Islam thrives in Chicago

By Lola Smallwood, Chicago Tribune, October 15, 1999

On a recent Friday afternoon, men dressed in cotton robes and sandals, baggy jeans and tennis shoes, overalls and work boots, slowly packed into an unadorned prayer room illuminated only by the light of two narrow, rectangular windows inside the Bridgeview mosque.

Within minutes, there was no space even to kneel on the avocado-colored carpet. Worshipers spilled out of the main prayer area to the courtyard outside the mosque, unrolling beautiful Persian rugs to accommodate the crowd.

Many are immigrants. Many more are descendants of Muslim emigres who are swiftly building a strong Muslim-American community in the south and southwest suburbs--and taxing the capacity of the Bridgeview center.

"We are going through a transition where the growth is really among the youth," said Bassam Jody, a Tinley Park resident and president of the Chicago Mosque Foundation. "It's a case of children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants coming up and spreading out to places such as Tinley Park and Orland Park."

Though it is unclear how many Muslims live in the southern part of the Chicago area, foundation officials said that on Islamic feast days, more than 5,000 Muslims have crowded into its mosque--built to hold 800 to 1,500 people.

And Friday congregational prayer draws some 2,000 Muslims.

Three small rental offices in Frankfort, Tinley Park and Bolingbrook serve as a place for Muslims to carry out salah, the required prayer, five times a day. But none of those locations offers Islamic educational or community programs.

However, on Fridays, men are required to attend congregational prayer, and most prefer to attend the Bridgeview mosque, officials say.

That has made conditions so cramped that officials recently announced intentions to build a new mosque in the nearby southwest suburbs by 2005. Though no definitive location or cost for the mosque is yet known, officials said about 15 acres of land would be needed to build the mosque.

The community's growth in the southwest suburbs reflects an explosion in the Muslim population throughout the Chicago area, which has risen from 50,000 to more than 350,000 in the last 30 years.

The growth is fueled by a continual stream of Muslim immigrants from places such as Yugoslavia, Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East.

However, a major force behind the numbers in southern Cook and Will counties is the emergence of second- and third-generation Muslim Americans.

"There was no community when I came here," said Salem M. Salem, 53, a Palestinian businessman who came to Chicago from Jerusalem in 1969.

Between puffs on a hand-rolled cigarette in the living room of his Oak Lawn home, he explained how he sent his small children back home to relatives to learn the principles and customs of Islam. They remained there for three years.

"Today you don't have to send children away," he said, as his two adult daughters, Nadia, 26, a Chicago lawyer, and Jackleen, 22, a University of Chicago graduate student, listened nearby. "The community is stronger. There are mosques, several schools. Children can be taught right here."

The migration of Muslim immigrants has traced an intricate pattern across the Chicago area since the late 1880s, said Asad Husain, president of the American Islamic College on the North Side.

During the early stages of migration, Muslims, many from the Middle East, settled in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side. As they prospered, those immigrants who chose to remain in the U.S. sought better housing opportunities in nearby suburbs such as Burbank, Bridgeview and Oak Lawn, making the southern region one of the largest and fastest-growing Muslim communities in the Chicago area.

Elsewhere, Muslim communities also thrive today in northern suburbs such as Morton Grove, where Eastern European Muslims from Albania and Serbia have settled. In DuPage County, Muslims from India and Pakistan have put down roots in Lombard, Villa Park and other cities.

Still, early on, many Muslim immigrants saw the Chicago area as a temporary land of opportunity, and little was done until the 1980s to build up the community, Husain said. As late as the 1970s, it was the norm for immigrants who had come for jobs or educational opportunities to return to their native countries. But since then, there has been considerable effort to create a religious community.

The Muslim religion is based on the Koran--a prodigious text of revelations shown to the prophet Muhammad by God during the 7th century, followers believe.

"I think my generation wants to be defined as Muslim Americans and feel comfortable with who we are and where we're at," said Nadia Salem, who lives a block from the Bridgeview mosque with her husband, writer Ibrahim Abusharif, 40.

Besides the proposed mosque in the Bridgeview area, new mosques have been built or are proposed in Villa Park, Des Plaines and Chicago. Five Islamic-based elementary and high schools have opened since 1990, including two in Bridgeview.

And in some ways, the new generation has brought a certain nuance to the faith in Bridgeview. In recent years, Friday prayer sermons have been offered in English instead of Arabic. A new community center houses a Sisters Community--a religious network of Muslim women. And a youth center offers teens a place to hold discussions such as "Teens and Islam" or "Marriage in Islam" to educate youths on how to apply the religion to modern life.

Such outlets are particularly essential in American society, where the culture in many ways contradicts the laws of the religion, Muslim parents said. For example, premarital sex and even unchaperoned dating among adults is prohibited. Women are encouraged to be educated but required to stay home with small children unless the family is in financial trouble. And elderly parents must be cared for by their children--not in nursing homes.

Yet financing mosques and community centers isn't easy because the teachings of the Koran forbid Muslims from accepting or providing interest-bearing loans.

In fact, the $600,000 mosque that opened in Villa Park last year was completely financed through cash donations, said Abdul Hammed Dogar, board member of the Islamic Foundation in Villa Park.

"Islamic religion said exploiting the needy is sinful," Jody said. "We will take no loan. We will look to the business community and Muslim organizations to raise the funds."