CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA // The oldest standing mosque in the US is not an imposing building. It lies in a quiet residential neighbourhood just north of downtown Cedar Rapids.
The wooden building with its little green dome is on the National Registrar of Historic Places. But what is considered the Mother Mosque of America, built in 1934, is more than a historical curiosity: it is testament to the vitality of one of the oldest Muslim communities in the US, one rooted in Iowa’s second-largest city, which has a population of about 127,000.
With American Muslims under more scrutiny since the September 11 attacks, perhaps the mosque’s real significance today is not its history but its location, said Albert Aossey, co-founder of the Midwest Islamic Association.
“Most people don’t think of Muslims in the heartland. But this is where they first came looking for a better life.”
Abbas Habhab blazed the trail. The young man from Kfarhouna, then Greater Syria, in 1888, became the first documented Muslim in Iowa, and over the next seven years he brought his three brothers, Musa, Yousef and Ali.
Lured by the promise of land – under the Homestead Act of 1862, new immigrants could secure 160 acres of land for a nominal fee if they fulfilled certain requirements for five years, including growing crops and building dwellings – the brothers started as farm hands, peddlers and at whatever else work they could find. They worked hard and long, said Paul Habhab, 41, Musa’s grandson. They were “hard men”, he said.
Two generations later, Mr Habhab is managing director of Islamic Services of America (Isa), which was founded by his father, also Paul, in 1975. Isa is one of a handful of American companies that provides internationally recognised halal certification for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, a US$2.3 billion (Dh8.4bn) global industry.
Together with another Cedar Rapids company, Midamar – which was founded by Albert Aossey’s younger brother, Bill, and is America’s largest distributor of halal food – Isa has given the Muslim community in Cedar Rapids a global reach that belies its humble beginnings.
