Imam Shamsi Ali on a workday, clean shaven and wearing a suit. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

Imam Shamsi Ali sits with his group of three students in the main prayer hall of the mosque at 96th Street and Third Avenue, officially the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Recent converts to Islam, the students attend the imam’s Saturday lectures on subjects ranging from prayer rituals to looking beyond the Quranic text to its essential meaning. The class is informal: students get to ask questions during and after it, and Ali smiles a lot. He makes references to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

“What happened?” he calls across the hall when a student hurriedly walks out just after coming in. He has accidentally brought shoes into the prayer hall, not allowed in a mosque. Allah always forgives mistakes, Ali says with a smile.

Imam Shamsi Ali wears a suit and has no beard. He doesn’t conform to the stereotype of a Muslim cleric and doesn’t feel he needs to dress the part. Robes and a long beard are not necessary criteria for being a good Muslim, he says. He has a slight build and calm voice, speaking clearly and articulately despite the accent and grammar of one who is not a native English speaker.

Named one of the city’s “influentials” by New York Magazine in May 2006, he is best known for his efforts towards interfaith harmony. “He’s soft spoken but projects this moral force,” says Walter Ruby, Muslim-—Jewish program officer at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, who has worked with Ali on interfaith relations.

For two years, since his predecessor retired, Ali has led this mosque, overseeing everything from cleaning to settling religious issues. He has modernized the mosque’s communications by encouraging email use and has placed stricter rules around distributing zakat, a charity all Muslims are required to contribute to. He was also instrumental in planning an Islamic school, Manhattan’s first, scheduled to begin next fall.

Ali is an unconventional Muslim cleric. Unlike many other imams, he doesn’t consider music unIslamic. He doesn’t believe women need to cover their faces and thinks they should have roles equal to men, in religion and otherwise.

The imam dressed to lead prayer. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

Ali believes that American Muslims should have an identity of their own rather than trying to adopt their parents’.

“I personally am in the view that we must create our own identity as a community,” says Ali. “ So, I want to see in the future American Muslims that identify themselves as Muslims and Americans; in other words they are not forced into certain identity as Pakistanis or Bangladeshis or Africans or Arabs.” He adds that he wants the Muslim community in New York to be very “advanced” socially, culturally, educationally and politically.

Born in Indonesia, Ali went to an Islamic boarding school there. It was unlike madrassahs elsewhere in the Muslim world, he emphasized; his school required biology and history along with Islam, he says. After graduating, he attended the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan, then located at Shah Faisal Mosque, considered the country’s most beautiful. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Islamic education, then went to Saudi Arabia to teach. In 1996, he came to the US with the permanent mission to Indonesia for the UN and led a small mosque for Indonesian Muslims in Astoria, Queens.

“September 11 then gave me even more opportunities to reach out,” says Ali, speaking in his spartan office in the mosque. “I represented the Muslim community at the Yankee Stadium’s Prayer for America weeks after September 11.” One of two Muslims who received President George W. Bush at Ground Zero, Ali told the president the terrorists did not represent the Muslim faith, but their own “ego.”

And after that he was everywhere, Ali says, lecturing at universities, speaking to the FBI and police officials, appearing in synagogues and churches. He believes such efforts landed him the job of assistant imam at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, where he has organized many seminars and talks with rabbis and priests.

Last year, Rabbi Michael Weisser invited Ali to be the guest speaker at the Free Synagogue of Flushing on Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place each year after Passover. Since then, Weisser says, he has spoken at the mosque after Friday prayers and the two have participated in prayer together at both the mosque and the synagogue. “He’s a shining light on the world,” says Weisser. “He sees the truth and then speaks the truth.”

Weisser calls Ali an inspiration not only to Muslims, but to Jews and Christians as well. “I introduce him to people as my rabbi,” says Weisser laughing and adds that Ali introduces him as his imam.

Ruby, from the Foundation of Ethnic Understanding, says Ali is a “very impressive guy.” While many Muslims have denounced terrorism, says Ruby, Ali is especially outspoken — despite the criticism he’s encountered from within the Muslim community.

