Imam Rasul Faheem Seifullah, leader of the al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, says he has always considered building bridges to other religious groups as an important part of his ministry. When a fire destroyed his mosque in December 2004, those bridges became lifelines for his small congregation of Sunni Muslims.
Less than two weeks before the fire at the center the Muslim congregation played host to an interfaith Thanksgiving service that brought more than 70 people together, including Christians, Jews and Native Americans.
The destruction of the mosque generated an outpouring of sympathy and support from many religious groups in western Massachusetts, including donations of space, money and legal expertise from Roman Catholics, Unitarians, Baptists, Jews and other Muslims.
"I wouldn't even know all the denominations," Seifullah said. "It was across the board."
One offer, from Rabbi Robert Sternberg, was to hold a service among the artifacts in the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center at the Jewish Community Center in Springfield.
Seifullah said he found nothing unnatural about a Muslim religious gathering in that space, which has displays featuring the narratives and histories of four Jewish families in a German town as a microcosm of the persecution and mass murder of Jews under the Nazis.
"I'll tell you what, every people on this planet has experienced a holocaust," Seifullah said. "The point is that this happened and it should never have to happen to anyone else."
Sternberg said he had extended the invitation as a natural response to the congregation's loss. There was great concern in the first days after the fire that it had been a hate crime, but the fire has since been determined to be the result of nonreligiously motivated youthful vandalism.
"They are good people, and we care about them," Sternberg said of the Sunni congregation.
The congregation at al-Baqi, part of the American Society of Muslims, also grew closer to the Nation of Islam mosque in Springfield after the fire and accepted an invitation to rent office space and to hold its weekly Friday services in its Mosque No.13, a converted beauty-supply store, until it can rebuild a permanent home. The move represents a renewed level of cooperation between the two Muslim groups, which share common roots in the American experience but had a rift in 1975.
Seifullah, 57, has experienced renewal in his personal religious history as well.
A native New Yorker, chemical engineer and Vietnam veteran, he was raised Roman Catholic. He joined the Nation of Islam in 1972 but drifted away from the Muslim community a few years later after the death of Elijah Muhammad, the movement's founder.
He rekindled his faith in the early 1990s, joined the mosque of al-Baqi, part of a Sunni offshoot led by Elijah Muhammad's son, and was named imam in 1998. Interfaith work has been part of his calling.
"There's more that we agree on than we disagree on, and while we are fighting to prove who is right, the rest of the world is going to hell," Seifullah said.
He prays five times a day and joins his congregants in ritual prostration as part of Friday services that mingle social commentary with fellowship and calls to serve the African-American community, of which they are part.
Seifullah at first saw his personal efforts to reach out to and learn about other religious groups in Springfield as a way to break down the insularity he perceived among African-American Muslims.
A "circling of the wagons" was a natural reaction to the suspicion that the Muslim religion raises among many people in the US, he said, but he believes it is crucial for all people to interact more.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS