patching...
Welcome back, Patch Blogger!

Islam

Friday, September 9, 2011

Area Interfaith Group Born Out of Tragedy and Charity

A donation of food from a Frankfort mosque and a Tinley church's outreach of compassion after 9/11 created the SouthWest Interfaith Team that strives to build bridges between religious communities.

The SouthWest Interfaith Team is a nonprofit group in the south suburbs of Chicago that was born through an act of giving. Rev. Jim Young, then of the Tinley Park United Methodist Church, met with Khalid Mozaffar and Tariq Khan, of Frankfort's American Islamic Association, in November 2002 after the AIA donated to the church a large collection from a food drive. Young, who’d worked at Ground Zero, said he was looking to do something more with Christian-Muslim relations and this meeting with Mozaffar and Khan planted the seeds for that. Around the same time, the Rev. Terrence Baeder of Zion Lutheran Church in Tinley Park reached out to the AIA in a show of support after hearing about threats against area Muslims in the wake of 9/11. This …

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Building a Mosque After 9/11: A Tale of Two Cities

Muslim leaders recall differing community reaction to the approval and building of two Southland mosques in Frankfort and Orland Park post 9/11.

The year was 1978. Bob Marley convinced warring Jamaican factions to shake hands. China lifted a ban on the works of Shakespeare. Pete Rose logged his 3,000th major league hit. And in the sparsely populated town of Frankfort a small group of Sunni Muslims founded a Sunday school to preserve their cultural heritage and religious doctrine that would later become known as the American Islamic Association. After four years of renting local classrooms and offices, enough money was raised to purchase property from a Frankfort crop duster at 8860 W. Saint Francis Rd. The farmhouse would eventually become the school. The airplane hangar would become the prayer hall. “It was nothing but pure farm land,” AIA co-founder and vice chairman Tariq Khan …

Comment_arrow

Jenny C

12:37 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011

Ben ~ You asked me - "did I say I wasn't aware of the backlash?" No, which is why I asked you if you were. I wasn't comparing you running an article to what is going on in Europe. (sigh) I was showing how multiculturalism has failed in a country that had tried it sooner than we had. Wise men learn from other's mistakes. It is foolish to think we could try the same thing and have a different …   more ›

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Five Things to Know About Ramadan

The Muslim month of fasting began Aug. 1.

Ramadan doesn’t have previews. There aren’t Ramadan sales for gifts, radio singles or colored lights that go up leading to the Muslim holy month. If anything, living in areas where Ramadan isn’t as well known as other religious holidays presents challenges. Since eating is restricted between dawn and dusk, working day shifts can’t be easy—especially in this heat. Here are a few other information nuggets about Ramadan, courtesy of Huffington Post: The Islamic City website has a tool for people to find precise times to start and stop fasting, by typing in city and state.

Got a Hot Tip?