Ibrahim Khalilullah Islamic Center (Fremont, Alameda County, CA)

Muslims in the West have always faced a quandary when it comes to picking a location for their masjid.  Here in the Bay Area, my local mosque was always doing damage control with neighbors upset at being woken up at 11 PM and 5 AM by congregants heading to prayers in the summertime.  Picking a commercial location hurts local businesses, whose customers can't find parking on Fridays during jummah.  Light industrial?  It's a nightmare getting a permit for a mosque because of the kids.  Oh, to live in Pakistan, where you can squat on someone's land, turn it into a masjid and nobody can say nothin' because their grasp on the rule of law is tenuous at best.

This mosque is located in a commercial park, but to its advantage it shares the block with two other Muslim nonprofits: the Ta'leef Collective and the Averroes Institute.

The Ta'leef Collective is a nonprofit offshoot of Zaytuna Institute and is famous for being probably the least-judgmental Islamic institution in the Bay Area.  Anyone can show up as they are and they will be welcomed in the halls of Ta'leef.  Averroes is Islamic high school, one of the first of its kind in the Bay Area.  In any case, when you share a parking lot with two other Muslim organizations, you don't have to worry as much about parking causing any pains.  Also, when the neighbors are surrounded by 3 different Islamic organizations, they're bound to learn more about the religion.


What's absolutely stunning about this masjid is how quiet it is, given the congregation's size.  The men's room has a capacity of exactly 168, and I'd say it was a little under half-full tonight.  Despite that, it was an extremely serene place to pray taraweeh.  The children were remarkably well-disciplined and all of them old enough to know better were focused on their prayer.  A toddler did start squawking during taraweeh, but his needs were met very quickly and we returned to a space where you could here a pin drop.  If you're tired of the hustle-and-bustle of the larger mosques but still want a large-mosque feel, go here.

Hands down one of the prettiest mihrabs in the Bay Area.

Date Visited: July 28, 2012

Location:

43140 Osgood Drive
Fremont, CA 94539


Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Wonderful

Size of congregation: 80-100 total

Capacity of center: 250-ish

Parking: Off-street parking in the business park.  People probably park on the street during business hours because they share the lot with many other businesses.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Plenty

Building: A building in a nondescript business park.  You'll probably drive past it the first time you're looking for it since there's only one driveway leading to the buildings.

Friendliness towards women: Women had their own entrance and an equitable space in which to pray.

Friendliness of congregation: It's primarily an Afghan community, but I felt like everyone was welcome.

Berkeley Masjid (Berkeley, Alameda County, CA)

One of the problems of being a masjid in college-town is the transient Muslim population.  Broke students spend their limited resources on necessities: tuition, fees, hookah, rent and food.  They've got little to no money to support a nonprofit (the "for the price of one hookah, you can buy a brick for the masjid" fundraising campaign also fell flat).  This makes maintaining a mosque hard, and establishing one even harder.

Berkeley's had a noticeable Muslim population since the 1960s, but they were one of the few major religious groups in the city to not have a prayer space near campus.  For years, students have been busing it to local mosques, praying in rented spaces or creating fire hazards by praying in building hallways.

The times they are a-changin'.  UC Berkeley is now home to a meditation room on the fifth floor of the student union (gets a little awkward when Muslims are praying and the Satanists are getting their worship on).  Berkeley Masjid, after years of insufficient fundraising and other struggles, is finally open.

I have to give the Berkeley Masjid Foundation and the Berkeley MSA a lot of credit.  The building looks very nice.  Marble flooring?  Stone steps?  Wooden blinds?  Hardy but comfortable carpet?  Absolutely gorgeous.

The best part is they have systems in place to make sure it stays as sparkling as it was last night.  In the afternoon I observed volunteers, probably Berkeley students, mopping the restroom.  It's great to see young men humble enough to serve as sanitation engineers.  It's great for Stanford students to see their Berkeley peers mopping floors, I'm sure.

The Berkeley MSA hasn't changed too much.  The guys still have a bit of fun with each other.  As I was exiting the restroom, one young'un came out with me.  His young'un friends started giving him a hard time:

: "Did you wash your hands?"

: "He used the bathroom and didn't wash his hands!"

: "What are you, white?"

White people, the cat's out of the bag.  We Muslims don't think you wash your hands after using the bathroom.  Why do you think we never invite you to our homes and masjids?  Oh yeah, we also use "you're white" as an insult.

Kids, be more careful about what you say.  Someone might hear it and blog it.

No, but seriously, it's great to see how the Berkeley MSA students have become the custodians of this masjid.  May Allah reward them for being so dedicated to the care of one of His houses.  And may Allah reward me for telling the world how great the Berkeley MSA is.  Ameen.

Taraweeh here is bizarre.  They pray 8 rakats on weeknights and 20 rakats on weekends.  Obviously, this means that their goal is not to finish the Quran during taraweeh.  Regardless of how many rakats you pray, if your goal is to finish the Quran in 29 nights, you have to recite 1.034 juz a night.  Still, their hybrid model tells me that this masjid doesn't stick to one madhab or the other, an important quality in a university town which attracts all kinds of Muslims.

I needed a little help to make my final observation.  Back when I was a student, there was no tension between the hijabis and non-hijabis because one group covered and the other didn't.  Sure, there was drama (it's not an MSA without drama!) but it was never because of a hijab or lack thereof.  Nobody judged each other based on what kind of a Muslims they looked like.  

I had to see if that was still true, so I dispatched an agent to the women's section.  My cousin does not wear the hijab and was covering her hair with her sweatshirt's hood.  I'm happy to say she reported there wasn't any hostility or judgment from the women in attendance.  Good on you, Berkeley women, good on you.

Post-iftar wreckage.  Moochers of Berkeley, congregate here at sunset.  Moochers of Berkeley congregate here at sunset.  Moochers of Berkeley congregate here at sunset?  Moochers of Berkeley congregate here at sunset!

Medallion in the foyer.

The congregation was praying in the zone last night, as opposed to praying man-to-man.

Date Visited: July 27, 2012

Location:

2176 Derby Street

Berkeley, CA 94705

Tag-team taraweeh: No

Qirat: Very fast and beautiful.

Size of congregation: 40-50

Capacity of center: 250?  There's lot of spillover room, so I'm thinking even 1,000 is possible if all the square footage is used.

Parking: Street.  Luckily, this neighborhood isn't metered, and the two-hour limit expires by evening.

Mihrab: No

Minbar: No

Shoe shelves: Non-existent.  I had no idea of what to do with my shoes.  I didn't want to wear them in the bathroom because sneakers can cause the wet floors to get filthy.  However, I didn't want to wear the masjid's slippers because you have no idea of who's worn those before.  No masjid has successfully reconciled these two very valid concerns.

Building: Large two-story building located in a residential neighborhood about 6 blocks away from campus.

Friendliness towards women: Most of the congregants here are students.  Therefore, the facilities available to women are of the highest quality. If you don't feel comfortable here as a woman, there isn't anything wrong with the masjid, there's something wrong with you.

Friendliness of congregation: Student populations are generally very friendly and welcoming.

Islamic Center of the East Bay (Antioch, Contra Costa County, CA)

Growing up, I never considered Antioch to be part of the Bay Area.  It was a distant land, far away from the San Francisco or San Pablo Bays and near something called the Sacramento River Delta.  Chances are if you saw an ad for a gun show in the South Bay, it was being held in Antioch, or Oakley, or somewhere out there in the boonies.  Definitely home to a bunch of gun-and-religion clingers as far as I was considered.

It's unsurprising that I thought this.  Few people lived out here, and even fewer Muslims.  The mosque I visited tonight was established with the support of 10 families in the late 1990s.  Imagine, in a time when MCA in the Silicon Valley was hosting guma prayers of 2,000 people, this mosque barely had enough men to hold a guma of their own.

Since then, this region has experience exponential growth.  Drawn to the area by large and affordable housing, the Muslim population has grown very quickly.  In response to the population boom, the community established a sizable mosque in a former dentists' office.  Being a dentists' office, the dimensions of the space weren't quite conducive to holding a prayer area, but this community made it work, and thrived.

