Mosques Team Up For Prayer Service, Festival

by Thomas Breen

Hundreds of Muslims from faith communities across Greater New Haven gathered at Yale’s Payne Whitney Gym — and then celebrated together in Edgewood Park — to mark one of the holiest days of the Islamic calendar.

The prayer service at Payne Whitney took place last Wednesday, May 27, for Eid al-Adha, a holiday that commemorates the biblical patriarch Abraham’s obedience to God. An Eid Festival then took place on Friday, May 29, in Edgewood Park near Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.

Wednesday’s prayer service and Friday’s festival came together thanks to a collaboration among a number of different mosques and Islamic faith institutions in the area, including George Street’s Masjid al-Islam, Dixwell Avenue’s Abdul Majid Karim Hasan Islamic Center (AMKHIC), the West Haven Islamic Center, Ansonia’s Masjid Samiya, Stratford’s Esa ibn Maryam, and the Yale Muslim Life Program.

“This was the first collective” effort by this particular group of faith communities, said Abdul Lateef-Edge, the amir — or president — of Masjid al-Islam and one of the lead organizers of the two events. “The Southern Connecticut Islamic community came together.”

Yale Director of Muslim Life Omer Bajwa led the prayer service at Payne Whitney on Wednesday morning. He and Edge said that hundreds of people attended.

“It was beautiful,” said AMKHIC Imam Saladin A. Hassan. “All those different nationalities coming together — Egyptian, Afghan, African American — under one roof for the same purpose, the same divine purpose.”

“Our community has grown dramatically in my time here,” said Bajwa, who has work in Yale’s Chaplain’s Office for nearly 19 years. “I want to see myself as a bridge builder” between Islamic communities inside and outside the university. That’s why he said yes when Edge, among other event organizers, approached him and asked if the different mosques could mark Eid together at Payne Whitney, where Bajwa has been leading Eid services for Yale community members for “the last few years.”

This was “a fantastic opportunity to do community building.”

Bajwa said that Eid al-Adha comes at the end of the Islamic calendar year, and coincides with the global Muslim pilgrimage known as the Hajj. The holiday itself focuses on the biblical narrative of Abraham, or Ibrahim. It is a story “about sacrifice and struggle and trust in God and that idea of his faithfulness.”

Half the world is spiritually connected to Abraham, Bajwa said, given the importance of his story to Muslims, Christians, and Jews. He said Eid al-Adha is a reminder of Abraham’s “patience, gratitude, faithfulness, trust in God, and sacrifices,” especially his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac upon God’s command.

Hassan, the AMKHIC leader, said that the story is a reminder to him to reflect on “how many things that we hold onto that are unnecessary.” If Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own son upon God’s command, think about all that we hold onto that is so much less important and that we nevertheless allow to “divide and tear apart this human family.”

Friday’s festival in the park, meanwhile, saw the organizing groups bring out a petting zoo, horses for kids to ride, bouncy houses, and lots of grilling. “The community is diverse,” Edge said; the food being cooked on the park’s grills included everything from jerk chicken to curried goat to lamb shish kabab to hot dogs and hamburgers.

“We have a passage in our book, in the Quran, that says: Hold onto the rope of this faith together, in unity,” Edge said. Friday’s festival was a demonstration of exactly that. “It was a call to remind people to come back, to bringing families together and bringing communities together.”

Masjid al-Islam Secretary Tihara Hopkins said the same. “Just to see the different communities come out together was an amazing experience to have,” she said.

Edge expressed gratitude to all of the different groups that helped make last week’s celebration happen.

“We want to bring people together,” he said. “Period.”