Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html?_r=1

Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life

Michael McElroy for The New York Times

Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, now retired in Boca Raton, Fla., prayed at the trade center.

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: September 10, 2010


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Given the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed: the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the life of the World Trade Center.

Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition.

“We weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ”

One of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish.

“It was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism — New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere in the world.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html?_r=1

[66 dmhlt]

1. Also just learned there is a Muslim prayer room at

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, thanks to Col. Colin Powell:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/09/powell-mosque/

Had learned a couple months ago about the prayer room at the Pentagon, but the Islamic prayer rooms at WTC and Walter Reed were new to me this past week.