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David Macaulay’s Mosque reminds me of the childhood pleasure of discovery without sacrificing valuable lessons and important technical detail.

The book follows the fictional construction of a grand mosque and the development of its surrounding campus, or kulliye, from 1596 to 1600 and shortly beyond. The premise of the book is informed by mosque construction in Istanbul between 1540 and 1580 under the direction of Mimar Sinan, an important Ottoman architect and engineer who designed and constructed hundreds of buildings throughout the empire.

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The earliest intentional wave of Muslim immigration into the United States happened in the 1870s, but the first mosques would not be established for many decades. Today’s mosques number in the thousands (2,769 mosques reported in the 2020 U.S. Mosque Survey), the majority of which were built in only the last thirty years.

Because there is no definitive consensus on what defines the earliest mosque, there is no definitive consensus on when and where the first American mosque was built. Nevertheless, these are five important placeholders in the relatively short history of today’s American mosque.

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Ramadan can be a very difficult time for low-income families. Groceries and food supplies can be expensive, access to the mosque can be logistically challenging or physically demanding, and the process of requesting financial assistance is complicated at best and degrading at worst. This proposal is a small-scale initiative inspired by a food basket program in the Gaza Strip.

As with all proposals on This American Mosque, please consider adapting this initiative for your mosque’s unique needs if you believe your community can benefit from it. Suggestions and ideas to improve this proposal are also welcome.

Overview

Target: Low-income families
Summary of Plan: Families apply privately for food assistance in the months prior to Ramadan. Information on family size and dietary restrictions is used to build food baskets funded by community donations and compiled and delivered by volunteers just before the start of Ramadan. Each food basket should be able to support its family for at least the entire month of Ramadan.
Problems Addressed: (1) Unaffordable food costs; (2) Mosque inaccessibility; (3) Inefficiency of conventional financial assistance programs
Estimated Cost: $50 to $75 per basket, or $500 to $750 per ten families assisted

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The setting of one of my most vivid childhood memories is my local mosque’s Red Room, a very large and windowless multipurpose space named after its rough red carpet. Throughout the year, the room was used as a Qur’an reading room in the daytime, a meeting space in the afternoon, and a makeshift dining area in the evening. It also served as an overflow room for the main prayer hall.

During Ramadan, the Red Room became “the babysitter”. It was referred to just like that, and children wanted both to be there and to escape. Total mayhem. Even at such a young age, I knew not to envy the babysitters hired to keep this enormous playpen under control.

Every night, as parents ushered their way towards the main prayer hall for nightly taraweeh and qiyam prayers, they made a quick detour to the Red Room to drop off their children. One by one, the kids filed through the wooden doors and into the containment room. Either you embraced the mayhem and joined in, or you stood terrified at the door until pickup time.

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Nearly a decade ago, I reconnected with a childhood friend whose parents, as did my own, attended the nightly Ramadan lectures at our local mosque and left us to run freely in the mosque’s recreational room for hours at a time.

I asked if she still attended the mosque, not quite registering the sensitivity of the question, and her response sticks with me still.

With a maturity beyond her age at the time, she sought more than just a prayer space; she looked to the mosque for security and encouragement. She had instead come to feel judged, unaccepted, and at odds with the older generations that dominated mosque leadership.

Her story is personal but not uncommon. Many who turn away from the mosque or who feel disenchanted by its congregants describe similar reasons.

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