“We organized a two-day seminar on what the holy book says about the others,” says Ali. “The Quran is very critical of the Jews and Christians and how should Muslims understand those verses that talk about the Jews and Christians? And in the meantime, we must maintain our relationship with the Jewish community and the Christian community.”

Bishop Ebony Kirkland of the Church of the Living God Worldwide in Queens Village, Queens, has been involved with Ali, since he spoke at an interfaith dialogue at the church. During a debate about which religion was right, she was struck by the imam’s statement that, “ There is really no absolute, the only absolute is God.”

“He has a peace that passes all understanding,” she says, referring to his calm manner. “He teaches in such a spirited way,” Kirkland adds. “There is such an ease of learning from him.”

Ali has also recently received the Prince Naif award, given by a Saudi official for intereligious harmony.

To help Muslim immigrants in the U.S. better assimilate, Ali organizes Thanksgiving celebrations every year and has been very involved with the Muslim Day Parade, which he sees as an opportunity for integration. “Get from the city and give back to the city,” says Ali. The parade, which usually takes place in early fall, proceeds down Madison Avenue, from 42nd Street to 24th, followed by bazaars and cultural shows.

Though orthodox Muslims consider music unlawful, Ali has brought children from the Indonesian community school in Astoria, Queens to perform Islamic songs at the post-parade celebrations.

“Some imams talked,” says Ali. “But they didn’t talk directly to me. Probably they know that when they talk to me, I will make them understand.”

His own colleague at the 96th Street mosque, Assistant Imam Abdul Rehman, thinks music is unacceptable.

Ali leading prayer at the 96th Street mosque. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

“For me music is a neutral thing,” Ali responds. “Depends on what kind of music you’re talking about. And for which purpose you are using it. And so, if music is used for Islamic song where you are reminded of God and Islam, then what is wrong to use the music?”

He adds, smiling, that he has watched disapproving imams’ faces during the singing and they seem to be enjoying it.

As for the practice of women covering their faces, Ali agrees with the controversial Egyptian scholars who deem it more cultural than religiously required. “I see it as sometimes kind of embarrassing when I see a woman walking on the street covering her face,” says Ali. “People tend to say, ‘This is the way Muslims treat their women, covered from head to toe. They cannot move.’ This is not what Islam is about.” Though the niqab veil is regarded as a sign of modesty, Ali sees it differently. A veiled woman walking in Time’s Square will get stared at, rather than avert attention, he says.

Further, women with covered faces can’t participate in the mosque and its affairs as much as he thinks they should. While he doesn’t think women should lead prayer, which hasn’t been done traditionally, he believes women can lead other mosque activities.

He does believe that women’s covering their heads is essential to modesty but also sees it as a choice which shouldn’t be imposed.

This has brought critics within the community, including a widespread rumor that he once tried to convince a woman to have an abortion, considered a sin by orthodox Muslims.

Ali says he doesn’t remember such an incident, but that Islam is flexible on that issue, given the circumstances. In the case of teenage pregnancies or when there is a threat to a pregnant woman’s life, the religious leader needs to be wise and flexible while advising someone, he says.

The Islamic Thinkers Society, an Islamic advocacy group, has posted Ali’s picture circled in red, with a caption that reads “FBI Mouthpiece.” The site denounces him as a hypocrite and criticizes him for bringing music into the Indonesian mosque he leads in Queens and for allowing the “free-mixing” of the sexes. Ali thinks the FBI accusation stems from Islam-awareness lectures he held for FBI employees.

The Islamic Thinkers Society, emailed for comment, did not respond.

“These individuals oppose me basically because I oppose their ideas, their hateful ideas, their narrow mindedness in understanding our religion and I really disagree with them and I oppose them strongly and I will never agree with them in their approach,” responds Ali.

Aggressive and best-selling denunciations of religion by critic Christopher Hitchens and scientist Richard Dawkins have given atheism a more controversial profile in recent years. But the Harlem monthly meetings, egalitarian by design, challenge the common perception of the atheist movement as antagonistic, says Charles Zorn, a psychology professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College in Harlem and a meeting regular. Organized by the Harlem branch of the Center for Inquiry, a national atheist organization, the gatherings are subdued affairs aimed at confronting divergent beliefs and brainstorming ways to create dialogue.

