Masjid Al-Rahman (Richmond, Contra Costa County, CA)

Not too many people know too much about Richmond, and what little they do know comes from the major news outlets.  More than a few Bay Area natives don't even know where it is.  Self-centered San Franciscans assume I'm referring to the Richmond District of the city when I say I live and work in Richmond.  Others snicker at the fact that the city has one councilmember named Butt and another named Booze.

The word most commonly associated with Richmond is crime, perhaps murder, given that in 2010 it was considered the third-most dangerous city in America.  However, the crime rate is down, and things are on an upswing here.  The city will soon be home to the second campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and many green tech companies are headquartered here.  Chevron's investing more money into the community than it ever has, and the much-maligned local school district is also showing signs of improvement.

That said, the city has problems, and I don't mean to sugarcoat them.  If you take a look at the crime map, you'll definitely see some activities you won't see in the wealthier cities of Contra Costa County.  This masjid isn't located in the worst neighborhood in Richmond, but it also isn't located in the best, either.

This is why it troubled me to see youth goofing off around the masjid last night.  While messing around is never desirable in any masjid, it is obviously a lot safer to do so in a suburban masjid.  You don't want your kid to be outside when there could be criminals lurking in the dark.  There's a very good reason why all the houses on the street are dark at night and nobody lets their children play in the yards after sunset.  Also, not to be too morbid, but one of the reasons why some Richmond streets have speed bumps is to prevent drive-bys.  For those reasons, the people who bring their kids to the masjid need to corral them and make sure they're either praying next to them or engaged in some activity INSIDE the mosque.  To the best of my knowledge, no Muslim has been harmed going to-and-from the masjid, but that's not a good reason to not take preventative measures and teach the kids discipline.

The community does do a lot for the kids, though.  One of the main expenses for the masjid is their Sunday school, which might be smaller than the one in say, San Francisco, but it's become an institution in the community.  That's how I know the Muslims here have their heads on straight.  If you want to establish an Islamic presence, the first thing you build is a masjid (check) and the second thing you build is a school (check).

I don't spend too much time at the masjid during Ramadan because since I moved here I've been 30Mosqueing, but I always try to grab iftar here when I can.  I haven't had the chance to have dinner here yet, but the people I meet at iftar are some of the most genuine and generous men I have ever met.  The Ramadan spirit shines through strongly here.

Congregation praying.  Absent: youth having a water fight in the restroom, which has a door exiting into the parking lot.  That's not unsafe at all.

Date Visited: August 3, 2012

Location:
1110 36th Street
Richmond, CA 94804

Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Very good.  I was mighty impressed.

Size of congregation: 75-100

Capacity of center: 100-150

Parking: A tiny lot, but mostly street.  Fair warnings, many cars have been broken into over the past six months, according to the City of Richmond's crime map.

Mihrab: No

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Ample

Building: A decent-sized center located very close to the interstate.  Good location for that reason.

Friendliness towards women: Women have their own prayer space and entrance.  It's welcoming towards women.

Friendliness of congregation: Very good people.  Everyone seems very convivial whenever I come here.

Masjid Annur (Richmond, Contra Costa County, CA)

Welcome to TJ territory.

All the bridge tolls I've paid this week have, well, taken a toll on my wallet, so I decided to be a homebody today and kick it with the TJs in Richmond.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, the TJs have taken over a building which used to be the original Kaiser Permanente hospital.  I have to give them credit for turning a rotting building into something somewhat functional, but I have a feeling Henry Kaiser is rolling in his grave after seeing what they've done to his trailblazing bastion of public health (KP was one of the first HMOs, you know).

I've always had an uneasy relationship with the TJs.  They appear to be the nicest people, but I'm uncomfortable with how they do abandon their families for extended amounts of time to proselytize their religion.  No doubt they have the best intentions in mind, but I can't see myself getting along with people with priorities like that.  What also terrifies me about them is once they find out where you live, they don't leave you alone.  So, if any TJs ask, I still live in Santa Clara.

What disturbs me the most about the TJs is their apparent disregard for women.  Here's a floor plan of the old Kasier facility they've taken over:

You can see that they have an entire city block to themselves.  I did my due diligence tonight and tried desperately to find evidence of a women's section.  Nary a sign...although most of the hospital rooms did have sleeping bags in them, no doubt belonging to wayward TJs on journeys to convert more Muslims to Islam.

