Muslims to break ground on mosque in Fifeville

By Rachana Dixit

Published: September 2, 2008

For many Charlottesville-area Muslims, the anticipation of a new mosque in Fifeville will be partly relieved today with the building’s groundbreaking.

“God willing it’ll happen,” said Shamual Choudhury, chairman of the mosque’s building committee and a 1998 University of Virginia graduate. “We’ve been waiting a long time.”

The new mosque and study center for the Islamic Society of Central Virginia, to be located on Pine Street in Charlottesville, has been in the works for several years, its necessity pushed along by the city’s burgeoning Muslim population. In 2000, the society purchased the site for the mosque. Currently, the group uses a white, two-floor house on 10 1/2 Street that it received as a donation.

“What we have now is a 100-plus-year-old house that is very limited in its space,” said Emaad Abdel-Rahman, a Charlottesville resident and society member.

During Friday prayers just after 1 p.m. last week — two days before Ramadan began — more than 40 men and 20 women packed into the aging house’s first- and second-floor rooms. With sitting rows designated by duct tape on the green-carpeted floor, space was scarce as attendees bowed to the ground together in prayer. After the service, dozens edged outside the house’s doors.

Rahman, who led the afternoon prayers, beseeched the congregation to support the new facility. That week, more than 80 people went to UVa’s Muslim Student Association meeting, further exemplifying the new site’s need.

“This is an ongoing commitment,” he said.

Rahman said the area’s Muslim population has been budding ever since an influx of refugees in the mid-1990s, many from countries such as Bosnia, Myanmar and Iraq. Before that, in the late 1980s, the Charlottesville-area Muslim population multiplied because of an increase in foreign students and second-generation Muslims attending UVa.

Choudhury said the Muslim community is much different than when he graduated from UVa in 1998 — about three years after the society was given the 10 1/2 Street house. “Before that we were doing our weekly prayers in a rented room,” Choudhury said. “Now that I come here the community is a lot larger.”

All the mosque’s paperwork was finalized with contractors in the last few weeks. “It just took a long time gathering funds,” Choudhury said.

Society officials agreed it was difficult to procure necessary monies for the $1.2 million project. The project’s original timeline showed construction beginning in September 2006 with completion by August 2007.

“Unfortunately, the construction industry is moving faster than we’re raising the money,” Choudhury said.

Tezer Battal, the Islamic Society of Central Virginia’s outreach secretary, said the nature of the community — largely comprised of students who do not stick around after a few years — made it increasingly challenging to garner funds.

“Whoever comes in to our community considers themselves transient,” Battal said. “They don’t feel they belong here. They don’t come to settle down.”

But those who want to stay will have more than enough room to do so. The new 15,000-square-foot facility will have a prayer room large enough to hold more than 300 people and a basement space for religious festivals and seminars.

The mosque’s construction plan is geared toward getting a functional facility built, and the group will worry about adding architectural elements and fine detailing — such as a dome and minaret — once more funds are raised. A fundraiser has already been scheduled for later this week in Vienna.

“Any fundraising with any religious institution takes time,” Rahman said. “But people have been very supportive.”