Then it all went up in flames.

The 5-0 refused to call it an act of terror or a hate crime because there wasn't conclusive evidence that it wasn't an accident or that the mosque was targeted because it was a mosque.  Luckily, despite that, the insurance paid out and the community was given the opportunity to build a proper mosque practically from the ground up.

And build a proper mosque they did.  Locals have affectionately nicknamed it Jean Grey because of how it rose from the ashes.  You can tell, however, that the alleged arson shook this community to the core.  Tall iron gates surround the building, and surveillance cameras cover every vulnerable spot around the mosque.  You would think you were in the roughest urban neighborhood if you saw the masjid from the outside.

From the inside, though, it's real purty-like and welcoming.  A splendid green carpet adorns the floor of the men's section, and the women's section had a gorgeous hardwood floor.  The bathrooms are pristine, and congregants take great care to not turn the floor into a Slip 'n Slide, something lacking in most of the mosques I've visited.

What impressed me most about this masjid was the youngling to uncle ratio.  There were a stunning number of young people in attendance given how small the community is.  If anything, this says a lot about the strength of the masjid's Sunday School program.  If these kids take their faith as seriously as they did their taraweeh tonight, this mosque is in good hands.

Big Brother-in-Islam is watching you.

Them Moslems is so patriotic they won a prize for it!

Men's prayer area, which doubles as a madrassa for kids on Sundays.

Date Visited: July 26, 2012

Location:
311 W. 18th Street
Antioch, CA 91234

Tag-team taraweeh: Nope

Qirat: Interesting.  Never heard recitation like it before.

Size of congregation: 70-80 people

Capacity of center: 100-200 total

Parking: Lot and street.  Folks tend to double-park in the lots so it's recommended to park on the street if you want to jet after 8 in the Desi-20 mosque.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Ample.  Indoor and outdoor shelves for spillover!

Building: A former dentists' office that was burned to the ground and then rebuilt by the community to suit its needs better.

Friendliness towards women: Very high.  Women are given an equitable and very decent place to pray.

Friendliness of congregation: High.  The diversity quotient here is off the charts and I'm confident they welcome all comers.

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.

Al-Tawhid Mosque (San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA)

Two years ago, when I first started assembling a list of mosques to visit, a friend of mine advised me to avoid this mosque.  If I visited it, he claimed, I'd be placed on a government list.  Well, I felt like I HAD to take a look, and it's a shame that it's taken so long.

I was flabbergasted by what I saw tonight.  Swarthy Semitic men wearing turbans and skullcaps were sitting on the floor, chatting in some foreign language or reading from books written in some unknown script.  I couldn't believe that this was going on in the middle of San Francisco, one of the most homogeneous in the world.  Welcome to Obama's America.

Clearly, I'm being sarcastic.  I saw nothing tonight to indicate the government should be using borrowed Chinese money to conduct surveillance here.  I give it the 30 Mosques seal of approval.

What I did notice about this masjid were the smells.  Scientists say the olfactory memories are some of the strongest humans develop.  Well, my nose helped me develop some great memories tonight.

The first thing which hit me as soon as I entered the masjid around Isha was the dinner the congregation had had earlier in the evening.  It smelled delicious, and it told me that this is a place where one can expect a proper iftar even on a weeknight.  The smaller mosques, given their limited resources, provide dates, but a full-blown dinner?  I can say with certainty that no masjid in the Bay Area will require you to bring your own date (haha).  Sorry if that's terribly cliche, but I'm a fan of DATEd material.

As I entered the prayer hall, I was hit with a medley of smells, which could be summed up in one word: man.  Tonight, the ventilation was turned off so we prayed taraweeh like the sahaba did: without the worldly comforts of Axe deodorant or Acqua Di Gio cologne (two of the more common smells at Desi mosques).  Felt like Arabia, I can tell you that.

This mosque has a rotation of imams to lead taraweeh, and they trade off after every four rakats.  Taraweeh here is the Arab-20, but I'm unsure about how many total imams lead taraweeh as I left after eight.  The third imam was just starting as I was leaving the building.  It's good to see multiple imams leading taraweeh, for many reasons, but most importantly so the imam has some backup in case he forgets the surahs he's supposed to be reciting.

