Today, Dewidar’s mosque occupies a trim six-story building on 55th Street between Lexington and Third avenues. The Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan comfortably accommodates 1,000 men and women.
For Dewidar, the fantastic growth of his community – with 36 nationalities, numerous languages and many worship traditions – is a direct result of America’s religious freedom. “I should give credit by the grace of almighty God to the system of this land,” he said.
Attendance has risen steadily in recent years at mosques across the city and the nation. The influx has been fueled partly by growing immigration from Muslim countries and partly by newfound interest in Islam from Muslims already here. But now American mosques are having trouble finding enough imams like Dewidar who are qualified to serve their growing and diversifying congregations.
The imam serves as a religious and social guide to the Muslim community. Traditionally, the term denotes a high level of theological training. In the U.S., though, the term often is used more loosely to recognize religious leadership within a community.
The post-9/11 cultural climate has discouraged some Muslim religious leaders from coming to the U.S., but a survey done in 2000 documented an imam shortage even before the terror attacks. Completed by Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, the study found that only one third of American mosques were led by full-time, paid imams with religious degrees. The remaining imams were either volunteers or elected from the congregation.
Bagby thinks this situation is changing. Spurred by renewed immigration from Muslim countries and growing financial stability of Muslim communities, more mosques are able to afford a full-time imam. Still, Bagby estimates that imams with religious degrees lead prayers at only half – or fewer – of the nearly 200 mosques in the New York area.
According to Zein Rimawi, a lay council member at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, well-publicized misunderstandings of Muslim culture have made imams reluctant to come to the U.S. “because they hear about the hard time people get here.”
Rimawi pointed to incidents such as the removal before Thanksgiving of six imams from a commercial flight in Minneapolis. The imams had prayed at the gate before boarding, and other passengers asked authorities to remove them from the plane, concerned the imams were preparing for a terrorist attack.
He said the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, one of the city’s largest mosques, was fortunate to find a candidate in late October to fill its imam position, which had been for a few months. The new imam, Sheik Ibrahim Al-Turkawi, 48, who is still in a trial period at the mosque, recounted how these stories filter back to the Middle East.
During Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar Islamic calendar, each mosque recites the entire Quran over 30 days. To fulfill this demanding and important task, American mosques traditionally hire imams from abroad. This fall, just before Al-Turkawi departed Egypt for Bay Ridge, several imams traveling to America for Ramadan with valid visas were denied entry at Dulles Airport. Though he found the story disconcerting, through a translator Al-Turkawi said, “I looked at the bigger picture. I know that hundreds of others make it into the U.S.”