“We don’t ignore or negate the idea of culture,” Zorn says, referring to the extreme influence of religion in America. “The meetings are driven by pro-intellectualism and pro-thinking. Contention is on the fringes.”

Problems have arisen nonetheless. Harlem atheists sustained a blow in September when the group’s de facto leader died of a blood disease at 49. Herbert Crimes, who went by Sibanye, a Swahili name meaning “we as one,” was the Center for Inquiry’s Harlem coordinator.

“Sibanye was the voice of atheism in Harlem, without a doubt,” says John Martey Young, Sibanye’s partner and a practicing Christian. Sibanye’s charismatic personality brought people together and he staked his reputation on first-rate discussions, Young says. More than 100 family and friends attended his memorial service at a midtown restaurant, eulogizing the man with an ironic blend of spirituality (Sibanye was raised in a religious St. Louis household) and non-theist ideology.

Three months later, the fractured community remains leaderless and none of those who regularly attended Sibanye’s meetings are willing to step forward. “They need some real help,” says Ken Bronstein, president of New York City Atheists.

In Harlem, a neighborhood with countless places of worship, there’s tremendous need for an atheist community, says Jane Everhart, of New York City Atheists. With an estimated 400 places of worship, according to Harlem Heritage Tours – “three churches on every street,” Everhart says – the neighborhood is a hotbed of religious life.

Because it’s also a center of black culture, the new atheist leader would, ideally, be black, says Zorn. He is white, and he sees that as a problem. “I feel comfortable participating, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable leading” the group, he says.

Atheism has a less-than-fervent following here – the monthly meeting regularly drew about 20 people. Atheism in Harlem is not only marginal – with no central gathering place – but stigmatized as well.

So, to identify oneself as a black atheist is to “lose your race card,” says Everhart, using Sibanye’s words. Everhart attributes the leadership void to fear of exclusion from the black community.

Although humanist thought played a defining role in the Harlem Renaissance, and therefore has a historic significance in Harlem’s intellectual legacy, “to be an atheist and an African American is a double bind,” says Anthony Pinn, a black humanism scholar at Rice University.

Christianity is normative in black communities, with churches the most prominent institution for social activism and personal progress. Black churches, however, can also be repressive, Pinn says. Human frailty and suffering are promoted as keys to a better life; subservience to God becomes more important than self-empowerment. These ideas – “no pain, no gain; no cross, no crown” – are detrimental to black communities, Pinn believes.

Sibanye had a similar perspective. In a taped conversation with Everhart last summer, he recalled a trip to South Africa and the negative impact he thought Christianity had on its black population.

“I would go into the homes of Africans,” Sibanye said. “They had dirt floors, tin roofs and tin walls and they had a blue-eyed Caucasian Jesus on every wall. It wore me out. I couldn’t say anything because I was the only Black atheist in the country at that time. I was strong in my atheism; I was unshakeable. Being witness to the oppression that those people had suffered, it made me want to cry.”

Reverend Booker T. Morgan, minister of evangelism at Convent Avenue Baptist Church, wasn’t aware a Harlem atheist group existed but maintains that atheists won’t necessarily face ostracism. Historically, the black community has found strength in God, he says, but “African Americans have been some of the most accommodating people in the world. If atheists are interested in dialogue, we’re open to that.”

While Sibanye’s belief that he was a one-man army now looks prescient, his death marks a new opportunity, says Michael De Dora, Jr., executive director of CFI-New York City. Sibanye’s death “gives us a chance to rethink how we’re treating the Harlem community,” De Dora says.

Given Harlem’s history as a home for black atheist thought, “atheist activists look at Harlem as a beacon on a hill,” De Dora says. “Harlem is a big piece of the puzzle.”

At the time of his death, Sibanye was working to extend CFI-Harlem’s education efforts beyond manning tables at local fairs and posting fliers. Aware that faith-based groups can apply for tax dollars to fund community projects, Sibanye wanted to seek public money for projects under the auspices of Harlem atheists, according to his partner Young.

“We’re going back to the drawing board, and that’s a good thing,” De Dora says. Zorn hopes to run more education and outreach programs and has discussed mounting a plaque and planting a memorial tree for Sibanye in Harlem.