Let the record show that this is a Yemeni mosque.  Trash Desis all you want, but at least we don't label our mosques as being "Desi mosques."  Mostly because we know that'd give the Arabs one more reason to hate us.

Date Visited: July 24, 2012

Location:
1227 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94109

Tag-team taraweeh: Yes

Qirat: The starter was the best of the night.  The reliever struggled a tad and was slower.

Size of congregation: 50-75 people

Capacity of center: 100 men, unknown female capacity

Parking: All street.  Welcome to San Francisco.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Ample, but I'm sure they get crammed during jummah

Building: Definitely looks smaller from the outside.  This facility is actually quite large, and I didn't have time to explore it tonight.  It is a true community center, and not just a prayer hall.

Friendliness towards women: Women are welcome here, but I can't tell you how welcome.  I didn't see any tonight, but I did hear children playing behind the wall somewhere.

Friendliness of congregation: Good people.  During the breaks they were tossing water into the crowd so we wouldn't get dehydrated.  Imagine feeling sweaty in San Francisco at night.  Yes, that's how warm it was tonight.

Musallah Darul Arqam (American Canyon, Napa County, CA)

I know what everyone's thinking, even the Bay Area natives.  Where the hell is American Canyon?

American Canyon is located on the border between suburban and rural Bay Area, just north of Vallejo and on the way to Napa.  It's an incredibly small city and, it not being located near a major interstate, is largely ignored by the vast majority of people here.

In the midst of this tiny community is an even tinier Muslim population.  I understand that there is a maximum of 20 Muslim families in the area.  If you're wondering why this small community would have their own little masjid, and not just merge with the Vallejo community, you have to ask yourself, wouldn't it be nice to have a neighborhood masjid instead of having to drive 10, 20 or even 30 miles to just pray one salat?

It is that philosophy which drove a gentleman to donate half his property to build a place for local Muslims to pray.  The gentleman lives in the house with his family, and has converted his stand-alone two-car garage into a mosque.  For a converted garage, it's remarkably well-developed and sophisticated.  The men's section and women's section were separated, and each had their own restroom.  They're currently working on expanding the back to add more space and wudu station.  You have to appreciate how much more space there is out here in rural America.  If you live in any of the urban or suburban cities you're a) lucky to have a garage and b) even luckier to have room to expand that garage.

The community does have very ambitious plans to build a proper masjid where the musallah is currently located.  Understandably, the project is moving along very slowly.  Makes sense, when you only have 15-20 families to rely on for donations, how quickly can you raise funds, anyways?

The small community, however, means that everyone knows each other, which gives it an edge over the big city congregations.  The expansion project may be moving along very slowly, but it's apparent to me that everyone recognizes the importance of having a proper masjid.  Also, given how expensive the Bay Area proper has gotten, I wouldn't be surprised if there's an influx of more Muslims who work in San Francisco but can't afford housing there.  It's good that they're planning a mosque that can handle that new population if it ever arrives.

Taraweeh was nice because there were so few people there.  This is an Arab-8 mosque, as opposed to a Desi-20, but the nice touch here is they rotate the imam schedule.  If you want to lead taraweeh here one night, you can sign up to take on that responsibility.  Nobody expects you to be a hafiz; tonight, the imam was using a Quran to guide himself through the prayer.  I have to admire this community's commitment to finishing the Quran by the end of Ramadan.  Smaller communities, I have seen, tend to take the easy route and complete 8 rakats as soon as possible.

I don't know if you'll ever have a chance to visit this musallah.  It really is out of the way; it's not located near any major interstates so you have to take a detour in order to swing by.  Also, once you're in American Canyon, you have to figure out which house it is off the highway.  I was a little intimidated by the lack of signage; out here, with rednecks around ever corner, you don't want to take a chance and knock on the wrong door.  Once you find the right place, however, they will make you feel welcome.

