HISTORY
The Muslim Center Mosque was incorporated in January 1985 as a Mosque dedicated to the pure worship of Allah and to the inclusion of Muslims of all races, cultures, and ethnic groups. We were a Mosque that has an aggressive outreach ministry designed to interact and cooperate with members of non-muslim community for the betterment of the whole society which we all share.
At the Muslim center, we identify with the leadership of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the son of the late leaders, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Imam W. D. Muhammed is credited with turning an entire national of Muslim’s toward the pure teaching of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) to whom the Holy Qur’an was revealed over 1,400 years ago.
Our aim as Muslim is to “Remake the World”. We want to remake the world from the decadent state it is now in. We want to remove negative images of nudity, vulgarity, ignorance, and devilish behavior from our society- and particularity from our youth.
To this end we wish to work with Christians, Jews, an other religions, as well as people of good will, putting our common God first, above us all, to collectively stamp out the devil, who is the avowed enemy of all mankind.
Imam Khalil
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Imam Abdullah El-Amin
Co-Founder of The Muslim Center Mosque and Community Center
Imam WD Mohammed
October 30, 1933 - September 9, 2008
The Muslim American Spokesman for Human Salvation
Imam Warith Deen Mohammed lead the largest community of Muslims in the United States of America. Imam Mohammed’s astute leadership, profound social commentary on major issues, piercing scriptural insight into the Bible, Torah and Quran and his unique ability to apply scriptural interpretation to social issues have brought him numerous awards and high honors. He was a man of vision who performed many historical “firsts‟ and who has a legacy that continues until today.
Born Wallace D. Mohammed (1933-2008) he was the seventh child of Elijah and Clara Muhammad builders of the Nation of Islam (1932-1975). Upon the passing of his father in 1975, he was voted leader of the Nation of Islam and immediately began to bring members of that community to the proper worship of God. He praised his father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, for the good he did for forty years in raising the consciousness of the Black man and woman in America; equipping them with love for themselves and courage to do for themselves. He said “That which is consistent with the Qur’an we will keep, and that which is not, we will let go.” At the same time he addressed the psychological and social damage the Caucasian image of God imposed on African Americans as well as Caucasians for millennia. Within a span of ten years he had transformed the former followers of his father from the worship of God as a man to the universal religion of Al-Islam contained in the Qur’an and the life of the Holy Prophet Mohammed (prayers and peace be upon him). This made him singularly responsible for what many observers consider a “modern day miracle” – the largest conversion to Al-Islam in the world in the twentieth-century. In 1977, he was responsible for leading the largest delegation of Muslim Americans in history to Hajj, the Pilgrimage to Mecca.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed introduced the Qur’an as the verifiable authority that human identity comes from God and human beings were created in excellence. This was the basis for his initiation of CRAID, (The Committee to Remove All Racial Images of Divine) in 1978. CRAID energized significant dialogue among Christians and Muslims around the topic of the effects of racial images in worship. This dialogue resulted in the attenuation of inferiority among African Americans and the removal of the Caucasian image of God from numerous church premises.
Recognized as one of the most significant religious leaders of the twentieth-century, Imam W. Deen Mohammed served as leader of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1995. In March of the same year he was the keynote speaker at the Muslim-Jewish Convocation in Glencoe, IL and visited Israel and Jordan in 1999. His relationship with the Focolare Movement of the Catholic Church and Lady Chiara Lubrich is unprecedented. He is the only African American and Muslim to have spoken from the pulpit of the Vatican – addressing over one hundred thousand – at the invitation of Pope John Paul II, in 1999. His tributes include Signatory to the Williamsburg Charter Foundation “First Liberty” Reaffirmation Ceremony for the Freedom of Religion, June 25, 1988; the Cup of Compassion Award from Hartford Seminary; Honorary Doctorate Degrees and numerous other prestigious awards. His portrait, commissioned by Morehouse College, hangs in the MLK, Jr. International Chapel with President Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Dalai Lama. He was awarded the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award and inducted into the MLK, Jr. International Board of Preachers.
His emphasis on the Revival of Religion included the Muslim world which in 1975 was dormant, mired in global polemical issues and not living up to the historical excellence of the traditions of Prophet Mohammed (ppbuh). As such, Imam Mohammed refused to align the new community of Muslims in America with any foreign government but said, “We only support the good they do”. He rejected the language of Orientalists, such as the term orthodox Islam, and avoided sectarian labels of Sunni and Shia preferring to define his followers as seeking to demonstrate the uswaah (character) of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, (ppbuh). As a special guest of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) in Tehran 1997, he worked to erase distinctions between those called Sunni and Shia and reminded them that those descriptions did not exist during the life of Mohammed, the Prophet (ppbuh).