I'd understand if they didn't have a women's section if they had only one room to themselves, but seriously, they couldn't set aside one of the many empty rooms for women?  I know Islamic scientists have proven with a shadow of a doubt that the universe will implode if non-mahram men and women pray in the same room, but there really is no excuse here.

All the empty halls and rooms, however, means that is an amazing place to be a kid.  Children (male, of course) stampeded through the building, unimpeded by the stern directives of their mothers.  Men futilely tried to corral the younglings, but their playtime could not be interrupted by prayer time.


Speaking of prayer time, there are definitely more people praying taraweeh here than there were last year.  Seems like this mosque is starting to get some name recognition.  Honestly, you can't blame people for coming here, backwards as it may be.  This place is less than 10 minutes from my place and shoot, it felt nice to not have to drive 10+ miles to go to taraweeh for a change.


Taraweeh here is the Arab-20, and it moves very quickly.  The imam did make a gaffe today; he lead a four-rakat set today instead of the standard two.  However, unlike Belmont, the crises passed without Arab men shouting in their sometimes terrifying language.  Just gotta roll with it sometimes, guys.

KP sign: a reminder of a bygone era.

Former hospital room converted into a canteen.

Where the TJs eat their TJ food.  As you can see, there's still a lot of work to do to make this building hospitable (word choice intentional)

Date Visited: July 25, 2012

Location:
1330 Cutting Boulevard
Richmond, CA 94804

Tag-team taraweeh: Nope

Qirat: Good.  Better'n average.

Size of congregation: 40-60 people

Capacity of center: The prayer hall had room for 150 individuals with XY chromosomes.  There's no room here for individuals with two X chromosomes.

Parking: Street.  Arguably unsafe due to the proximity to the worst neighborhoods in Richmond, but generally there are no break-ins during prayer time to the number of people who are around then.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Ample.

Building: A rescued Kaiser Permanente hospital.  This structure was left to die before the TJs took it over.  They're working on gutting it to make it more usable.

Friendliness towards women: Ranks near the bottom of all the mosques I have ever visited in the Bay Area.

Friendliness of congregation: Decent.  Anyone male is welcome here.

Islamic Society of West Contra Costa County (Richmond)

There’s something strange about the Richmond Muslim community. This month I visited a Richmond mosque with the capacity to hold 100 worshippers with ease, and there were maybe a dozen there, if even that much. This Richmond mosque also has a capacity of around 100-150 worshippers, and it was bursting at the seams. Clearly, there’s a space issue, so why don’t worshippers attend the other one?

I don’t really care enough to investigate, and besides, it’s more fun to speculate. My Belmont insider, who apparently also fancies himself to be a Richmond insider, said one mosque is controlled by a group of Muslims which tends to drive others away. These Muslims are bent on spreading the word of God, but amusingly sometimes spread Islam to folks who are already Muslim. It can get a little annoying, from what I hear.

I like to think I’ve gotten to know Richmond pretty well, including the ethnic breakdown. Based on what I saw today, I think it’s safe to say most of the people in attendance do not live in Richmond. I say that because I did not see a noticeable number of blacks, Latinos and whites, the three dominant ethnic groups of the city. I’m willing to bet this mosque was the brainchild of wealthy Muslims looking for cheap property.

And it must have been cheap. While this isn’t located in one of the worse neighborhoods in the city, it’s also not one of the best. It’s close to the freeway, sure, but the only source of light in the area was the mosque itself. Cars line the very narrow streets, making it difficult to find parking and creating a traffic logjam as worshippers leave the mosque after prayers. Mosques in residential neighborhoods tend to be at odds with their neighbors, but I wonder if this neighborhood welcomes the Muslim community. What better way to keep your street safe than by welcoming a religious institution with congregants who come five times a day? I’ve heard stories about a mosque in Poughkeepsie, NY which was given tax breaks to stay where it was because the presence of the mosque was making the neighborhood safer. Maybe the same is true here, I don’t know.

The hafiz was a young guy who was unfortunately stumbling in the beginning. After the fourth inning, the manager approached the mound and it seemed to me as if he was going to put in a reliever. That didn’t happen, but the hafiz’s woes got me thinking (during prayer, yes yes, plenty of Muslim minds wander during prayer). What if each hafiz had an earpiece to which they could keep up with their own recitation? There would be no chance of any of them stumbling, since, as hufaz, they know the Quran well enough to say recite it in a chorus. The obvious roadblock to this idea is that you’re not supposed to recite the Quran in a chorus during prayer, but it’s worth thinking about, especially as the demand for hufaz grows and they can’t all be expected to be spot-on every night.

