As Islamophobia remains steady, Long Island mosques stay involved with local community

By Priya Shahi & Joshua Spitz

Growing up on Long Island, Imam Mehdad Islam recounts his experience being fairly well, except he still remembers a threatening feeling he once felt at a halal restaurant next to the mall in Smith Haven, Long Island.

“He was armed. He made myself, my wife and my mother in law feel really uncomfortable,” Mehdad Islam said. “He was talking to someone in code language trying to cause problems or cause harm. We felt threatened and we felt scared.”

Now, Imam Mehdad Islam, Head of Education and Youth Group at the Islamic Center of Mastic Shirley, is sitting next to St. Joseph’s College professor, Thomas Petriano. It is March 29, and four students are in attendance with the St. Joseph’s College professor on their yearly college trip to the mosque.

“I believe it’s especially important for [my students] to come to Friday afternoon prayers to experience it for themselves,” Thomas Petriano, professor and chair of religious studies at St. Joseph’s College, said. “We’re always welcomed here by the community and students recognize and appreciate that.”

Other mosques on Long Island, like the one in Shirley, are welcoming others in their efforts to educate them about Islam. On March 18, forty students from Westbury Middle School visited The Islamic Center of Long Island (ICLU) in Westbury, New York in an attempt to start a relationship between the school community and the Muslim community.

“During these times when Islamophobia is a real and ever-growing threat, we must tear down walls by seeking to establish meaningful relationships with one another,” Daniel Chavez, teacher at Westbury Middle School, said. “Before our visit, [one student] viewed the mosque as a scary place, but after the visit, she realized that there was nothing for her to fear.”

Of the 15 mosques in Suffolk County, nearly 10 of them have events on their calendars for this moth that include educating the community about Islam, holding basketball tournaments, and reaching out to nearby colleges and middle schools to make connections.

“Middle school and high school were probably the peak of discrimination for me,” Ahmed Galal, an Egyptian Muslim who grew up in Dix Hills, New York, said. “And that’s not to say that I still do not experience these things in my life today.”

Since Trump, islamophobic acts have risen including a competition to pull hijabs off women’s heads on Long Island. This January, a man allegedly spat on a Muslim woman wearing a hijab on Dutch Kills street. Following the New Zealand attacks, there is an increase in police presence outside of Long Island mosques for security.

“I was also blown away being outside looking at the police cruiser standing guard,” Chavez said, as he compared it to the Roman Catholic Church where he worships and where he has never seen police.

Two days after the New Zealand attack, the ICLU youth program which consists of mostly middle schoolers and high schoolers, sat together, discussed and navigated their feelings with Fawzia Syed, an older youth member.

“They have to understand first how to deal with their feelings before we start to actively approach working on things,” Syed said. “So it’s not complete anger, but more productive.”

During their Sunday class on the week of the attack, a group of moms and their kids from Roseland, a predominant jewish and catholic neighborhood in New Jersey, visited the mosque on their own accord to comfort youth members with flowers and signs.

“It was really touching,” Syed said.                

Syed is still in touch with one of the moms as they are planning to start an interfaith program in the mosque, which will come to fruition in the near future. Westbury Middle School is also looking to plan more visits to the Islamic Center.

“We are hopeful that this is the first step in establishing a meaningful relationship between our school community and our Muslim neighbors,” Chavez said.