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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Courtesy
of the New York Times at:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/nyregion/11religion.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Muslims
and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>By
SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Sometime
in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his
union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World
Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>In
the union locker room on the 51st floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam went through a
construction worker’s version of due diligence. In the case of an
emergency in the building, he asked his foreman and crew, where was he supposed
to reassemble? The answer was the corner of Broadway and Vesey. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Over
the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam
voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?”
And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south
tower. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>He
went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as
wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing
toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>On
any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might
include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and
ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned
citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole
Muslim spectrum of nationality and race. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Leaping
down the stairs on Sept. 11, 2001, when he had been installing ceiling speakers
for a reinsurance company on the 49th floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam had a brief,
panicked thought. He didn’t see any of the Muslims he recognized from the
prayer room. Where were they? Had they managed to evacuate? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>He
staggered out to the gathering place at Broadway and Vesey. From that corner,
he watched the south tower collapse, to be followed soon by the north one.
Somewhere in the smoking, burning mountain of rubble lay whatever remained of
the prayer room, and also of some of the Muslims who had used it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Given
the vitriolic opposition now to the proposal to build a Muslim community center
two blocks from ground zero, one might say something else has been destroyed:
the realization that Muslim people and the Muslim religion were part of the
life of the World Trade Center. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Opponents
of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims
of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were
Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but
even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef,
their religious observance generated no opposition <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>“We
weren’t aliens,” Mr. Abdus-Salaam, 60, said in a telephone
interview from Florida, where he moved in retirement. “We had a foothold
there. You’d walk into the elevator in the morning and say, ‘Salaam
aleikum,’ to one construction worker and five more guys in suits would
answer, ‘Aleikum salaam.’ ” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>One
of those men in suits could have been Zafar Sareshwala, a financial executive
for the Parsoli Corporation, who went to the prayer room while on business
trips from his London office. He was introduced to it, he recently recalled, by
a Manhattan investment banker who happened to be Jewish. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>“It
was so freeing and so calm,” Mr. Sareshwala, 47, said in a phone
conversation from Mumbai, where he is now based. “It had the feel of a
real mosque. And the best part is that you are in the epicenter of capitalism
— New York City, the World Trade Center — and you had this island
of spiritualism. I don’t think you could have that combination anywhere
in the world.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>How,
when and by whom the prayer room was begun remains unclear. Interviews this
week with historians and building executives of the trade center came up empty.
Many of the Port Authority’s leasing records were destroyed in the
towers’ collapse. The imams of several Manhattan mosques whose members
sometimes went to the prayer room knew nothing of its origins. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Yet
the room’s existence is etched in the memories of participants like Mr.
Abdus-Salaam and Mr. Sareshwala. Prof. John L. Esposito of Georgetown
University, an expert in Islamic studies, briefly mentions the prayer room in
his recent book “The Future of Islam.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Moreover,
the prayer room was not the only example of Muslim religious practice in or
near the trade center. About three dozen Muslim staff members of Windows on the
World, the restaurant atop the north tower, used a stairwell between the 106th
and 107th floors for their daily prayers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Without
enough time to walk to the closest mosque — Masjid Manhattan on Warren
Street, about four blocks away — the waiters, chefs, banquet managers and
others would lay a tablecloth atop the concrete landing in the stairwell and
flatten cardboard boxes from food deliveries to serve as prayer mats. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>During
Ramadan, the Muslim employees brought their favorite foods from home, and at
the end of the daylight fast shared their iftar meal in the restaurant’s
employee cafeteria. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>“Iftar
was my best memory,” said Sekou Siby, 45, a chef originally from the
Ivory Coast. “It was really special.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Such
memories have been overtaken, though, by others. Mr. Siby’s cousin and
roommate, a chef named Abdoul-Karim Traoré, died at Windows on the World on
Sept. 11, as did at least one other Muslim staff member, a banquet server named
Shabir Ahmed from Bangladesh. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Fekkak
Mamdouh, an immigrant from Morocco who was head waiter, attended a worship
service just weeks after the attacks that honored the estimated 60 Muslims who
died. Far from being viewed as objectionable, the service was conducted with
formal support from city, state and federal authorities, who arranged for buses
to transport imams and mourners to Warren Street. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>There,
within sight of the ruins, they chanted salat al-Ghaib, the funeral prayer when
there is not an intact corpse. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>“It
is a shame, shame, shame,” Mr. Mamdouh, 49, said of the Park51 dispute.
“Sometimes I wake up and think, this is not what I came to America for. I
came here to build this country together. People are using this issue for their
own agenda. It’s designed to keep the hate going.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>--------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Sinclair
Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, now retired in Boca Raton, Fla., prayed at the trade
center.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><img
border=0 width=380 height=221 id="Picture_x0020_0"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CB5373.1C1ABD50" alt="Sinclair_Hejazi_Abdus_Salaam.jpg"></span><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Seeya
round town, Moscow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Tom
Hansen<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Moscow,
Idaho<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>"The
Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change and the
Realist adjusts his sails." <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>-
Unknown <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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