Two years after losing their mosque in arson fire, members of southeast Missouri Islamic Center have found a new home, saying it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the community.
“We worship God and we connect with the people for the sake of God and we’re really excited that we’re able to do this, provide this service to the community for education and coming together,” Dr. Ahmad Sheikh, a member of the Muslim community, told KFVS12.
An arsonist set the old mosque on fire in April 2020. The fire damaged a large portion of the mosque. Members of the Muslim community continued holding prayer services until a new property could be found.
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“We tried to rebuild it,” Islamic Center President Shafiq Malik said.
“We did a lot of work for it, architectural plans and everything else too and we tried to send out a word for bidding, it was too expensive for us to build that.”
Home Finally
After two years of search, the Islamic Center in Cape Girardeau is now located in a building that used to be a Masonic Temple.
“I was passing by this on broadway,” Malik said.
“I saw the sign for sale, and something hit me, this could be the place for us, so I came back looked around called the real estate agent, looked at the building, it just felt like it was the right place for us to start our worship.”
Inaugurating the new mosque on Friday night, October 28, Muslims thanked the community for the support.
“We cannot give enough thanks to the community of Cape Girardeau and all of the police department, fire department, they have supported us in a lot of ways,” Sheikh said.
“Even the general public of the Cape Girardeau community that helped us with a lot of funds and everything else too, so that’s the reason we were able to buy this building because of those funds, so we are very thankful for the Cape Girardeau community.”
A CAIR report recorded 144 anti-mosque incidents in 2017, of which 57 were hate crimes.