Still, Young believes it’s unlikely that the Harlem atheists can enact a major culture shift. “Sibanye’s ideology will never catch on in an African American community,” he says. “The Church is too thoroughly entrenched.”

A menorah, a traditional Hanukkah candelabra, at the Old Broadway Synagogue. (Photo by Joshua Tapper)

By Joshua Tapper

In recent years, Harlem hasn’t been a magnet for Jewish New Yorkers. In addition to a Chabad chapter and an itinerant minyan group, Harlem has just one traditional synagogue. Yet, the Old Broadway Synagogue, tucked under the shadow of the elevated subway, just off 125th Street, remains a stalwart of the small Harlem Jewish community, as it has since 1923.

This Hanukkah, the synagogue opened its doors to the community, bringing Jews and non-Jews together to celebrate the Festival of Lights. On the fourth night of the eight-night holiday, the synagogue, in conjunction with Senator Bill Perkins’ office, hosted a candle-lighting ceremony and feast of latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts).

Paul Radensky, the synagogue’s gregarious president, began the festivities by welcoming the crowd of about 30 to the community-building affair. A series of speakers, including Sen. Perkins, spoke of the Jewish community’s importance to Harlem.

The Hanukkah celebration, in its second year, “shows another side of Harlem and the diversity that exists,” said Cordell Cleare, Sen. Perkin’s chief of staff and the event’s main organizer. “We can learn what others are celebrating and it’s a way for us to come together.” Sen. Perkins’ office is organizing Christmas and Kwanzaa parties as well.

As guests filtered into the narrow sanctuary, taking their seats in wooden pews, a silver, menorah sat high on the bimah, an elevated platform at the front of the room.

Ronald Newsome, a 78-year-old Harlem resident, was attending his first Hanukkah party. He recalled the days when Harlem was home to a vibrant Jewish community. “We all occupy the same spaces,” Newsome said, stressing the importance of interfaith programs.

Old Broadway Synagogue has a congregation of 50 to 60, but draws 25 to 35 for regular Saturday morning services. While many of the congregants come from the Upper West Side, there are “more and more Jews living in Harlem now,” Radensky said. He jokingly calls the community “a ghetto in the ghetto.”

Paul Radensky, left, Sen. Bill Perkins, center, and Cordell Cleare, Sen. Perkins' chief of staff, discuss the night's festivities. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

The Hanukkah party attracted a diverse crowd. Bearded Orthodox Jews sat next to blacks, some Jewish, some not. Carla McIntosh, a black Jew and Harlem resident who’s attended the synagogue off-and-on for 10 years, said she’s never encountered religious prejudice. The party was important, McIntosh said, “because we’re a community, a small neighborhood, and we need to get along.”

Candace Queen Mother Abbess, also knows as Bishop Shirley Pitts, of the Ethiopian Orthodox Coptic Church of North and South America, is an example of religious synthesis in the area. She’s cared for “Jewish elders” for 40 years and has picked up some of the traditions. She pulled a prayer shawl from her purse. “I always carry a prayer shawl in case the Sabbath catches me somewhere,” she said.

Reporting by Sonal Shah

TALKING ABOUT KWANZAA

By Shareen Pathak

This holiday season, African-Americans will be placing candle-filled kinaras side-by-side with tinselly Christmas trees to celebrate Kwanzaa, which takes place from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1.

Created by Ron Karenga in 1966, the seven-day celebration is the first specifically African-American holiday.  The Uptowner spoke to Abdel Salaam, assistant director of Forces of Nature: A Kwanzaa Celebration, opening tonight at City College, about the holiday. (We have edited and condensed his responses.)

Q: What is the history of Kwanzaa? How is it particularly relevant to Harlem?

A: The holiday is non-heroic, non-religious and nonsectarian. It is based on the East African harvest called Kwanza, and finds a particularly relevant home in Harlem, which many celebrate as the black cultural capital of the modern world.

Many of the earliest devotees of Kwanzaa were from Harlem and Brooklyn and helped disseminate its cultural doctrine, the Nguzo Saba, or seven principles. They are:

• Umoja (unity)
• Kujichagulia (self-determination)
• Ujima (collective work and responsibility)
• Ujamaa (cooperative economics)
• Nia (purpose)
• Kumba (creativity)
• Imani (faith)

Q: How widely celebrated is Kwanzaa?

