Somalis building West Side mosque
By Meredith Heagney
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The two-story, 30,000-square-foot Abubakar Asiddiq Islamic Center will have a prayer hall, classrooms and a room where bodies are prepared for burial.
Right now, their prayer hall is a former sports bar.
But soon, Somali Muslims on the West Side will have a new, $2.5 million mosque for worship.
They gathered yesterday under white tents on a vacant field for a groundbreaking ceremony at the northwest corner of Sullivant Avenue and Industrial Mile Road in Prairie Township.
For five years, members of the Abubakar Asiddiq Islamic Center have met inside an old strip mall at the corner of Sullivant and Demorest Road
The center pays $2,500 a month for rent plus utilities, said Abukar Osman, a member of the construction committee and the board of trustees.
Each Friday, as many as 1,500 people attend one of two prayer services at the center, which can accommodate about 800.
The new mosque can accommodate up to 1,700.
"It gives you the feeling that you are in a real mosque instead of some strip-mall building," Osman said. "It reminds us like the mosques that we used to use back home."
Community members have raised about $400,000 to build the mosque. The 9.7-acre property cost them $300,000.
The property is surrounded by apartment buildings populated predominantly by Somalis, Osman said.
The Somali population on the West Side has grown rapidly in the past five years, said Abukar Arman, a Somali and the president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Columbus. The North Side already is home to several predominantly Somali mosques.
The mosque won't be exclusively for Somalis but will work to help them with problems common to the population, Osman said, such as English-language training.
After the mosque is completed by May, the plan is to build an adjacent community center, Osman said.
Plans for the two-story, 30,000-square-foot mosque include a prayer hall, eight classrooms and a room where bodies can be washed and prepared for burial.
The mosque was designed by local Somali architect Yusuf Abucar, who attended the groundbreaking.
Members who attended yesterday said they are excited about the future.
"People have been dreaming of this for a long time," said Hanan Said, 15, who was born in Somalia.
mheagney@dispatch.com
