Muslims in California’s fast-growing city of Rancho Cucamonga are celebrating this year’s Ramadan with a special joy as they finally get their long-awaited mosque.

“We have been waiting for this,” Salma Shah, a 62-year-old city resident, told Los Angeles Times on Monday, September 1.

“It’s our dream.”

For years, the growing Muslim community in the city squeezed themselves into an old stucco house, using its small rooms for prayer.

But with the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which starts Monday in North America, they will be able to hold their prayer in the newly-build mosque.

Over the weekend, construction workers were hurrying to polish the marble floors and lay the last roof tiles to finish the mosque in time for Ramadan.

Mosque leaders had worried they could not finish in time for Ramadan, but the city granted them a temporary occupancy permit.

The mosque, which has two minarets and a broad dome, will accommodate about 1,100 worshippers.

It is being built by the Islamic Center of Inland Empire, located in the heart of Rancho Cucamonga, at a cost of $2 million.

Timely   

Muslims in the city believe their new mosque came just in time.

“This is our holy month, so anything we want to do, we want to do this month,” said Tehseen Zafar, 54.

Ramadan, the ninth month on the Islamic lunar calendar, is a time for Muslims to get closer to God through prayer and good deeds.

During this holy month, adult Muslims, save the sick and those traveling, abstain during daylight hours from food, drink, smoking and sex between dawn and sunset.

The daily fast is broken with the iftar, after which Muslims join Tarawih, a special nightly prayers performed during Ramadan.

Many Muslim men also perform i`tikaf (spiritual retreat), spending the last 10 days of the month exclusively in the mosque.

For some Rancho Cucamonga Muslims, the new mosque will serve another cause, bringing the racially diverse city of 170,000 population together.

Dr. Shoaib Patail, one of the Islamic Center’s founders, said the mosque’s design purposefully incorporates traditional Eastern arches and Western cathedral ceilings.

He hopes the mosque can become a gathering place for the city as well as for the Muslim community.

“It glorifies the importance of our relationships, our community and our city,” Patail told the LA Times.

“It allows us to show the non-Muslim community we are a part of the community.”