That tiny sign let me know that I was in the right place.  Keep in mind this building is about 30 yards from the border of the property and down a long driveway.  Before I saw the sign I approached with caution in case some redneck came out with his shotgun yelling at me to git off his property.

Date Visited: July 23, 2012

Location:
3853 1/2 Broadway Street (Highway 29)
American Canyon, CA 94503

Tag-team taraweeh: Not tonight, but I'm sure there's the option to

Qirat: Good

Size of congregation: 5-6 people

Capacity of center: 30

Parking: Plenty of parking on the property, but it is off-road, so make sure your car can handle it.

Mihrab: Yes

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Yes, but outdoors.  Left my flippy-floppies out there for maybe 2 hours and they were a little chilly when I slipped them back on.

Building: Converted two-car garage

Friendliness towards women: Women have an equitable space here.  The only downside is they close the doors to the women's section if there are any in attendance.  If you're not a fan of barriers, this isn't the mosque for you.

Friendliness of congregation: Very nice people.  Then again, the farther you get away from the cities, the more that holds true.

Jamil Islamic Center (Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, CA)

Disclaimer: this is a sufi mosque and the extent of my knowledge of sufism is what I gathered in a one semester course in college and a wild weekend in Konya, Turkey, resting place of Rumi.

There are many features in this musalla which distinguish it from the standard masjid, most noticeably the pictures of the saints on the wall.  This is generally considered to be a no-no in Islam because if you're hanging up pictures in a place of worship, you're skirting with shirk, which essentially boils down to glorifying beings other than God.  Of course, that's not how the sufis see it, but the concept of sainthood is a controversial one in Islam.

The other thing which will catch your eye is this puppy:

I don't mean to get all up in your bid'ahness, but why is there a coffin in your prayer area?

This is actually a pretty common sight in most of the sufi masjids I've been to, which admittedly isn't a lot.  First of all, there there's nothing in the coffin; the City of Palo Alto would I'm sure frown upon the housing of bodies in converted rug stores.  That said, this coffin is meant to represent the body of a saint, and I'm sure that body is displayed in a shrine somewhere in the Middle East, and that shrine is probably located in or near a masjid.

Empty coffins and saintly pictures aside, this is a standard masjid, and no, nobody was praying towards the saint, who was housed in the back of the room.  I arrived at the masjid 1 or 2 minutes before maghrib and I broke my fast with a very friendly gentleman who was the only one there at the time.  To date, it was the best iftar I've had this Ramadan.  How could you beat this?

Is that what the moon is supposed to look like on the fourth night of Ramadan?  Or is it the moon of the third night, given its size?

This is a great place to break your fast.  You can sit out on this second-floor balcony, surveying the 1% as they enjoy their 10-dollar burgers and other such overpriced food items.  On a good day you might catch a glimpse of Mark Zuckerberg ducking into Antonio's Nuthouse, although I hear he no longer frequents that establishment.  Given that it's summertime in Palo Alto and relatively far away from Stanford Junior University, it's not very crowded in the evening time these days.

Maghrib was nice and intimate, with a total of three worshipers.  I was told most of the congregation was at either MCA or Stanford getting their grub on at the free iftars tonight.

Palo Alto is about 60 miles away from my home, and given the fact that they were going to start prayers at 10:15, I did the responsible thing took my leave after maghrib to handle prayers a bit closer to home.  I'm not blessed with the opportunity to take a Kickstarter-funded vacation in order to do this project and so have to be wise with my time.  Apologies if you were looking forward to reading my biased account of taraweeh here.

Date Visited: July 22, 2012

Location:

427 South California Avenue

Palo Alto, CA 94306

Tag-team taraweeh: Honestly don't know

Qirat: N/A

Size of congregation: Maghrib time had only 3 people in attendance.  I don't imagine this place gets crowded.

Capacity of center: 20-30

Parking: Street parking, of which there is plenty.

Mihrab: No

Minbar: Yes

Shoe shelves: Yes.

Building: The second floor of what used to be a rug store.

Friendliness towards women: No women were in attendance at maghrib time, but sufi congregations tend to be more welcoming than the average masjid in this regard.

Friendliness of congregation: I've never met a sufi who wasn't friendly and hospitable.