Muslim community invites Fort Collins to new mosque and Islamic Center

Feb. 25, 2014   |  

Written by

Sarah Jane Kyle

Islamic Center open house

Where: Islamic Center of Fort Collins, 925 W. Lake St.

Islamic Center of Fort Collins[Muslim Brotherhood] will host an open house Saturday to introduce a new building and reintroduce the area’s Muslim community.

The 18,000-square-foot Turkish-style mosque and Islamic Center, 925 W. Lake St., opened in late 2013 as a beacon of hope [for what?] and visibility to the city’s roughly 2,000-strong Muslim community. Muslims have been in Fort Collins since 1952, according to the Center’s website. The first mosque was established in March 1980.

Saturday’s festivities begin at 10 a.m. and will allow people to tour the facility – which includes hand-woven carpet from the Middle East, gender-specific wudu rooms for washing hands, feet and face before prayers [and no mention of the gender-specific prayer rooms?], and traditional mihrab[is the qibla (the direction of the Ka’aba) niche in the wall that’s closet to Mecca to which they pray. I’ve no idea what the rest of this sentence refers to] & indicates to echo prayers and sermons throughout the building, – and participate in [the entirely misnamed] interfaith dialog and [one-way] cultural exchange.

The Islamic Center’s previous building was just more than 2,500 square feet without many external identifying features at its Peterson Street location. The new building features a 70-foot minaret and 50-foot dome [supremacy rising! How tall is the tallest church spire?], both topped with crescent moons. [Allah, the moon god’s standard.]

“To have such a building as this is just really unimaginable,” said Islamic Center member Elizabeth Siddique, 80. Siddique has been in Fort Collins since 1964 and said her family was one of the first Muslim families to stay in the area permanently. “Not only because it’s beautiful, but because it fills such a need in our community.” Siddique hopes Saturday’s open house will be the first of many interactions between Muslims and the greater Fort Collins community, solidifying the Islamic Center’s place as an “integral part” of the faith community. “I think it’s going to be, for the most part, an introduction to who we are and what we stand for,” she said. [And Ms. Kyle doesn’t think to ask what that is, of course. But that’s okay; she wouldn’t know she was being lied to anyway.]

Sarah Jane Kyle is the Coloradoan reporter covering volunteerism, nonprofits and philanthropy. Follow her on Twitter @sarahjanekyle or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/reportersarahjane.