25 Texas Mosques Open Their Doors to Harvey Survivors
The Lone Star State hasn’t always been the most welcoming place to Muslims, but Texas members of the faith have looked beyond that to help Harvey’s victims.
Dean Obeidallah
09.01.17 12:40 AM ET
While Joel Osteen needed the media to shame him into opening his megachurch for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, the Muslims in Texas didn’t need any prodding. They quickly jumped into action by opening mosques across the Houston area, handing out supplies to those in need and raising money for the victims.
Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, explained to me, “Over 25 mosques in the Houston area have opened their doors to those seeking shelter from this deadly storm.”
Beyond that over 100 young Muslim Texans who are part of Muslim Youth USA, together with 40 more from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association, took to the streets volunteering to help their fellow Americans in need. These young Muslims handed out food, water, and other supplies to their fellow residents of the Lone Star State, while some used their personal boats to help rescue those stranded.
And it’s not just Muslims in the Houston area who are mobilizing to help their fellow Texans. As Alia Salem, a leader in the Dallas-Forth Worth Muslim community, noted, “Muslims in the Dallas area mobilized quickly for volunteer training and donation collecting.” Salem explained, “Over 300 volunteers showed up at the Islamic Center in Dallas for training with Islamic Relief with only a few hours’ notice, and five Dallas-area mosques immediately started a collection to help those people in need.”
These actions represent the best of America and the best of Islam. But I’m not writing this article in any way to suggest that Muslims are the only ones helping the victims of Hurricane Harvey. It’s truly been an all-hands-on-deck mentality with people of all backgrounds lending a helping hand. Countless churches have opened their doors and provided much needed relief for those fleeing the storm. Two Jewish summer camps in the area of the floods have opened their doors to people evacuating their homes. And the list goes on of people of other faiths or no faith helping out people who have lost in some cases everything to this devastating hurricane.
But the difference is that compared to other faith groups, being Muslim in Texas is far more challenging—to say the least. In the last year there has been a rash of anti-Muslim incidents. In January, two Texas mosques were set on fire in incidents the police have deemed to be arson, one of these fires occurring within hours of Donald Trump signing his original Muslim ban executive order. Arrests in both incidents were made by the police.
There has been a string of protests by armed right-wing anti-Muslim bigots surrounding Texas-area mosques with the purpose to bully and intimidate the local Muslim population. The most recent in June saw several hundred anti-Muslim activists take part in a nationwide effort by the vile anti-Muslim group ACT for America.
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