30 mosques in 30 days in 30 American states: A remarkable Journey of two curious American Muslims
By Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam
November 8, 2011
New York: As part of the week-long “Many Facets of America” Tour of visiting Asian Muslim journalists, organized by the Department of State, we got to meet two remarkable young American Muslims. Starting from the idea of breaking their Ramadan fast in 30 different mosques and discovering the variety of Muslims who live in New York and have mosques in different areas, these two friends writer Aman Ali and filmmaker Bassam Tariq went on to travel across the United States of America in 30 states this year in Ramadan in a fascinating journey of discovering the variety of Islam that is practiced and Muslims that live here.
As they described in fascinating detail, beginning Aug. 1 in Alaska, the two intrepid American Muslim youth spent each night of Ramadan at a different mosque in 30 states around the country. The two travelled as many as 13,000 miles (nearly 21, 000 Kms), on a route that essentially took them across the entire country before reaching their homes in New York City. In their view, however, the true stars of their project are the readers of their blog available at 30mosques.com that have supported the initiative. In less than a month, readers gave more than $12,000 in online donations to this project to translate “this half-baked idea,” as they put it, to go across the country into a reality.
Speaking to visiting journalists in the Foreign Press Centre, New York, the two spoke of what they learnt from their experiences. During their Ramadan-long journey, they met a cross section of an estimated 3 to 4 million Muslims living in the United States – a number that is expected to double by the year 2030. Muslims in the U.S. come from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds including African Americans, South and East Asians, Europeans, Arabs and East Africans. Nearly all sects and schools of thought of Islam are represented here. Muslims have been living here at least for a couple of hundred years. The two were awestruck to discover beautiful mosques in the middle of nowhere sometimes.
Each day during Ramadan, Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq visited a different state and blogged about their experience each night, highlighting stories about the people they’ve met, the mosque they prayed in and of course the tasty cuisines each place has to offer. These experiences provide a fascinating read.
One of the most important features of their journey and experience is that it encompasses Muslims of all sects and schools of thought including the Ahmadis whom one Islamic government (that of Pakistan) has branded as non-Muslim. Bassam Tariq and Aman Ali apparently consider Muslims of all opinion as Muslim and did not discriminate.
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To bring their talk and their journey to life, we reproduce a video interview of the two travelers shown by Al-Jazeera.