Mourning, Solidarity Mark Mosque Vigil

With Turkish and American flags waving side by side, hundreds gathered outside the Diyanet Mosque on Middletown Avenue Thursday evening for a prayer vigil and collective demonstration of interfaith solidarity four days after someone intentionally set the Islamic place of worship on fire. 

The rally was organized by Fahd Syed of the Muslim Coalition of Connecticut and a host of other local faith groups. It brought together rabbis, imams, priests, Turkish diplomats, local and state politicians, and scores of other New Haveners, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to express in one voice a communal anguish that a local place of worship had become victim to an apparent arson. And during Ramadan, nonetheless, one of the holiest periods of the Muslim calendar.

Speaker after speaker referenced recent hate-filled fatal attacks at mosques in New Zealand, churches in Sri Lanka, and synagogues in Pittsburgh and in California.

“I wish I could say I was surprised by what took place on Sunday,” said Downtown Alder Hacibey Catalbasoglu (pictured), who is Turkish American and the sole Muslim on the Board of Alders. ​“But I’m not. Muslim Americans have been marginalized in the U.S. for as long as I can remember.”

Along with reflections on the vulnerability of Muslims and other religious minorities, speakers remarked on the uplifting power of people of different backgrounds standing side by side with one another, pledging support to a common brotherhood and common sisterhood.

“This is the only way that we’re going to stop this hate,” said Saifuddin Hasaan (pictured above), the assistant imam of George Street’s Masjid al Islam. ​“We have to understand we are one human family.”

“I’m African American,” he continued. ​“I’ve been victimized by this my entire life. Now I’m being victimized again as a Muslim, and it’s time for it to stop. So we’ve got all wake up, regardless of where we come from, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, African American, white, black, all of us. Come together against this because there’s more good in this world that there is hatred.”

Bonita Grubbs, the executive director of Christian Community Action, said she lives in the neighborhood and could see the smoke from Sunday’s fire through her window. She walked to the mosque that night, just as she did Thursday afternoon, and thought of how this it now joins an unfortunate club of other houses of worship throughout the world that have also been attacked.

“It’s important to stand at a time of tragedy,” she said. ​“I stand with you, and I will be back.”

Herb Brockman, retired rabbi of Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden, called from the podium for over a dozen faith leaders from different religions who participate in a regular interfaith community circle to stand behind him and in front of the damaged mosque.

“The mosque today is in each one of us,” he said. ​“We are the mosque. We are the house that God is visiting.”

And Omer Bajwa Yale’s Islamic chaplain, recalled how he had been teaching an English class at Diyanet just the night before the fire, and had visited the mosque for iftar, the ceremonial breaking of the fast that takes place every sundown during Ramadan. He and his wife and his best friends put together a crowd-funding page for the mosque the day after the fire to help the congregants defray whatever rebuilding costs aren’t covered by insurance.

“In the last 72 hours,” he said, ​“from Monday evening until now, we’ve reached almost $150,000” in donations. That, he said, will not just help rebuild the mosque, but definitively shows that people from throughout the world feel a collective hurt whenever a mosque is attacked, and want to show their support in whatever way they can.

“We’re just getting a lot of support from all over the world,” the congregation’s President Haydar Elevulu said before the vigil. ​“From everybody. Christians, Jews, Muslims. All neighbors have shown support.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full prayer vigil.