Many early Muslim communities did not have enough funds or people to establish a mosque; they met in private homes, renting out halls for holidays, and founded social organizations which were intended to preserve both their ethnic and religious heritage. The first documented communal prayer of Muslims in America was in Ross, North Dakota, in 1900. By the 1920s, small communities across the United States were gathering for prayers and forming the first Islamic Associations. One of the first groups formed was a Muslim charitable organization, the Red Crescent Society in Detroit. Other early associations of Muslims included South Asians in Sacramento, Bosnians in Chicago, Turko-Tatars in New York, and small immigrant communities from Syria-Lebanon in Detroit, Michigan, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. With the First World War, the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Great Depression, Muslim immigration began to slow. While there was a brief upsurge in immigration between the two World Wars, racially biased immigration laws severely restricted the growth of many early Muslim communities.A look at immigration laws.
The first known American mosques were established in Biddeford, Maine, in 1915; in Ross, North Dakota, in 1920; in Highland Park, Michigan, in 1923; and in Michigan City, Indiana, in 1925. Declining immigration and rising assimilation eventually caused most of these mosques to close. In 1934, the building now known as “the Mother Mosque of America” was established by a Syrian-Lebanese community in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Fundraising for the mosque included community dinners and appeals to other Muslim communities scattered throughout the U.S., such as Chicago, Toledo, and Detroit. This simple structure, nestled in America’s heartland, is the oldest purpose-built mosque that is still in use today.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Early American Mosques
The Pluralism Project of Harvard University reports: