Tag Archive | "Islam"

Bronx Muslim Leaders Aim to End “Destructive Talk”

The president of the Parkchester mosque on White Plains Road spoke gently and firmly one September morning from his office behind the spacious third-floor prayer room. “Now people are trying to explain it a different way,” said Mohammed Mayeez Uddin, referring to the incendiary, anti-Islam movie trailer that had rocked YouTube two weeks earlier.

“We are not a modern Muslim. We are just Muslim,” said Uddin, of his fellow worshipers in the James Masjid. Next to his office stood a row of blue-tiled fountains where members cleanse their hands before prayer.

The clumsy video called “Innocence of Muslims” had mocked the Prophet Muhammed as a fool and a womanizer. Media attention to the universally condemned film coincided with an attack in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador. The riotous protests in response to the film and U.S. foreign policy were still making headlines at the time.

Muslim leaders in the Bronx like Uddin felt compelled to emphasize the vast gap between peaceful followers of Islam in the Bronx, and the violent extremists elsewhere. It is not easy to quantify precisely how many Muslims live in the Bronx because of incomplete national and local data on religion.  But in a borough that added 16 Islamic congregations and 26,342 adherents between 2000 and 2010 and has its own online news site devoted to covering issues relevant to Muslims in New York City, Islam is its fastest-growing religion.

Most Islamic leaders there responded to the recent violent eruptions overseas with a mixture of dismay, embarrassment, and deep concern over the world’s lack of understanding of their religion. “Forcefully, we cannot do everything,” Uddin said, shaking his head at the violent protests. He spoke haltingly, but deliberately. “You have to be peaceful.”

To that end, Uddin does not allow what he calls “destructive talk” about politics and protests in the name of faith at the Parkchester mosque where nearly all 5,000 members are originally from Bangladesh. He said he has occasionally thrown out members who have brought up the subjects. The most recent time was after the “Innocence” video gained attention. One of the mosque’s members tried to organize other parishioners in a protest.

“I just told him, ‘please leave,’” Uddin said.

Vincent Rada, a paralegal and Muslim living in Parkchester, said local reactions and conversations did not gain enough media focus.

Of the dozen Muslims interviewed in the three weeks following the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — which is around the time “Innocence of Muslims” gained notoriety — most expressed a similar dismay at the offensive video.

It’s an image of their religion, most said, that has nothing to do with their own lives and their personal experience with Islam. Because of that, Pakistan-born Mohammed Jan, president of Mabni Masjid in Morris Park, was more upset than angry when the video emerged.

“Our religion, Islam, teaches us strongly peace, love, prosperity — and respect,” Jan said. “I mean, in the other world, there are so many demonstrations going on,” he said, referring to and distancing himself and his fellow community members from their native countries. “At some point, it’s embarrassing for us.”

Mohammed Jan, president of Mabni Masjid in Morris Park in the Bronx, says it’s too easy to generalize “Muslim reactions” toward their faith. (SONIA PAUL/ The Bronx Ink)

Mohammed Jan, President of Mabni Masjid in Morris Park in the Bronx, expressed his frustration with the anti-Islam New York City subway ads, which gained attention following the viral YouTube video.

Many Muslims in the Bronx were hesitant to discuss their views openly or have their pictures taken. Instead, they preferred to have their imams, or religious leaders, speak on their behalf. The imams, in turn, suggested mosque presidents as speakers for the community.

Discussions aside, statistics reveal the population is growing.  Figures from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census estimate the Bronx is home to 38,506 Muslims. Before 2000, the religion census didn’t distinguish Islam as a major religion in the Bronx.

The Muslim community includes people from countries as diverse as Albania, Mali and the Unites States itself, as well as South Asian nations. The number of residents from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, three of the top four countries with the most number of Muslims (the fourth is Indonesia), has risen from 17,992 in 2000 to 25,587 in 2010. The Bangladeshi population alone grew by 333 percent.

The population of Africans in the Bronx has also grown considerably: The most recent U.S. census estimates that from 1990 to 2010, the number of sub-Saharan Africans grew from 12,063 to around 70,000. Residents estimate about 75 percent of Africans in the Bronx are Muslim.