A: Kwanzaa probably has its greatest following in the cities of the United States, like New York, Chicago, Newark, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, which was the home of Dr. Karenga.  While particularly relevant to African-Americans, Kwanzaa’s universal principles can be celebrated by anyone and currently have followers and practitioners in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and of course the Americas. Probably about 18 million people celebrate it today.

Q. What special products are sold for Kwanzaa in Harlem?

Kwanzaa cards, childrens’ games, Kwanzaa kits, Mishuma Saba (seven candles) and mkekas (straw mats) are very popular. We also get Kiikombe cha Umoja (unity cups) and vibunzi (Native American corn). Zawadi (hand-made gifts) are available nationwide in most African communities and some major chain stores. Walk along 125th Street and you’ll see what I mean. All the small shops are selling this stuff.

Harlem Stage presents Forces of Nature: A Kwanzaa Celebration, a dance, music and theater experience opening tonight at the Aaron Davis Hall at City College. For tickets and more information, call 212.281.9240 x 27.

EL MUSEO PARADES NEW PUPPETS FOR THREE KINGS DAY

By Shane Show
Note: This story was updated on Dec. 16, 2009.

El Museo's original Three Kings figures are being converted into a museum exhibit. Roughly six feet high, they rolled down Harlem's streets on wooden frames, but have been in various states of decay as years have passed. Photo by Shane Snow.

Having paraded down East Harlem’s streets each January for 32 years, El Museo del Barrio’s renowned, trundling Three Kings Day figurines will be retired this year, to be replaced by 12-foot high papier maché puppets representing the convergence of traditions, races and cultures in Latin America.

Local artist Polina Porras Sivolobova designed and is overseeing construction of the puppets, which will make their debut at this year’s parade on Jan. 6, said El Museo spokesman Ines Aslan. They’ll blend the traditional Christian style with some Caribbean flavor, Aslan said.

The puppets, an El Museo statement explained, are “inspired in the Taíno cosmological tradition, are made of papier maché, colorful fabrics, and a carefully-crafted structure that allows for graceful movement.” Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of Puerto Rico and other nearby islands.

The local parade, which will step off from Park Avenue and 106th Street at 11 a.m. and circle its way to El Museo by 1 p.m., is renowned for its colorful floats, upbeat music and dancing. “The director of the museum started the parade,” Aslan said. “The museum staff and neighborhood artists created the puppets and decorations.”

Operators control the new puppets from the inside, bearing the weight with a backpack-like mechanism. The finished puppets will hold gifts in front of them and feature detailed painted heads rich in Taíno and Christian symbolism. Photo by Shane Snow.

Three Kings Day, the culmination of the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas, commemorates the trio of Biblical magi who brought gifts to the newborn Christ child. Though often overshadowed by its more commercial holiday counterpart on Dec. 25, Three Kings Day remains popular in many Latin countries, often celebrated with a banquet known as the Feast of the Epiphany.

“The synergy of the Christian and Taíno traditions, wonderfully embodied by our new puppets, perfectly synthesizes the unique cultural mix that characterizes our community, as well as El Museo del Barrio’s mission,” the museum statement said.

Pastor Johnny Acevedo chats with Thomas Dunn after preaching his Sunday sermon.

On a Sunday morning, a group of college students in skinny jeans heard bongo beats thumping from the Clinton Houses. Peering into the squat brick building at 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, they saw a young pastor in horn-rimmed glasses, belting the Scriptures with a brassy voice and broad smile.

The latecomers decided to join about 40 members of the congregation in metal folding chairs, and sat behind a dad bouncing a toddler in his tattooed arms. The sound engineer, Butch Borst, amped up the clave beat on his soundboard.

When the pastor finished his song, he explained the biblical image of an open door. “If you are a woman of color,” he said, “you have experienced doors that are closed. That’s part of our history.” Then, he showed a picture of himself as a child, still unaware of the many doors he would confront. “That’s me on the left, the one who looks like a girl,” he joked.

