Barely visible among the high-rise apartment buildings and cocktail lounges, a battered steel door in Manhattan’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood leads to a basement jammed with barefoot men praying on their lunch break.
The makeshift mosque is a far cry from the 13-story proposed Cordoba House, the so-called planned “Ground Zero mosque” that’s two blocks closer to the busy construction site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
And the leaders of Masjid Manhattan want to keep it that way.
“We are not involved with that other group,” said Imam Mustafa Elazabawy, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard above the din of an air conditioner unit, but not to disturb the Arabic recitations.
“We have been here for 30 years, in this neighborhood. Many Muslims also died over there, on 9/11.”
Read it all.
RNS: Quietly, another mosque operates in shadow of Ground Zero
Barely visible among the high-rise apartment buildings and cocktail lounges, a battered steel door in Manhattan’s trendy Tribeca neighborhood leads to a basement jammed with barefoot men praying on their lunch break.
The makeshift mosque is a far cry from the 13-story proposed Cordoba House, the so-called planned “Ground Zero mosque” that’s two blocks closer to the busy construction site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
And the leaders of Masjid Manhattan want to keep it that way.
“We are not involved with that other group,” said Imam Mustafa Elazabawy, raising his voice just loud enough to be heard above the din of an air conditioner unit, but not to disturb the Arabic recitations.
“We have been here for 30 years, in this neighborhood. Many Muslims also died over there, on 9/11.”
Read it all.