By Nadrat Siddique
Washington,
DC
April
6, 2018
I performed juma’ah prayers for the last
two weeks at the DC Islamic Center. Located on Embassy Row, ICDC, as it is
known, is rather unusual as far as mosques go. It was conceived in 1944 during
the Truman presidency by diplomats from Muslim countries, and was inaugurated
in 1957 under Eisenhower. The principal
who pushed for the completion of the center was Egyptian Ambassador Kamil Abdul
Rahim. Abdul Rahim travelled to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Muslim countries
to solicit funds for the completion of the center. In addition to funds, various Arab countries
also contributed to the decor of the mosque: Egypt provided a chandelier, Iran
brought in oriental carpets, and Turkey contributed tiles.
At the time, ICDC’s board was composed
of diplomats from the various Muslim countries. Today, it is unclear who sits
on its board. In fact, the ICDC webpage fails to list board members, imams, and
related information. By contrast, other mosques, however conservative or
controlled, list this key information. The imam’s salary is also not divulged.
It does say that the Islamic Center’s aim is to work with the U.S. government,
an odd breach of the key American principle of “Separation of Church and
State.”
The Saudi Embassy’s website mentions the DC Islamic Center (as an example of the broadening reach of Islam in the U.S.), but does not delve into the extent of its contributions or investment into the Center.
The Islamic Center board was determined by election only once in its history: In November 1981, a Syrian-born Sunni scholar, named Muhammad Al-Asi was elected imam. His reign at the center was brief however, and he was ousted by the Saudis and others associated with the previous mosque board in March 1983. The Saudis locked Asi and his family out of the Islamic Center, and completely closed the Center for three months, under two seemingly unrelated pretexts: 1) that they had information on a weapons cache inside the Center; and 2) maintenance and repairs were needed inside the Center.
Later, when Imam Al-Asi attempted to return, they arrested and briefly jailed him along with 50 of his supporters, charging then with “unlawful entry into the mosque” and “disturbing a religious service.” Asi and his cohorts were also indefinitely banned from entering the mosque.
New Trend, then in its sixth year of publication, supported Imam Al-Asi on principle.
So, the operations of the current board of the ICDC remain enshrouded in mystery. The little which is known emerged around 2009, as a result of a legal case between the mosque director/imam Abdullah Khouj and the mosque financial manager Farzad Darui. As a consequence of the case, it became apparent that hundreds of thousands of dollars were being funneled into a mosque fund by the Saudi government. The money was to be used, in part, for mosque maintenance and security.
Another point garnered from the 2009 case was that the mosque board had, in 1984, shortly after deposing Muhammad Al-Asi, hired a Saudi—from Saudi Arabia, and with no ties to the local community—to be imam.
The Saudi imam’s March 30 khutbah I sat in on focused on cleansing one’s body as well as one’s soul, touching on various complications which can arise in such cleansing, including hasad (envy). The April 6 khutbah by the same imam also focused on hasad: Why one ought not engage in hasad; ramifications of engaging in hasad; remedies for the individual in danger of engaging in hasad, etc. There was a great deal of redundancy between the March 20 and April 6 khutbahs. And there were extensive and selective quotations from the Qur’an in Arabic (to a congregation which was, at best, 50% Arabic-speaking).
Feeling an odd twinge of empathy (pity, really), I pondered how difficult it was for imams in the pocket of Saud or DHS to come up with entirely academic khutbahs, and completely skirt any remotely political topic, week after week. Almost any real world concern, it seemed to me, could be labeled as political—and hence off limits—not only to the paid Saudi imam whom I observed, but to the numerous imams on the DHS-approved speaking circuit.
For example, in both the ICDC khutbas I heard, the imam mentioned memorization of Qur’an by hafiz-e-Quran as one area in which envy was okay. That is, competition to memorize and accurately recite God’s word was a highly worthwhile endeavor exempt from the warnings against hasad. Ideally, envying a hafiz would lead one to also become a hafiz.
Ironically, two days prior, 100 hafiz-e-Quran children in Kunduz (Afghanistan) were killed in an airstrike by the Afghan government, a puppet of the U.S. And a little more than a year ago, world renowned hafiz-e-Qur’an Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman died a political prisoner in U.S. custody. How could any man of God ignore these terrible tragedies, and not make the logical connections? But to the Saudi imam I was observed, there seemed no connection.
The Saudi imam continued to rail against hasad, spouting off yet more daleel in Arabic. His frenzied du’ah, also entirely in Arabic, was the only passionate part of his khutbah. Murdered Afghan children were clearly not on his mind. I left immediately after the prayer ended, asking Allah to forgive me for praying behind such a one. I pondered the openness to scrutiny of our beloved Rasool (SAW) and later of the Khulafah-E-Rashidun (RA) by their constituents. At a minimum, disclosure of the ICDC imam’s salary and its source, as well as the salaries (and sources) of other ICDC board members would help congregants to understand why topics such as hasad are beat to death during the Center’s khutbahs, while thousands of innocents across the Muslim world perish daily at the hands of the U.S., Russian, NATO, and other imperialist armies without a mention.
© 2018 Nadrat Siddique
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