The pastor, Johnny Acevedo, said he launched East Harlem’s newest church, Open Door Fellowship, to build a new neighborhood congregation with a relaxed vibe. Between songs, Acevedo cracked jokes about marijuana and masculinity. He and a handful of volunteers tried to draw in passersby by standing, fittingly, at their open door.

A sociology major, Acevedo uses such activist phrases as “challenge the system” and “community-led.” But because of his day job as a high school technology consultant at Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars, he also can speak the language of a Barrio teenager.

Raised in Astoria by middle-class Puerto Rican parents, Acevedo said he wasn’t always the approachable pastor. As a kid, he felt superior to the Puerto Ricans in El Barrio.

“I thought I was the s—, it was terrible,” he said. “I needed to be challenged.”

Acevedo found that challenge at Westminster Theological Seminary School, where he struggled through Hebrew. At the time, he didn’t believe he would pass, an experience that helps him empathize with the children he tutors who struggle with math and technology, he said.
His fledging church faces difficulties, he acknowledged.

He didn’t want to sound like “the arrogant new kid on the block,” but said he’s seen many Harlem churches turn into commuter hubs, where “the community becomes your parking lot, and that’s it.” He decided to start his own church this fall because it was either “put up or shut up.”

To prepare for the launch, Acevedo appeared on Urban Latino Radio, started a men’s Bible study group, distributed 500 postcards and surveyed Harlem residents. In the one-page survey, he asked, “What do you have to offer?” Five volunteers work alongside Acevedo and, as fellow activists and friends, share many of his concerns.

With their surveys, they hope to show the community that they are a solution to problems with schools, health and housing. “We’re this group of six people, what are we gonna do about all that? It starts with us listening. We’re not the solution.” The community is, Acevedo said.

To realize their ambitious goals, the six volunteers raised money through family, friends and donors Acevedo knew from his previous churches. Their denomination, Christian Reformed, also provided a grant for new congregations. Combined, the funds cover their $300 weekly costs.

Acevedo chats with Thomas Dunn and his son, Dylan

They hope to attract neighborhood residents and churchgoers of all ages and backgrounds. After the very first service last month, members of the diverse audience said they would return for Acevedo’s down-to-earth style.

“I like that it wasn’t churchy,” said Lenore Maine, 53. “He was trying to meet people where they are. And I like the ethnicities; there are lots of different kinds of people.”

“You feel closer to the religion and God because of how the pastor spoke,” said Arelis Cruz, 14. “He made you feel more comfortable with the jokes.”

Acevedo’s school coworkers said they believe his church will survive. Marshall Cho, a Bronx middle school teacher, met Acevedo at New Song Ministry in Harlem and asked him to make a guest appearance at his math class.

“He was really able to engage the middle school kids for hours, so he’s a gifted man,” Cho said. “He’s pretty hip.”

Dominic Lewis, 54, also met Acevedo at New Song and liked the “warmth” of his sermons. “He has an excellent ear for listening and giving feedback,” Lewis said. “He engages and walks people through their problems. He doesn’t just pray for you; he makes phone calls.
“He’s not just a Sunday pastor. He’s involved in the life of the people.”

Despite the confidence of his coworkers and parishioners, Acevedo stays realistic. “We don’t really know what we’re doing,” he said.
“Seventy percent of new churches fail. People with a lot more marketing savvy than I have, have failed.”

Tryfon C. Tzifas, president of community outreach at Greek Orthodox Community of St. George and Demetrios Church at 103rd Street and Lexington, said he’s glad Acevedo draws younger people; his own church attracts an older congregation.

“A good church is equivalent to a good school. They give an example of how to live properly,” Tzifas said. “I wish them success and good luck.”

The Islamic Cultural Center of New York, at 96th Street and Third Avenue plans to open the first full-time Islamic school in Manhattan next fall. The school, financed by the government of Kuwait, will occupy two floors of an adjacent apartment building. It will begin with grades pre-K through 2 and eventually expand to include high school, said Imam Shamsi Ali, acting imam at the mosque.

“It’s like a dream for us,” said Raesa Algazali, who teaches at the mosque’s weekend school and has been hoping for an Islamic school for her children for the past six years. “If they learn about Islam here, I don’t have to go back home,” said Algazali, explaining that she returns to Yemen every three or four years so her children are exposed to Islam and to Arabic.

