The 5 Town Jewish Times reports: 

A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday at 2:00 p.m. by the Town of Hempstead to hear a request for permission to convert a house on Peninsula Boulevard in Hewlett to an Islamic mosque. The house is located at 437 Hamilton Avenue, which is at the corner of Peninsula and Hewlett, a rather busy intersection around the block from the Yeshiva of South Shore. The house has been operating as a mosque for approximately one year already, although no variance has been issued to deal with the issues of parking. This is the first mosque in Hewlett; the first registered mosque in all of Long Island was established in 1974.

“During the Islamic holiday seasons, such as Ramadan, the parking and traffic situation has been getting pretty serious,” remarked someone who works near the property. One neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed frustration with the parking problem.

The variance being requested seeks permission to remove the garage now on the premises to make space for a small parking lot with room for about four cars. Concerns have been raised by some residents that cars backing out of such a lot could contribute to the already dangerous traffic situation on Peninsula Boulevard. The mosque building itself has 1,300 square feet of living space. Built in 1950, the house has seven rooms and two bathrooms. Sitting on a lot measuring 55 feet by 155 feet, it is owned by Mr. Etal Eqbal Rasheed; two brothers of Mr. Rasheed, Afroz and Mamoon, are also listed on the application.

There seems to be a certain level of xenophobia they are encountering, although the Rasheeds are apparently quite amiable people. “They attempted to use local businesses when they moved in,” remarked a real-estate agent familiar with the property. According to the agent, the house has been neglected in the past. “There are wires hanging from the place, and no work has been done on it for a while,” remarked the agent.

The request for a variance was filed by Charles E. Lapp of the Law Offices of Lapp and Lapp in Cedarhurst. Mr. Lapp stated, “They just want to use the location for morning and evening worship and perhaps on weekends for activities for the children.”

Another concern voiced by a neighbor is that people driving to the mosque make illegal U-turns on Hamilton Avenue to get to it. A petition signed by about a dozen neighbors in the immediate area expressed opposition on the grounds that too many cars would cause congestion, especially in an area where there are children playing.

When Mr. Lapp was asked which particular Islamic sect the mosque was to cater to, he replied that the Rasheeds were Indian Muslims, but that the mosque would be open to all sects and the mosque would not be affiliated with any particular brand of Islam. Next to Hinduism, Islam is the second most popular religion in India, where approximately 13 percent of the population is Muslim. Long Island is home to approximately 75,000 Muslims, with 20,000 of this number coming from India. The slow but steady influx of Muslims from Asian countries is mostly due to the change in United States immigration law in 1965.

Muslims are required by their religion to attend a mosque for prayer services each Friday. In addition, according to strict Islamic law, Muslims must pray five times per day. (Professor Louis Ginsburg once theorized that this Muslim practice originated with the Jewish requirement to pray three times a day.)

According to some experts, many of the descendants of immigrant Muslims have increased their observance of Muslim customs in this country. Perhaps due to a sense of isolation they feel as strangers in the community, they tend to fall back upon religious rituals from home. In a desire to improve themselves, they may take the religious theology and practice more seriously than their parents’ generation did.

Of course, the tragic events of September 11, 2001 have left many people nervous and edgy about any perceived rise in Islamic fundamentalist worship. According to recent reports, a new campaign promoting Islam is scheduled to appear on more than a thousand subway cars in New York City this coming September. The campaign has angered numerous riders, who have organized a protest. Siraj Wahhaj, one of the backers of the subway campaign, is the imam of a Brooklyn mosque and was the first Muslim religious leader to lead a prayer before the United States House of Representatives. The problem is that he was also one of the prime character witnesses for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was convicted for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, which killed six people and injured more than a thousand people. Mr. Wahhaj was on a list of 170 potential co-conspirators in the case, but in the end no charges were made against him.