Praying to Allah in the U.S. isn?t as simple as it should be.
When Americans mistake cultures for the Islamic faith, a problem occurs, said Imam Mahmoud Abdelhady of Dar Al-Taqwa in Ellicott City.
Muslims at Howard County?s first masjid want to replace their neighbors? potential confusion and misconceptions with conversations and truths.
“People have a lot of questions [about being Muslim,]” said Ayman Nassar, Dar Al-Taqwa board member. “The mosque is open for anyone to come to socialize or ask questions.”
Dar Al-Taqwa frequently hosts open houses for non-Muslims to learn about Islamic practices and beliefs. The community, founded in 1992, erected the masjid in 2006 after worshipping in rented office space in the Wilde Lake Shopping Center in Columbia and a house on their current premise.
Approximately 300 families attend services at Dar Al-Taqwa. In recent years, “the numbers of [local] Muslims have grown dramatically,” according to Abdelhady.
Many of the converts are women, Nassar said.
“What we?ve been hearing is they found solutions to daily issues here. Other religions didn?t fit so they started to look around and researched other faiths until they found the Qur?an.”
Recently, a woman new to the faith told Abdelhady she did not know what liberation was until she learned Islam, he said.
Islamic women, unlike men, “are not obligated to spend a penny of their money on their household,” Abdelhady said. “Islam gave women the right of their own wealth and inheritance 1,400 years ago, when it was revolutionary at the time. This kind of thinking came in history when women were inherited like objects ? you get a chair, a desk and a woman.”
Dar Al-Taqwa provides education services for elementary-aged children to study the history of Islamic societies and perfect their Arabic.
“Students learn and memorize the Qu?ran. Reading with absolute accuracy is important because If someone really wants to have the feeling of what God said, they read the Qu?ran in Arabic ? that?s exactly the way it was given from God to Gibril,” said Principal of the Dar Al-Taqwa?s Education Center?s Saturday School, Safiyah Blake.
Dar Al-Taqwa, a beautiful, tranquil place, resembles old world structures in Jerusalem, Indonesia and Egypt, Blake said. “The entire mosque is surrounded by woods so we see each of the four seasons transform the trees around us. It was designed to fit into the lay of the land.”
