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Grand Opening of Recent ICRM Building
T
he grand opening of the
Islamic Center took place on
January 20th, 2012. Working
with Muslim Student Association (MSA),
the ICRM committees and the members
invited all friends and families of Rolla and
the neighboring cities to attend the grand
opening. Guests were welcomed by offering
them a cup of Middle Eastern and
Turkish coffee and dates. Gifts baskets were
also distributed to the guests. MSA members
offered tours to the building. Question
sand answer and social gathering were also
Anan Takhrori
provided in addition to lunch and desert.
Over 400 people attended the event including
the Mayor of Rolla. Also, students from
the Missouri S&T campus including Greek
Houses and other clubs and organizations,
campus staff, Rolla business employees, and
the construction crew were also glad to get
a chance to join everyone in celebrating the
grand opening.
The purpose of the grand opening was to
invite the Rolla community to learn more
about the new center where five daily
prayers are offered in addition to Sunday
school and Arabic classes for kids and
non-Arabic speakers. In addition to learning
about the building, the guests had a
chance to watch a documentary about the
construction process and the challenges
faced during the years of hard work. Movies
about Islam, Muslim countries, and Muslims
around the world in general were played
in the classrooms. Guests had a chance to
ask questions and get to know the Muslim
Community of Rolla and their Muslim
neighbors.
Interview with Dr. Salah Taqieddin
By: Tarique Ahmad
One of the founding members of the Rolla Masjid is Salah Taqieddin,
so to learn more about him and the founding of this masjid we
conducted an interview with him. A summary of that interview is
attached below.
Dr. Salah Taqieddin was born in Jordan in 1944. During his time in
Jordan he finished a mining engineering degree and worked with
a large mining company in Jordan. While working he was able to
gain a scholarship to go back to school and gain his master’s degree.
As he was completing his master’s program he saw an ad to come
to the Colorado School of Mines to get a PhD through Yaramouk
University. He pursued his PhD there until he his advisor unfortunately
passed away, which lead him to search for a new advisor and
ultimately led him to Rolla, MO and the University of Missouri Rolla.
He arrived here in 1979, just a few days before Eid al-Adha and at
that time there were only ten or so Muslim students. Since it was
so close to Eid he and the other students asked the foreign student
advisor for help finding a place to make Eid prayer. The advisor was
able to find them a church that allowed them to make Eid Salaah.
As some more time passed they gained a Muslim student advisor,
Ibarahim Adawi, which pushed them to find a place that they could
make salah. This was when one of the students suggested renting
a one bedroom house and using it as a mosque. They were able to
find such a house and began to hold jummah prayers there until
they were asked to leave by the landlord. At this point they began
to go to a friend’s home and hold salah there, marking the end of
1979. In 1980 Dr. Salah graduated and returned to went back to
Jordan until the summer when he returned as a visiting professor.
As a visiting professor he was given a guest room in a guest house
with a lot of vacant rooms at the time, so he would invite the other
Muslims during Ramadan to come and join him. After that Ramadan
he returned to Jordan again. When he was leaving for Jordan the
Muslim Student Association was forming with Omur Tag as their
advisor. He didn’t have much contact with Rolla again until two or
three years later. He had heard that a couple of Muslim brothers had
bought a home with the intentions of turning it into a mosque and
had started praying there.
Dr. Salah returned to Rolla in 2006 as a visiting professor in Civil
Engineering. When he arrived he was astonished to see that the
Muslim population had grown from 10 to almost 60 with a small
home where they all prayed. The growing community was becoming
too big for the house so they decided to build a new mosque
in the same location as the old one. This lead to the creation of the
construction committee that consisted of Dr. Salah, Dr. Assad Ullah
and his wife, Dr. Abdul Jalel bil Arabi, Dr. Fethi Fenish, Dr. Chaudry,
and Dr. Walid Assadi with Adul Aziz as their elected manager. They
would meet every Saturday on the upper floor of the old mosque to
discuss the building of the new mosque.
Continued in Page 11
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