The speakers cut out after the 5th rakat and there was chaos. Obviously everyone kept praying, but as soon as the 6th rakat was over, men leaped up to get batteries for the microphone. One man got up and scolded the congregation for not teaching children the proper adab of being in the masjid. Was he suggesting it was the kids’ fault that the microphone’s batteries died? I think he’s giving the kids too much credit for hatching this dastardly plan to mildly inconvenience the congregation.

Pandemonium also erupted in the women’s section, because since they couldn’t hear anything after the microphone cut out, they were stuck on the 5th rakat and never finished the 6th rakat. See, this is why I’m vehemently opposed to mosques which insist upon sequestering their women. Basically, if the Richmond mosque gave the women a visual aid, and put them close enough to the men’s section to hear what was going on without a microphone, their taraweeh wouldn’t have been ruined tonight. Accidents happen, but in other masajid, this accident would be completely avoidable.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Hatem Bazian in the crowd tonight. If you don’t know Hatem Bazian, he’s helped hundreds, if not thousands, of UC Berkeley students define and understand Islam in America. It’s a wonderful class and he’s a wonderful man for allowing me to be the reader for it for multiple years. I could insert a story about how I messed with the class as the reader, and how Hatem played along by giving me the time to do so, but this is neither the time nor the blog.

Men milling about after 8 rakats.  Felt bad for the neighbors; it was, after all, 10:30 PM on a Sunday.

Date Visited: August 7, 2011

Location:
Masjid Al-Rahman
110 36th St.
Richmond, CA 94805

Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Good, very sonorous

Size of congregation: ~100

Capacity of center: ~100

Parking: Street

Mihrab: No

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Not enough by a longshot

Building: A building located in a residential neighborhood but close to one of Richmond’s main thoroughfares.

Friendliness towards women: Medium, really not happy that their taraweeh was disrupted

Friendliness of congregation: High

Masjid An-Noor (Richmond)

Date Visited: July 31, 2011
 

Name: Masjid An-noor
Location: 1330 Cutting Blvd.

Richmond, CA 94801

Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Good

Size of congregation: < 15
 

Capacity of center: ~100
 

Parking: Street
 

Mihrab: Yes
 

Minbar: Yes
 

Shoe shelves: Yes
 

Building: A former Kaiser office.  Converted space located smack-dab in the middle of Richmond's industrial district
 

Friendliness towards women: Really no way to judge, I would assume high?
 

Friendliness of congregation: High.  It's safe to say most small congregations are friendly.

Richmond, California has a bad rap.  You ask the average Bay Area resident about Richmond and they'll likely tell you it's rated as one of the most dangerous cities in America, or maybe specifically that it's often in the top 10 in terms of murders per capita.  The thing is, they wouldn't be lying, because there is a lot of crime here.  What most people don't know is that there is another side to Richmond.

There is a Richmond with million-dollar views of the San Francisco and San Pablo Bays.  There is a Richmond home to SunPower (proud supporter of local public radio programming, apparently) and may well be home to the new second campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  There is a Richmond where there aren't iron bars on the windows and children can play in the street.

This mosque is in the part of Richmond everyone knows about.

I needed to talk about the "nice" part of Richmond because without telling you about it this post may well have furthered the stereotype that nothing good is happening here.  There are lots of great things happening here, but I don't want to completely ignore the realities of this city.  Yesterday, a mile away from this mosque, a man was shot in the head while driving, causing him to crash and killing his passenger.  These are unfortunately the stories which grab the headlines when it comes to Richmond, but I don't want this blog to add to the negativity.

The mosque, as I pointed out last year, is impossible to find unless you know what you’re looking for.  The only sign indicating that this industrial building is a mosque are two signs in squiggly, one at the corner of Cutting and 13^th and the other at the entrance to the mosque, which is guarded by incredibly daunting tall iron-wrought gates.  The entrance itself is a large, former emergency exit, further belying the building’s role in Richmond’s industrial past.  The street is moderately well-lit but deathly quiet; nobody has any business here at night and the only cars you’ll see on the street at night probably belong to the congregation.

