoes and visiting women learned how to tie head scarves as they settled down to share in the night’s fast-breaking dinner for Ramadan, a monthlong holiday in the Muslim faith in which practicers fast from dawn until sunset.
Since the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, Ramadan falls at a different time every year unlike the standard Gregorian calendar based on the movement of the sun. This year’s holiday began on the evening of Aug. 11 in North America and will end Sept. 10.
“Ramadan is a return back to the nature of the human being connected to God,” said Ahmed Jamil, president of the mosque.
Jamil said Al-Dawah has held this event annually since 2003, primarily to let the immediate community know what is going on in the mosque and to share a meal with members of the mosque. More than 100 people attended the event this year.
“We want people to sit next to each other and speak and explore and find that relationship amongst themselves,” Bucaram said.
Bucaram said Ramadan is a good holiday for this because many religions use fasting as a form of spirituality, and during Ramadan neighbors of other faiths can find something in common.
Jamil said the evening was designed to embrace the community at large. The leaders did not invite any Muslim speakers, but instead had speakers from the city Police Department, the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta and the nearby Greek Orthodox church of St. Irene of Chaysovalantou.
“It’s an event that brings together the diverse ethnic background of our community,” said George Hassan of St. Irene.
Chief of Community Affairs for the NYPD Philip Banks mentioned the Aug. 24 attack on a Jamaica taxi driver, Ahmed Sharif, in his talk and said the Muslim community could find a friend in the NYPD to fight hate crimes.
“There’s always going to be people out there who are going to divide that unity and the bridge we are building here tonight,” Banks said.
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, of Neturei Karta, who made a speech about Muslim-Jewish relations and his organization’s wish to separate Judaism from the political movement of Zionism, called the evening a positive rebuilding of harmonic coexistance.
“We see this [event] and we realize there is something different than we’ve been told throughout our lives,” Weiss said.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
