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Religious
Groups in My Hometown
JamesPaul Aidan Qazilbash
In my entire life I have lived in Boston, Massachusetts and I
have always had ties to the city of Quincy adjacent to Boston just
south of us along the shoreline. Quincy is one of the most religious
cities I have encountered to feature so many houses of worship
per capita. The community is largely and almost entirely comprised
of three distinctly different groups, Christians, Muslims and Buddhist.
There is even a smaller population of organized worshippers in
more new age styled groups such as a naturist church.
Quincy's Muslim community is one of the northeast's strongest
enclaves and has been instrumental in spreading their faith throughout
all of Massachusetts. Imam Talal Eid has been the spiritual and
communal leader of the Islamic Center of New England since 1982.
One of the I.C.N.E.'s proudest achievements was when in the early
1990's they broke ground on a new center and fully functioning
grade school in Sharon, which is a predominantly Jewish only town
with even a minimalist Christian population. Much of the interfaith
talks that led to that zoning being passed were brokered by members
of the I.C.N.E., members of a local rabbinical council, and a Jesuit
Priest from Boston College.
In the early 1970's Quincy's first incantation of the mosque was
birthed into the heart of a classically tough, blue collar Irish
Catholic heartland that defines the city. My father Asaf Qazilbash
was one of the men who figured prominently in the growth and integration
of these early Muslims in Quincy. It was people like my father
and Imam Talal Eid who served incredible witness by putting a positive
face on the rich, faithful religion of Islam. My father served
on the board of directors in the 1980's when all this tremendous
growth was serving to establish the I.C.N.E. and Islam as a dignified,
God serving religion to the outside world in Quincy. I must mention
that in a religion that is famed for the lack of voice women are
attributed that one of the I.C.N.E.'s finest representatives to
the community at large was sister Zaida. Her family ran a sandwich
shop at the end of the street from the I.C.N.E., which was right
next to the Fore River Shipyards where many of the World War II
battleships were built during prior years. The dockworkers, foreman
and other shipbuilders would go everyday for lunch and be served
their favorite meal by a woman they loved dearly and her family.
She made Islam a real thing to people who might otherwise not have
developed such familiarity.
By the early 1980's, growth was steady and constant. There were
at this time two consecutive sessions of Sunday school classes
that my three siblings and I had to attend each week after attending
Catholic school five of the other six days of the week. It's no
wonder one of their kids is getting ordained after all that religious
schooling! Our classes focused on reading Arabic and memorizing
Surats from the Holy Quran.
As Quincy's membership sprouted every year it became necessary
to build a sizable addition to the building. The original structure
quickly became spare back classrooms and storage as a beautiful
addition featured elegant, modern classrooms now on two levels,
an administrative office, a social hall where you could find many
of Boston and the outlying suburb's best doctors, engineers, architects
and various other successful, diligent professionals who had brought
their children for education as well as community and fellowship
within the growing epicenter of Islam in Massachusetts. Now Muslims
had a House of God of their own that was comparable to the churches
and synagogues that had previously dominated the spiritual landscape
of their community.
As the growth continued, people drove from further each week to
worship in Quincy. Twice a year the Eid services would be so well
attended that Imam Talal Eid would lead three services and they
would have to hire Quincy police to direct all the traffic that
flocked to the center.
Having traced the genesis this far, the first steps toward building
a new site weren't just about capital campaigns and zoning ordinances.
The intended first site proposed was in the bordering town of Milton.
I remember well my father's strong, proud and defiant reaction
when a man identifying himself as “Johnny Murphy” would call my
house and threaten my father if they built a new center in Milton.
Eventually after more threats and false alarms someone did break
into the I.C.N.E. and set a fire that damaged much of the social
hall and surrounding area of the building. Muslims showed the outside
world that they were here to stay when they picked themselves up
from this heartache and rebuilt. Eventually, this road lead to
what is now the Islamic Academy of Sharon, a full grade K-12 school
that even offers SAT preparatory courses. The Muslims who convened
in Quincy had succeeded in bearing witness to their faith and spreading
out into new communities that had been previously off limits. When
my father passed away in 2002 as a career geotechnical engineer,
his legacy endured. More than any bridge, building foundation,
or railway that he helped design and build, his proudest achievement
was building a house of God that generations of his Muslim brothers
and sisters and their children would thrive in.
Elsewhere across Quincy in the dark days after September 11 th
there was a Muslim man who owned a small grocery store that had
it's windows smashed in. Members of my former church, Quincy Community
United Methodist Church led by Reverend Carol Stine, approached
him as Christians and offered to regularly stand watch outside
his store to offer protection for him and his store. He refused
graciously but thanked them profusely. They had given him such
a different glimpse into Christianity as a caring, universal practice.
Quincy's Muslim population continues to grow annually as it members
come from far and wide just as they did when my family began attending
in the 1970's. Today these new residents help to make up and define
a community that has established its good, faithful and dignified
name through the hard work, faithfulness, peacefulness, tolerance,
tears, heartbreak, and patience of prior generations of Muslims
who came to Quincy to make it a home for all. |
