Rakan El Hamad, a structural engineer by profession, spends a majority of his days building bridges.
As a Muslim and board director for a Fort Worth Islamic nonprofit, El Hamad asked city leaders and residents to help him build a different kind of bridge — one focused on interfaith relationships.
Leaders of the Al-Hedayah Academy, a mosque and community center in east Fort Worth, invited dozens of city and county officials, neighboring residents and people of different faiths for iftar, or a meal eaten at sunset to break a daily fast that occurs throughout the holy month of Ramadan.
Even though the nonprofit’s Fort Worth origins date back to 1992, the organization “just recently” invited non-Muslims into the mosque, El Hamad said during the March 15 dinner. Last March, the nonprofit held a “Meet your Muslim neighbor” event as a path for residents to learn about the faith.
A year later, the breaking of bread over plates of cashews stuffed in dates and sprinkled sesame seeds — an integral part of the iftar meal — was symbolic of the academy’s visions to be a “bridge between cultures, space and communities,” he added.
“We want to extend our reach beyond our immediate community and actively engage with people of all backgrounds, regardless of ethnicity, faith or worship,” El Hamad said. “Let’s set an example of what’s possible with faith, education and service united.”
Imam Moujahed Bakhach took to the podium to kick off the gathering with prayer, asking God to help bring “love and mutual respect and understanding” among attendees.
Bakhach, representatives of the Al-Hedayah Academy and other religious leaders previously gathered in January for lunch between Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders after a ceasefire deal was announced between Israel and Hamas.
Now, just two months later, he stood in front of a crowd of city and county government officials, law enforcement and people of various faiths, asking them to keep interfaith conversation and efforts going.
“We are meeting with the intention to know each other, to understand each other and to work on each other and to build better relationships,” he said. “I hope it will not be the first and the last, but the beginning.”
The gathering offered a way for the academy to connect with local leaders to learn about different needs in the community and how the nonprofit can help, said Sadia Haq, who also serves on the board of directors for the Al-Hedayah Academy.
Offering elder care and a place for young families to get together are just some of the ways the nonprofit could help residents, Haq said.
“It’s not just a place to worship, it’s a community of all people’s backgrounds,” Haq said. “This is what (the iftar) symbolized.”
Growing up in North Arlington, El Hamad noticed that people of different faiths would generally stick to themselves. Misconceptions or misunderstandings by others about his religion had an impact on his youth, El Hamad added.
“For better or for worse, they saw things in the media that didn’t have a good connotation for all of us,” El Hamad said.
Now, as a leader of the Al-Hedayah Academy and a soon-to-be father, he hopes the iftar will serve as the beginning of a community where young Muslims can be themselves around people who are and aren’t like them, but understand the faith.
“Muslims are just people. We want to live just like everybody else,” El Hamad said. “Although we have core tenets to our faith, it doesn’t necessarily differ on a moral basis from everybody else.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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