Mabni Masjid’s mixed community of devotees embodies this influx of new residents in a community where people have also lived their whole lives. It serves a large Pakistani population, as well as patrons from countries like Bangladesh, Egypt and Morocco. Several African Americans and people from African countries come as well, Jan said.

Like Parkchester James Masjid, Mabni Masjid has strict rules regarding what people say in the mosque. People come there to pray. This separation between religion and politics means that discussions of current events occur outside the mosque, in quieter conversations rather than in public demonstrations.

Mamadou Sy, who is originally from Mali, wishes the media would show a more comprehensive range of Muslim reactions instead of just the extremist ones.

It provides strong contrast from the violent eruptions abroad that confused foreign policy and politics with actual faith.

“Unfortunately, I think media has been the unwitting amplifier of what could have been a very small issue,” wrote Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, in an email. “Compared to the mass protests of the Arab Spring, demonstrations against the film were minuscule, and even fewer of those who showed up carried out violence.”

The role of free speech in perpetuating the insulting portrayal of the Prophet Muhammed was one of the more pressing concerns in the Bronx. Valencia Johnson, 39, an African-American nurse and Bronx native, received text messages from friends asking her to boycott YouTube and Google in protest, since Google, which owns YouTube, hasn’t taken down the video in the U.S.

“We’re more quiet here,” Johnson said in an interview in September. “We’re not going so far and burning flags and doing stuff like that,” she said, referring to the looting, rioting and burning of American flags and effigies of President Barack Obama in several countries.

“We’re just trying to do what we can through our community here,” said Johnson, whose shimmery lime-green and pink eye shadow matched the colors of her hijab. “Don’t go to this website.”

Bronx native Valencia Johnson recounts how people expected her to react to the YouTube video because of her Muslim faith.

Other interviews in the Bronx hint that immigration, the economy and the increased scrutiny on Muslims after 9/11 influenced decisions to even react to the video.

Palestinian immigrant Musab Ahmed, who came to New York five years ago, said he could understand why some people were so angry. But he did not feel inclined to do much in response, nor did anyone else seem to expect anything from him.

“Right now, the economy’s really bad,” Ahmed said as he prepared hot falafels in the Hunts Point food cart he now owns. His dark hair was concealed underneath a black, stocking-like cap. “People have their own problems to think about.”

He said no one’s ever been rude or suspicious of him because of  his faith.

Ahmed’s experience reflects a growing trend among first generation Muslim Americans. A 2011 Pew opinion poll reported that life has become more difficult for them since 9/11, but they haven’t experienced any increased hostility in the immediate wake of the terrorist attacks. What they are concerned about, however, is extremism within Islam.

It is a loaded topic in the Bronx, where three Muslim men were convicted last year for a 2009 plot to blow up synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. The men had planted fake bombs at two different locations. They had received the fake bombs from an FBI informant.

Ibrahim Ramey, who works for the Highbridge-based Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development, said people are concerned with extremism, particularly how it affects impressionable young people. But that in itself is not the most pressing issue.

Indeed, all the Muslims interviewed distanced themselves from extreme views, both regarding their religion and the reactions to the “Innocence of Muslims.” But most of them agreed people still did not understand the faith.

“I think we need to have a more nuanced view of how Islam is,” Ramey said.

 

A select timeline of local and global reactions to the “Innocence of Muslims” video:

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Bengali enclave grows in Norwood

Mohammed Hussein estimated he helped bring about 34 family members from Bangladesh to the Bronx. (JASMEET SIDHU/The Bronx Ink)

 

During the recent Islamic holiday Eid al-Adha, 62-year-old Mohammed Hussein sat in a loud, crowded Norwood apartment surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and several members of his extended family.

They spoke in rapid Bengali to each other, cleaning up remnants of an early day feast, and made plans to visit the homes of several other Bangladeshi families around Bainbridge Avenue and 205th Street, which sits at the end of the D-train in the northern Bronx.

“In three or four blocks, 72 of the houses are Bangladesh people,” said Hussein, who owns a bodega on nearby Perry Avenue.