When I arrived, there were 3 men sitting in the main prayer hall, enjoying a pitcher of tea.  They immediately offered me some, and peppered me with questions about my well-being, where I was from and where I lived now.  We bonded over the fact that the group was well-acquainted with the neighborhood of Point Richmond, my current home and blessed with one of the aforementioned million-dollar views.

A young man led Isha prayer, which made me glad.  Too often I’ve seen masajid rely on elderly imams whom they’ve flown in from distant places like the UK or South Africa.  The fact is now there is a burgeoning base of local young talent which Bay Area masajid should look to first before considering the cost of flying someone out and putting them up for a month.  My insider at Belmont tells me that’s what’s going on down there, and it’s an option my hometown mosque of MCA will have to weigh pretty soon as Sheikh Jibreel will have to retire at some point.

I left the mosque with my hands smelling like the perfume they’d sprayed on the carpet and satisfied with my start to this holy month, but a question nagged at me as I drove home.  Who funds this mosque?  The congregation was barely larger than handful and yet the hall was big enough to fit 100 people.  I know rent in Richmond is cheap, but it isn’t free, you know?

 The mosque entrance, with the sign written in squiggly (Arabic)

Islamic Center of West Contra Costa County

Date visited: September 2, 2010

Location: Richmond, CA
1110 36th St.
Richmond, 94804

Tag-team Taraweeh: No

Size of congregation: 30-40

Capacity of center: 200-250

Parking: Small parking lot, mostly street

Mihrab: No

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Plenty

Building: Relatively new mosque; it was built when I was young. It's in a pretty sketchy neighborhood; it's surrounded by an iron fence with thick padlocks at every gate.

Friendliness towards women: There were plenty of women there, and they were treated equally when it came to iftar time.

Friendliness of congregation: Very. Lots of food was passed around.

I don't know much about this place. I do remember coming here more than a few times as a child, but it had been more than ten years since I visited this place today. That would explain why everything seemed smaller than I remember it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a very nicely-sized center. And yes, it actually is a center, they have a kitchen and a few open spaces which double as classrooms. They walls are covered in decorations and the prayer space has a beautiful new carpet. It's clear that the congregation takes a lot of pride in its center.

I struck up a conversation with the dude next to me because he saw my Berkeley sweatshirt (no confusion about how someone knew I went to Berkeley tonight). I appreciate these conversations because it opens my eyes to how hard the folks up here really have it. It makes me thankful for all the things I do have, mostly my youth. I can get by on a low salary because I don't have any roots or anyone to support. I'm meeting guys who are struggling to make ends meet because they've been relegated to part-time jobs while supporting entire families. There's plenty of cases like that in the South Bay too, but I guess it took me relocating to a new neighborhood to become familiar with them.

This mosque is a Tablighi mosque. That said, I've realized, especially in Ramadan, the background of a mosque shouldn't impact my decision to stop by for prayer. All I do these days at these mosque is eat and pray...and love the fact that I still have the opp to check out a different mosque every night.

Masjid An-Noor

Date visited: August 29, 2010

Location: Richmond, CA
1330 Cutting Blvd.
Richmond 94801

Tag-team Taraweeh: Nope

Size of congregation: Small. < 30

Capacity of center: ~ 400

Parking: Street

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: None. Shoes ALL over the floor. I can't imagine how it looks during guma.

Building: A building in the middle of the warehouse district. A building in the middle of the warehouse district surround by a tall wrought iron fence with spikes on top. Welcome to Richmond, son.

Friendliness towards women: Women? What would women be doing here, there's no kitchen.

Friendliness of congregation: Extreme. Small congregation, w00t! One of the dudes went to Berkeley...he and I stared at each other for a little bit since we couldn't place where we'd seen each other.

I've relocated to Richmond and was without the interwebs for a bit. Apologies for the delay. However, now you can expect loads of posts about masajid in the heart in Oakland.

If you can't read Arabic, you're not finding this place. Well, I suppose you could look at the address painted on the wall, but my point is, the only sign for this place was in Arabic. That said, however, even if the newest convert got the urge to come to this place, I suppose all he'd have to do is look for the only place for miles with a sign in Arabic.

This place is massive. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so large, but as I entered I saw the sizeable prayer space in addition to a long hallway leading to other rooms. The bathroom was done up nicely too, which means this masjid has been operational for a long time. All in all, it's another one of those oases in a pretty rough neighborhood.

And man, it is rough because this place is imposing from the outside. If that iron gate's closed, you're shiz out of luck. Come during prayer time or don't come at all.