It is, when it comes down to it, an ordinary church in suburbia. The cars in the lot are the predictable amalgam of SUVs and up-market sedans. The social hall features two giant American flags, and in the back of the sanctuary, some fidgety youngster has left behind her book of Mother Goose rhymes.
The bookshelf at one side of the sanctuary tells the rest of the story. Just above a volume called "Meet Mr. Snuffle-upagus" rests the congregational copy of "What to Do if You're Stopped By the Police, the FBI, the INS or the Customs Service."
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HOMEFRONT
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette brings you "Homefront," a feature by staff writer Dennis B. Roddy that appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. "Homefront" will examine the continuing ways people have been affected by the Sept. 11 terror attacks. | | |
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Most elders of a congregation worry about the kids falling away from the faith. Safdar Chaudhary worries about the feds turning up at his home with questions he can't answer satisfactorily.
Put aside the fact that what most Americans know about Chaudhary's religion is that members claiming adherence to it flew planes into crowded buildings, and the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Monroeville is indistinguishable from the Christian church up the road or the synagogue a few hundred yards farther up.
The nexus between religion and politics is shaped by economics. Chaudhary, a Pakistan-born psychiatrist, drives a BMW, lives comfortably, will send his two sons to college and reads a far different Koran than Mullah Omar.
"You can use a knife to cut bread. You can use a knife to kill somebody," he says. His knives cut bread. His Koran preaches peace and learning.
"You and I would not follow our religion if it did not reinforce that," he says. To understand Islam, he says, is to understand the strain between those who see religion as adaptable to all cultures and times and those who fear the slightest deviation from text is an attempt to change an eternal and immutable truth.
Chaudhary specializes in treating people with addictions. When a Muslim alcoholic turns up, he tries to wean him away from his addiction into sobriety.
"Osama bin Laden might see the same guy and say, 'Go get him, because he must be punished right away for his deeds,'" says Chaudhary.
Likewise, Chaudhary knows that while strict Islamic law precludes the practice of dating, the young men and women in his congregation are first-generation Americans. They will make their own calls, and Islam will be their religion, too.
Chaudhary is 44. He came to America from Lahore, Pakistan, in 1984 and became a citizen five years later. His children were born here. His views are, in many ways, a lesson in how religions adapt to their cultures and if the cultures return the favor, all goes well.
The Muslim Center has roughly 140 families from a dozen or more countries: Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are all represented. Over there, the norms and customs are set.
"Here, we are still establishing them," Chaudhary says. Evidence of this can be found in competing pamphlets on a table at the mosque entrance. Members of the congregation are arguing about whether prayer times -- especially the emergence of the first crescent moon of Ramadan -- must be done solely by visual sighting or mathematical calculation. Muslims specialize in both.
Similarly, the times of daily prayer, all guided by phases of the heavens, are posted out front: Fajr, Shurak, Zhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Ishaa.
Something stands out in this measuring of the day by time of prayer. A millennium before, Christian society measured its day by Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline.
Each side has changed with time.
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