Hussein, who first moved to New York City from Bangladesh in 1981, has seen firsthand the rapid growth of Bangladeshi immigrants to the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, particularly in the last few years. Walk along Bainbridge Avenue, which cuts right at the heart of this north Bronx neighborhood, and you can spot several Bangladeshi-owned bodegas that proudly tout signs in their native language, selling mustard oils and pastes, bags of lentils, halal meats and other typical staples of Bengali cuisine. Hussein himself estimated that he helped to bring about 34 members of his own extended family from Bangladesh to the Bronx, many of who now live within a few short blocks of his home in Norwood.

“There is close communication in the community,” Hussein said. “When I brought all those relatives, we want to live close to each other.”

Hussein’s story is typical among Bangladeshi and other South Asian immigrants in New York City. But while Parkchester in the Bronx and Astoria and Jackson Heights in Queens have long been known for being home to the Bangladesh diaspora, Norwood is also quietly becoming an attractive destination for these recent immigrants into the city. This growth has been spurred on by cheaper rents in the north Bronx, the prospect of a new four-story mosque in the neighborhood, and a tight-knit community that works to bring relatives from Bangladesh into the neighborhood.

A Bangladeshi-owned bodega in Norwood. (JASMEET SIDHU/The Bronx Ink)

According to data from the U.S. Census, the Bangladesh population in the Bronx has nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, from about 3,900 residents, to 7,500 residents. The area around the Williamsbridge Oval Park near Mosholu Parkway in particular has seen a sharp rise in the number of Bangladesh-born residents, growing nearly 500 percent in the last 10 years, while the overall population in the area has remained steady.

“In the last few years, they are growing pretty quickly around the Mosholu Parkway,” said Mohammed Islam, President of the Bronx Bangladesh Society.

“The rent is expensive elsewhere, so people are coming from Parkchester and Queens over there, because of relatives and family members.”

Many of the local Bangladeshis in the neighborhood have similar stories.

Inteshar Choudhury, a 48-year-old bodega owner on 206th Street, one of about a dozen Bangladeshi-owned bodegas crowded within the same block, came to Norwood from Bangladesh a few years ago through a family connection. He said he plans to bring many more relatives to the neighborhood as soon as he can.

“After five years, when I become a citizen, I’ll apply for my relatives,” said Choudhury, adding that more than 70 percent of the Bangladeshis in the neighborhood came from a single regional district in the country, Sylhet, because of this chain of family immigration sponsorships.

“That’s the way everyone comes,” Choudhury said.

The growth has been so rapid among the predominantly Islamic Bangladeshis that construction began a few weeks ago to build a new four-story mosque to handle the neighborhood demand. The new mosque, which is being built on an empty lot on the corner of 206th Street and Rochambeau Avenue, is estimated to cost more than $2 million and is expected to be open for worship in two years. Until then, the Williamsbridge Oval Park often attracts hundreds of Muslims for outdoor prayer services on special holidays, like Eid.

“There is a big population here now, and a personal need. Where are all the Muslim people supposed to go?” said Hussein, who serves as secretary for the expanding North Bronx Islamic Center, which now occupies a small first floor apartment building on Perry Avenue. “It’s going to attract more Bangladeshi people here. People will want to be near the mosque.”

Although there were tensions in the form of racial epithets yelled by strangers on the street immediately after 9/11, many of the practicing Muslims in the Bangladeshi community said the community has for the large part been accepting of their plans for the mosque, and their growth in the community.

“It’s actually a very nice neighborhood,” explained Syed Jamin Ali, president of the North Bronx Islamic Center. “Right now we have no discrimination on our mosque. We feel free.”

For long-time residents of Norwood, the growth of Bangladeshis in what used to be a predominantly Irish and Jewish neighborhood doesn’t faze them – it’s simply just the latest ethnic group to call this small pocket of the Bronx home.

“There have always been a lot of immigrants here. It’s nothing new,” said Ralph Martell, a resident of the neighborhood for nearly 40 years. “The Bangladeshis are very nice people.”

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