The center is trying to complete construction so it can apply for a certificate of occupancy, required to apply for a license.

“Though we call it Islamic school, we are going to teach everything else,” Ali said, “plus, of course, Islamic tradition.”

While a private institution, the school will conform to New York City requirements and follow a public school curriculum along with an Islamic one, Ali said. It will hire licensed teachers fluent in English. The medium of instruction will be English and Muslim students will be required to take courses in Islamic practices, Arabic and ethics. Non-Muslim students will have the choice to study the parallel curriculum, but will not be required to.

The school will be open to discussion regarding controversial subjects like evolution, Ali said, and the students will be free to choose their own stances on the subject.

While “cultural reasons” may prevent the school from continuing coeducation after grade 6, the imam said that will depend on facilities at the time. The imam, however, is a proponent of educating girls.

The school will recruit children of diplomats, United Nations representatives and other residents of Manhattan, Ali said. Students from outer boroughs may also attend.

Many worshippers, however, think the school would be too far for children outside Manhattan.

Samir Hoti, who is working on the construction of the school building, said he would be interested in his daughters attending, if it were not so far from their home. While he lives close by on 106th Street, the girls live with their mother in the Yonkers. His son, however, will be registered when the school opens next year.

Harlem resident Algazali said she would love to have her four children attend, but she thinks it will be too expensive. So, she will enroll only one child.

Fees and finances have not been discussed, Ali said, but a system of financial aid is being devised.

The school will be housed on the first two floors of a luxury condo building next to the mosque. Entrances are separate and acoustics will be dealt with so as to avoid noise and disturbance to tenants.

Tenants walking in and out of the building were unperturbed by the idea of the school and some were supportive.

“It’s a great thing,” said Brooke Connell, who entered with two little girls.

“A school is always good,” said Heijoon Chung, another tenant . “Religious school is always OK,” she said, adding that her son goes to a Catholic school. She said she often wonders whether the Islamic school will admit students of other faiths.

Jeremy Price feels there is no real interaction with the activities of the mosque except for crowds during Ramadan and on holidays which he does not feel are intrusive or disturbing.

Algazali, however, is excited. “I have another baby,” she said, patting her stomach. She would love for that baby to attend the Islamic school, “Inshah Allah,” she said — in Arabic, God willing.

Baptist Temple Church under construction to save its roof from collapsing. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

Baptist Temple Church on 116 Street in East Harlem is under dramatic construction after the Department of Buildings deemed the building unsafe because of a cracked front façade and worn-out trusses hanging off a bearing wall.

The church has been closed since Sept. 19 and no one is allowed inside for safety reasons, forcing the congregation to meet elsewhere. The construction left a gaping hole in the church’s exterior, covered only by a tarp.

After an inspection, the Department of Buildings “determined that the defective section of the roof and the front masonry needed to be removed to a safe level,” Carly Sullivan of the department’s press office wrote in an email. The construction forced the brief closure of 116 Street between Malcolm X Boulevard and Fifth Avenue as large cranes dismantled the highest part of the roof and removed a portion of the stone façade, and the city issued a vacate order.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development completed the construction and will bill the church for the work, according to an email from Miriam Solis of the department’s press office. Her note explained the department is not responsible for the building’s repair.

The Department of Buildings filed a violation against the building’s owners for failing to repair the church before they stepped in. The Rev. Shepherd Lee, the pastor, declined to comment on the violation and would not explain how the church is responding. “I have to be cautious in this society that we live in,” he said.

Neighboring businesses, mostly small retail outlets, said they had not been drastically affected by the construction, other than the street’s initial closure.

Baptist Temple Church, a former synagogue, was built in 1906 by a growing Jewish community that moved to Harlem between 1870 and 1930. Aside from the Lower East Side and Warsaw, Harlem was once the world’s third largest Jewish settlement, The New York Times reported in a 2002 profile of Harlem churches.

