Missouri Islamic Center Finds New Home Two Years after Fire
After losing their place of worship to arson, members of a southeast Missouri Islamic Center found a new home.
In April 2020 an arsonist set fire to the mosque on Northwest End Boulevard.
Islamic Center President Shafiq Malik said it’s been a challenge to get to the new place which was used to be a Masonic Temple.
“We tried to rebuild it,” Malik said. “We did a lot of work for it, architectural plans and everything else too and we tried to send out a word for bidding, it was too expensive for us to build that.”
The fire damaged a large portion of the mosque. They continued holding prayer services until a new property could be found.
“I was passing by this on broadway,” Malik said. “I saw the sign for sale, and something hit me, this could be the place for us, so I came back looked around called the real estate agent, looked at the building, it just felt like it was the right place for us to start our worship.”
Dr. Ahmad Sheikh said it already feels like home.
“We worship God and we connect with the people for the sake of God and we’re really excited that we’re able to do this, provide this service to the community for education and coming together,” Sheik said.
Malik said this would not be possible without the support of the community.
“We cannot give enough thanks to the community of Cape Girardeau and all of the police department, fire department, they have supported us in a lot of ways,” he said. “Even the general public of the Cape Girardeau community that helped us with a lot of funds and everything else too, so that’s the reason we were able to buy this building because of those funds, so we are very thankful for the Cape Girardeau community.”
The first celebration of service for the new mosque will be held Friday night, October 28. It’ll open to the community at a later date.
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