Muslim community growing in Connecticut
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ ... 6769.story
HARTFORD, Conn. - The Muslim community in Connecticut is growing, drawing more faithful to a mosque that provides room to expand and prompting efforts to reach out to others.
For example, a billboard on Interstate 84 west near Cheshire invites motorists to turn east, or toward Mecca.
The Connecticut chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America that paid for the billboard has sponsored similar highway messages nationwide to inform non-Muslims about Islam and counter negative images that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"This is a national effort to establish some understanding of Islam, to start an interfaith dialogue," said Naveed Khan, a member of the United Muslim Masjid, a Waterbury mosque under construction. "There is a great need to educate people about Islam after 9/11. As a community we need to address this issue."
Islamic Circle's national convention in July at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford was attended by about 15,000 people.
"What we see in the news media and television is a picture of Muslims that is far from reality," said Muhammad Ahmad, a member of the Islamic Circle of North America and a doctor who practices internal medicine in Chicago. "Unless we go out and tell our neighbors who we are, there is no one who will correct the image."
Ahmad, who answers phone lines that inform callers about Islam, said he's received calls from curious priests, students, Muslims, non-Muslims and news reporters. Some callers have even tried to convert him to their faith.
"We are giving out information. What people want to do with that information is their problem," he said.
Construction of the United Muslim Masjid in Waterbury is more evidence of the growing Muslim community in Connecticut. Khan said the group is building a 24,000-square-foot building because its current mosque can no longer fit the growing number of Muslims in the Waterbury area who pray there five times a day and gather for Islamic holidays.
Attendance at the mosque has grown in the last decade as a rising number of Muslims have arrived in the Waterbury area from Albania, Ghana and elsewhere.
The new mosque will have a community hall, library, gymnasium, learning center and a minaret tall enough to be seen from I-84. The new mosque also will allow its members to hold more outreach activities to educate the public about Islam and Muslims.
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Information from: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com
