An intimate congregation of Muslims on Pittsburgh’s North Side will soon have a new home in which to worship after breaking ground Wednesday afternoon, the first time a mosque will be built from the ground up in the city.
The religious community, Light of the Age Mosque, consists of about 100 people and has been worshiping in the North Side for two decades in a rented building near Allegheny General Hospital. Now they hope the new site at the corner of Fulton and Warner streets in the Manchester neighborhood will serve not only as a house of worship, but a pillar for the neighborhood.
“Our house is an open house,” said Ibrahim Philip Snow, a California native who moved to Pittsburgh’s North Side in 2009 to assist with community building. “Our house is a house of God. Everyone is welcome.”
While Light of the Age, like other Muslim groups in the city, already have a central location, the new building will represent the first time a mosque is built from the ground up in Pittsburgh’s city limits.
A large portion of the mosque’s funding comes from Anisa Kanbour, a local doctor and longtime supporter of Pittsburgh’s Muslim community who left behind $1.5 million to establish the building in the city’s limits after her death. It was her wish since the 1970s to build a mosque in Pittsburgh, as her brother, Fouad Kanbour, told the crowd.
“It’s amazing,” said Mr. Snow. “It’s an indication of the blessings.”
While the building process is slated to take nine months to a year, Mr. Snow cautioned that was an aspirational timeline as supply chain issues and rising prices may delay the project.
Part of the mission behind building the mosque is to help dispel misinformation and Islamophobia, he said. “Whether people accept or reject it, we want people to understand what they’re accepting or rejecting,” he told the Post-Gazette.
Imam Hamza Perez, the faith leader and co-founder of Light of the Age Mosque, said he had a dream prior to receiving the funding. In the dream, he came upon a masjid — a house of worship — where all the doors were locked except one.
“It had a very steep hill and it was very difficult to get inside the door, and that was the door that we entered,” he recalled to the crowd.
He described the real-life story of the project as a difficult process; just as they received the funding, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill and delayed construction further. “But ... all praise to God, Allah is the best of planners,” he said before leading the crowd in a prayer.
The Manchester Citizens Corporation, a neighborhood group, and its executive director, LaShawn Burton-Faulk, also helped bring the house of worship into the neighborhood.
MEDCO commercial construction group will be the general contractors on the project, said Karim Alshurafa, the mosque commission’s executive chair. The architect is Greg Peterson of IDG in Crescent.
Mick Stinelli: mstinelli@post-gazette.com
First Published: August 24, 2022, 7:50 p.m.
