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A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn

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Canada Goose Outlet But as the sun rises over Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Sheik Reda Shata’s new world comes to life. The R train rattles beneath a littered stretch of canada goose outlet parka sidewalk, where Mexican workers huddle canada goose outlet washington dc in the cold. An electric Santa dances in a doughnut shop window. Neon signs beckon. Gypsy cabs blare their horns. Canada Goose Outlet

buy canada goose jacket The imam slips into a plain brick building, nothing like the golden domed mosque of his youth. He stops to pray, and then climbs the cracked linoleum steps to his cluttered office. The answering machine blinks frantically, a portent of the endless questions to come. buy canada goose jacket

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To his congregants, Mr. Shata is far more than the leader of daily prayers and giver of the Friday sermon. Many of canada goose outlet uk them now live in a land without their parents, who typically assist with finding a spouse. There are fewer uncles and cousins canada goose factory outlet vancouver to help resolve personal disputes. There is no local canada goose outlet location House of Fatwa to issue rulings on ethical questions.

Sheik Reda, as he is called, arrived in Brooklyn one year after Sept. 11. Virtually overnight, he became an Islamic judge and nursery school principal, a matchmaker and marriage counselor, a 24 hour hot line on all things Islamic.

Canada Goose sale Day after day, he canada goose outlet official must find ways to reconcile Muslim tradition with American life. Little in his rural Egyptian upbringing or years of Islamic scholarship prepared him for the challenge of leading a mosque in America. Canada Goose sale

Canada Goose sale The job has worn him down and opened his mind. canada goose outlet buffalo It has landed him, exhausted, in the hospital and earned him a following far beyond Brooklyn. Canada Goose sale

Canada Goose online “America transformed me from a person of rigidity to flexibility,” said Mr. Shata, speaking through an Arabic translator. “I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the canada goose outlet authentic people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back.” Canada Goose online

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Canada Goose Outlet Over the last half century, the Muslim population in the United States has risen significantly. Immigrants from canadagoosediscount.co.uk the Middle East, South Asia and Africa have settled across the country, establishing mosques from Boston to Los Angeles, and turning Islam into one canada goose outlet houston of the nation’s fastest growing religions. By some estimates, as many as six million Muslims now live in America. Canada Goose Outlet

canada goose clearance Leading this flock calls for improvisation. Imams must unify diverse canada goose uk site congregations with often clashing Islamic traditions. They must grapple with the threat of terrorism, answering to law enforcement agents without losing the trust of their fellow Muslims. Sometimes they must set aside conservative beliefs that prevail in the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam. canada goose clearance

Canada Goose Parka Islam is a legalistic faith: Muslims believe in a divine law that guides their daily lives, including what they canada goose outlet in uk should eat, drink and wear. In countries where the religion reigns, this is largely the accepted way. Canada Goose Parka

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Canada Goose Jackets In America, imams evoke a simplistic caricature of robed, bearded clerics issuing fatwas in foreign lands. Hundreds of imams live in the United States, but their portrait remains flatly one dimensional. Either they are symbols of diversity, breaking the Ramadan fast with canada goose outlet in canada smiling politicians, or zealots, hurrying into their storefront mosques. Canada Goose Jackets

canada goose store Mr. Shata, canada goose jacket outlet store 37, is neither a firebrand nor a canada goose outlet orlando ready advocate of progressive Islam. Some of his views would offend conservative Muslims; other beliefs would repel American liberals. He is in many ways a work in progress, mapping his own middle ground between two different worlds. canada goose store

cheap Canada Goose The imam’s cramped, curtained office can hardly contain the dramas that unfold inside. Women cry. Husbands storm off. Friendships end. Every day brings soap opera plots and pitch. cheap Canada Goose

Canada Goose sale A Moroccan woman falls to her knees near the imam’s Hewlett Packard printer. “Have mercy on me!” she wails to a canada goose outlet online store review friend who has accused her of theft. Another day, it is a man whose Lebanese wife has concealed their marriage and newborn son from her strict father. “I will tell him everything!” the husband screams. Canada Goose sale

Mr. Shata settles dowries, confronts wife abusers, brokers business deals and tries to arrange marriages. He approaches each problem with an almost scientific certainty that it can be solved. “I try to be more of a doctor than a judge,” canada goose uk sale said Mr. Shata. “A judge sentences. A doctor tries to remedy.”

Canada Goose Parka Imams in the United States now serve an estimated 1,200 mosques. Some of their congregants have lived here for generations, assimilating socially and succeeding professionally. But others are recent immigrants, still struggling to find their place in America. Demographers expect their numbers to rise in the coming decades, possibly surpassing those of American Jews. Canada Goose Parka

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canada goose deals But few are prepared for canada goose factory outlet toronto location the test that awaits. Like the parish priests who came generations before, imams are called on to lead a community on the margins of American civic life. They are conduits to and arbiters of an exhilarating, if sometimes hostile world, filled with promise and peril. canada goose deals

An Invitation to Islam

canada goose More than 5,000 miles lie between Brooklyn and Kafr al Battikh, Mr. Shata’s canada goose outlet vancouver birthplace in northeastern Egypt. Situated where the Nile Delta meets the Suez Canal, it was canada goose factory outlet a village of dirt roads and watermelon vines when Mr. Shata was born in 1968. canada goose

buy canada goose jacket cheap Egypt was in the throes of change. The country had just suffered a staggering defeat in the Six Day War with Israel, and protests against the government followed. Hoping to counter growing radicalism, a new president, Anwar Sadat, allowed a long repressed Islamic movement to flourish. buy canada goose jacket cheap

canada goose deals The son of a farmer and fertilizer salesman, Mr. Shata belonged to the lowest rung of Egypt’s rural middle class. His house had no electricity. He did not see a television until he was 15. canada goose deals

canada goose clearance Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice. At bedtime, she would tell him the story of the Prophet Muhammad, the seventh century founder of Islam. The boy heard much that was familiar. Like the prophet, he had lost his mother at a young age. canada goose clearance

canada goose coats on sale “She told me the same story maybe a thousand times,” he said. canada goose coats on sale

Canada Goose Parka At the age of canada goose outlet online 5, he began memorizing the canada goose outlet 80 off Koran. Like thousands of children in the Egyptian countryside, he attended a Sunni religious school subsidized by the government and connected to Al Azhar University, a bastion of Islamic scholarship Canada Goose Parka.


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