Thomas Breen photo
Ercan Uzun and Ersoy Musn outside Diyanet Mosque on Wednesday. Below: The mosque at 531 Middletown Ave.
Ercan Uzun and Ersoy Mus stood outside the Diyanet Mosque on Wednesday, reflecting on the emotional roller-coaster that the mosque’s 300 members have gone through in the few days since Sunday’s fire at the 531 Middletown Ave. place of worship.
The surprise and hurt of the fire itself coming during the holy month of Ramadan, the interruption of extensive renovations to the building’s third floor; the flood of media attention to the latest victim of an apparent religious hate crime; and the outpouring of financial and emotional support from people of all faiths from throughout the city, country, and world.
“Today to us, tomorrow to the church and synagogues,” Uzun said about the threat that Sunday’s fire poses to all places of worship. “We must find the people who did this.” Fire Chief John Alston said someone set the fire intentionally.
Uzun and Mus said they have both been with the mosque since it opened in 2009. Not once in the past decade, they said, has the mosque received a threat of violence.
“We’re still surprised” about Sunday’s fire, Uzun said.
“We’re shocked,” Mus said. “We never thought this would happen here.”
They said the mosque was indeed covered by fire insurance, and that the insurance company has sent its own investigators to the site to determine the extent of the damage and how much of the repairs will be covered by their policy. Uzun and Mus said they expect the policy to cover all of the repair work.
Nevertheless, they said, they feel immensely grateful for the now $114,000-plus the mosque has raised in donations from over 3,600 people from as close as New Haven and as far as France and Germany.
They said the congregation had been working for months on extensive renovations to the mosque’s third floor, which will be the building’s main prayer room. They said the renovations also included the construction of a stairwell to that floor, as well as planned improvements to the facade, which was to be covered in stucco.
They said that the mosque, like many churches, synagogues, and other places of worship, relies on donations to foot its regular operating and capital costs. Many of those donations come during Ramadan, they said. They hope that this Ramadan’s donations will provide a financial bulwark for the mosque in the uncertain weeks and months ahead.
Since the fire, Uzun said, he and his family and many other congregants have stayed home to pray. Other congregants, he said, have gone out to mosques in West Haven, Orange, Stratford, Meriden, and elsewhere to pray with others during this holy month.
The short-term plan is to hire an office trailer, he said, so that the mosque’s congregants can come back to Middletown Avenue to pray together for the rest of the month. That trailer should be on site by Friday, he said, when the mosque plans on holding a 12:30 prayer service.
“We’re going to continue to pray,” he said, no matter what state the building is in.