Prayer Resumes At Fire-Damaged Mosque

Sumeyya Sahim, only in the U.S. six months from her native Istanbul, Turkey, arrived early at the Diyanet Mosque Friday. Five days after someone started a fire there, the congregation was ready to gather again in communal prayer.

Sahim (pictured) was among some 60 other Muslims from the Greater New Haven area who gathered Friday around noon at the Middletown Avenue mosque for Jummah, the important afternoon Friday prayer, especially significant during the month of Ramadan.

It was the first prayer service at the mosque since a deliberately set fire last week destroyed part of the buildilng, triggering both an outpouring of support and a ripple of alarm in the local Muslim community.

Earlier in the day two grey shoebox containers had been delivered to the parking lot in front of the mosque. As the hour of the prayer approached, volunteers put down plywood flooring on the space between the two and covering it with carpet.

The congregation had temporary container spaces on site for the resumption of communal prayer. Because in Islam men and women pray separately, the idea was that the women would pray in the temporary container spaces and the men on the plywood space in between.

The prayers were to begin at 1:30. The women, like Salim, arriving early, took off their shoes, and stepped into one of the container spaces to read their Koran in the run-up to Jummah.

There are five daily prayer times, six days a week, in which Muslims can pray individually. The Friday Jummah, which takes the place of the regular weekday afternoon prayer, requires that people come together.

That’s why this first post-fire Jummah was significant.

Sumeyya couldn’t speak enough English yet for me to understand her, so she eagerly got her husband Selim on the her cell phone to translate my questions, many of which he answered, on the significance of the occasion.

Selim Sahim is 29. He operates a pizzeria in West Haven.

“Muslims communicate with god every month all the time, but it’s sad it [the fire] happened on our holy month,” he told me. ​“This is the main month when we connect with God.”

It was his understanding, he said, that the Koran text at the heart of the Jummah deals with the death of Muhammad. ​“During the days of our prophet, people were burned, they were tortured, it was always happening. And in Syria it’s happening today, babies, kids dying. In prophet times they burned mosques too.”

Sahim ended up on a stoic but hopeful note: ​“Every time a tragedy happens, this is how it goes, we get connected more than ever before. It just unites us more.”

That too turned out to be the theme of the khutbah, the short sermon that is inserted within parts of the Jummah service, distinguishing Jummah from the other prayer occasions.

On this special Jummah, the man who was to deliver it was Sinon Dedeler, the vice consul of the Turkish consulate in New York, who has specific responsibility for social and religious affairs. The mosque and its minarets have been built with major support from the government of Turkey.

Turan Yildiz, who was helping ready the temporary prayer space, had this take on the Jummah on this day: ​“I feel sad. To me, it is a hate crime. This planet is big enough for everybody. We worship the same god. We should bring out the things we share rather than our differences.”

It began to rain shortly after Connecticut State Sen. Saud Anwar arrived. The South Windsor-based legislator, the only Muslim in the state legislature, had never been to the mosque. He said he wanted to be on hand for this Jummah to be sure the community knew he was there for them.

“They are not alone,” he said in remarks while other members of the congregation hoisted up a small white tent over the men’s prayer area between the containers.

“While [the fire] is still under investigation, we should not jump to conclusions. If it turns out to be a hate crime, we need to bring out the message of love and harmony, and we will do that.”

In the meantime, he repeated, ​“people need to know that they are not alone.”

As the rain turned from drizzle into a persistent stream, out came the umbrellas, and several men scurried off to find more tents. The Jummah commenced with the call to prayer, as Anwar and the others took off their shoes and found a place to kneel.

Among them was an immediate neighbor of the mosque, Hussein Mahmud, an Ethiopian Muslim by origin. For 20 years he has lived in a condo down Middletown Avenue, less than half a mile from the mosque, which has only been at the location for a decade.

He prays five times a day and comes to the Diyanet often. He said for him this Jummah would be the same as others.

“I have a condo. I don’t bother anyone, and nobody bothers me,” Mahmud said.

But somebody had bothered the mosque, and then some. ​“The mosque was our home,” said Selim Sahim. ​“It’s unbelievable . It was so hard to get the permits to build it.”

But with insurance and an outpouring community donations, rebuilding should be a lot easier.

Mahmud said that one of the obligations of a Muslim during Ramadan is to give more charity even usual. He speculated that a lot of the donations — which thus far have topped $170,00 —are coming from devout Muslims because of that.

Then he went in out of the rain to find a place to pray.