BY JAWEED KALEEM
jkaleem@MiamiHerald.com

Posted on Thu, Sep. 13, 2007
S. Florida imams shape Islamic community
BY JAWEED KALEEM
Shafayat Mohamed has mastered the American way. He’s a magazine editor and former local radio host, and he has his own line of DVDs.
And he’s the leader of one of the largest mosques in South Florida.

Mohammed Zakaria Badat, a soft-spoken British transplant who favors the BBC for his news, came to the area two years ago with his wife and three young children. He’s quickly building a congregation at his Kendall mosque, tapping into the American psyche — though he hasn’t yet converted to CNN.

”I like America and the American people,” he said. But being new to the area, “you’re learning new things about the community every day.”

As imams, both are playing pivotal roles in shaping South Florida’s burgeoning Islamic community, which today begins its observance of Ramadan, the holiest month in Islam. For the next 30 days, most of the region’s approximately 70,000 Muslims will fast from sunrise to sunset and pray up to five times a day. They will read the Koran, the Islamic holy book, with the goal of finishing its 800-plus pages by the end of Ramadan.

”As the Muslim population grows, they’re both influential in the community,” said Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, director of the American Muslim Association of North America, which is based in Miami and in its 10th year. “They’re spiritual leaders, and people come to them for advice.”

While both men are devout Muslims, their experiences and styles are worlds, or more appropriately, continents apart.

Mohamed leads Darul Uloom Institute in Pembroke Pines, attracting 600 worshipers for Friday prayers, including Guyanese Americans, Sudanese immigrants and former Christians.

Almost an hour’s drive away, on the western edge of Kendall, Badat runs the Islamic School of Miami, a smaller center that attracts a few hundred for Friday prayers, including Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis.

FROM THE WEST

Mohamed, 48, of Pembroke Pines, was born and raised in the West, near Port of Spain in Trinidad. His first language was English — only later did he learn the intricate verses of classical Arabic. He speaks in a clipped Caribbean lilt and has called South Florida home since 1990.

He often skips the traditional Islamic style of loose white pants and flowing tunic to don gray flannels and a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the top.

“When I speak at Jummah [Friday prayer service], I’ll dress more traditionally, but otherwise I’ll wear what’s comfortable, as long as it’s modest and within the boundaries of Islam.”

Badat, on the other hand, often sports the traditional Indian shalwar kameez, or pant shirt, and keeps a fist-length beard.

Born in the Indian state of Gujarat, Badat, 37, moved with his family to the United Kingdom when he was 2. He has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from British universities. He has studied and taught Islam for much of his life and, before relocating, came to South Florida once or twice a year to speak at mosques.

”My friend who I studied with in the U.K. had been trying to convince me to join him in the U.S. He said they needed imams,” Badat said.

TAKES THE CHALLENGE

In 2003, while leading a mosque in Leicestershire, two hours north of London, Badat received calls from the board of the Kendall center, which was looking for a new imam. Eager for a challenge, he took the job and in 2005 moved with his wife and three kids: Mohammed, now 9, Khadija, 8, and Safiyyah, 6.

The move threw Badat out of his comfort zone.

”It’s a very different experience here,” he said.

Back home, almost all the Muslims were from South Asia; in South Florida, the Muslim community includes Hispanics, Africans and African Americans. It’s also a much smaller community. While there are about a dozen mosques in Miami-Dade County and another dozen in Broward County, Leicestershire has more than two dozen and is one-third of Miami-Dade’s size.

Badat says the change — from one Western nation to another — wasn’t too hard for his wife and kids, but it was important to find the right neighborhood to call home.

”In the U.K., we lived near downtown,” he said. But large American cities can have more crime than midsize British ones, ‘’so we moved to Kendall — there are families and it’s relatively safe.” The mosque is only a five-minute walk from home.

For Mohamed, it’s a five-minute car ride from his Miramar home to the Pembroke Pines mosque. Step inside and you will find copies of Al Hikmat, his monthly magazine, plus CDs and DVDs of his sermons (donations are accepted). Until recently, he hosted an Islamic PSP themes show on WAVS-AM (1170). It still can be heard on the Internet. At Darul Uloom, he not only performs sermons and leads prayers but is the principal for the institute’s preschool.

Though he can recite Koranic verses from memory, he grew up in a family that flirted with Christianity and Hinduism. His father sold alcohol at a bar — drinking is prohibited by Islam — and his mother kept a Christian name.

”I remember having a picture of Jesus in our house,” he said.

Only after meeting Muslim missionaries at 16 did Mohamed begin studying Islam. That could explain his open-minded view toward other religions, he says. The year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Inter-faith Council of Greater Hollywood chose Mohamed as the first Muslim to head the then mostly Jewish and Christian clergy group.

”He’s a unique leader who truly believes in creating interfaith understanding,” said Marjorie Aloni, a former council president who recruited Mohamed to the group in 2000.

While he distanced himself from radical Islam, calling himself a ”moderate to liberal Muslim,” Mohamed’s mosque came under heavy scrutiny from the media and federal officials after Sept. 11. Jose Padilla, convicted last month in federal court on three terrorism-related charges, frequently visited the center in the mid-1990s. More recently, the mosque was frequented by two Muslims sentenced to prison in 2002 for planning terrorist attacks in South Florida.

”Yes, we had a few bad apples around, but that doesn’t mean everyone is bad,” Mohamed said. “We attract all kinds of people here, and you may have people who have radical and extreme motives that come here to disguise themselves and fit into our moderate environment.”

In the past few years, Darul Uloom has attracted less negative attention and has grown to its 600-member base. He expects more than a thousand people for Eid ul-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan and should be around Oct. 13, depending on the new moon cycle.

Badat says he will see a similarly large crowd for the holiday. Newer to the United States, he routinely gets stopped at airports. Like Mohamed, he condemns radical Islam, but he doesn’t shy away from calling himself a fundamentalist — with a twist.

”It’s become a swear word. Every Muslim is a fundamentalist, as in your fundamental beliefs are in the oneness of Allah. That’s all,” he said.

Over the next month, those fundamentals will be revisited. Ramadan is a time for no-frills Islam, where the focus is on Allah and the well-being of one’s community, the imams say.

”I look at Ramadan as an opportunity of forgiveness and purification, a time to develop piety, discipline and self-control,” Mohamed said.

”It’s a time to be close with your family, to help the poor, and to thank Allah for putting you here on this earth,” Badat added.

In the spirit of Islam, the two are imparting their knowledge to a younger generation.

Mohamed, as the principal of the mosque’s preschool, regularly teaches students.

Badat conducts weekly Islamic classes for 20 boys, reciting the Koran in Arabic and lecturing on the hadith, or pious traditions of the Prophet Mohammed.

In a room next door, his wife Fatima holds classes with girls.

Yusuf Sulaiman, 10, a home-schooler, is such a student. By age 9, he finished the holy book in Arabic, and by the time he’s 13 he hopes to be a hafiz, one who has memorized the Koran.

After that, “I want to become an imam myself.”
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