After thousands of Sunday morning services, generations of weddings and funerals, nearly a century of Christmases – and then Dias de Navidad, as the neighborhood evolved – the church at 21 Wadsworth Avenue is showing its age. The white columns that greet Washington Heights Presbyterians are shedding their paint. Inside, sky blue paint peels from the corners of the domed sanctuary ceiling. But the most alarming disrepair looms farther above, in the cracked stones and rusted beams of the church’s tower.

The congregation and preservationists hope recognition will lead to restoration for the Fort Washington Presbyterian Church, which was added to the state Register of Historic Places on Sept. 15. In May the city gave landmark status to the church, built in 1913. Known as La Iglesia Presbiteriana Fort Washington Heights since a Hispanic congregation took over in 1982, the building is expected to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the next few months.

“This church is so architecturally significant,” said Kathleen Howe, the state historic preservation specialist who prepared the state register proposal. The city landmark proposal required only a description of the building’s exterior, so Howe added documentation of the interior for the state application.

The church’s neo-Georgian portico and tiered tower are the work of the early 20th-century architect Thomas Hastings, who designed the church for West Presbyterian Church and Park Presbyterian Church when the two congregations merged in 1911. Hastings’ firm is known for the New York Public Library and other landmark civic buildings on the East Coast, but he had strong family ties to the church. His father was the retired pastor of West Presbyterian; his grandfather wrote the hymn “Rock of Ages.”

Even as the faces and the languages of the neighborhood have changed over the years, the building has always been home to a Presbyterian congregation. The basement that housed a soup kitchen during the Great Depression is now scattered with art supplies for an after-school program.

The Rev. Carmen Rosario called the new historic designations a matter of pride for the congregation, which includes many immigrants from the Dominican Republic and other Latin American countries. The building, like their faith, anchors their sense of place in the long story of New York because this particular corner has always been a place for immigrants, Rosario said. A commemorative history published for the building’s 25th anniversary in 1938 trumpeted that the church had “embraced men, women and children from every country on the globe.”

The building drew immigrants from a variety of European countries in its earlier days, and Rosario said it’s an honor to get architectural recognition for the building during Latin American immigrants’ turn. “That is important not only to the church, but to the Latino community around us,” she said.

The historic designations are also a matter of practicality: Landmarked buildings are eligible for grants the church desperately needs to keep the building intact. About 50 people attend the service each week, and many are senior citizens – they don’t have the money or energy to make up for years of neglected maintenance, Rosario said. “We don’t have the resources at all,” she said.

The ornate tower still dwarfs billboards and apartments crowding the neighborhood skyline, but summers of rain and frozen winters have left it dangerously unstable. An evaluation of the tower in 2008 by the New York firm Old Structures Engineering concluded that the steel deterioration and masonry damage “will get worse with time at an increasing rate.” The report presented three options: fully repair the entire structure; remove damaged stones as a temporary repair; or demolish the top of the tower.

Ann-Isabel Friedman, director of the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Sacred Sites program, has been working with the church since 2002 and hopes to develop a conservation plan in the next year, now that the building is eligible for grants. But even erecting scaffolding for a tower that high would cost almost $100,000. That’s the maximum amount Sacred Sites can provide – and the recession’s effect on fundraising means the actual amount available is much lower. “I only have as much money to give away as I can raise in a given year,” Friedman said.

The church is also eligible for state money set aside for preservation of nonprofit, register-listed sites – but competition for those grants is stiff. The state Historic Preservation Fund provides grants up to $600,000 and often selects religious properties, said Merrill Hesch, the regional grants officer for the New York City region. But only a few projects are chosen each year from more than a dozen applications, and the grant can only cover three-quarters of the total price tag even with eased requirements for areas where the poverty rate exceeds 10 percent . Buildings owned by religious organizations or used for religious purposes often cannot receive government money, including the city’s grants, because of constitutional mandates for separation of church and state.

Friedman doesn’t want to resort to the “triage approach” of partial repair. Supporting the tower in unsightly plywood and cables would buy only 10 years to figure out a better plan, she said, and would hide the architectural selling points from potential donors. The other option short of full repair – decapitating the top tiers of the tower – would permanently diminish the building’s character.

But Friedman also knows the building cannot afford any more years of deferred maintenance. “I’m afraid what’s going to happen here,” she said, “is a wake-up call – which is something falls off the building.”