Finding the right person to lead New England’s largest mosque will not be easy. No one is as keenly aware of this as leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury, who moved their search for a new imam into high gear last month after the mosque’s first-ever cleric, William Suhaib Webb, accepted a new job.
The cultural center joins a growing number of US mosques scrambling to find religiously qualified, culturally conversant leaders at a time when such leadership is vital, said Jocelyne Cesari, who directs the Islam in the West program at Harvard University.
The need for strong American Muslim institutions — and capable religious leaders at their helm — seems particularly urgent at a time when the headlines are filled with news of beheadings by the Islamic State, an increasingly bloody Arab-Israeli conflict, and the still-fresh memory of the Boston Marathon bombings, whose lone living alleged perpetrator is about to stand trial.
Boston’s most high-profile imam will have to speak to these issues internally and externally, while educating a new generation of American Muslims and helping to oversee a complex and increasingly crucial institution.
Many mosques in America are dominated by one or two ethnicities, but the Roxbury cultural center draws Muslims from an estimated 64 ethnic groups, speaking dozens of languages. There are also descendants of African-American Muslim movements, as well as converts from various racial and ethnic backgrounds.
It is diverse in other ways, too. Scientists and struggling refugees, grandparents and teenagers, new converts and lifelong adherents pray shoulder-to-shoulder, holding an array of political and social beliefs.
The mosque has grown markedly in the last three years, adding programs for teenagers, converts, and classes on the spiritual and intellectual dimensions of Islam.
Webb and his congregation built stronger ties with interfaith leaders — improving, in particular, their relationship with the Jewish community following years of tensions surrounding the mosque’s early leadership.
And the mosque has immersed itself in civic issues, participating in a statewide campaign to expand gun control and bringing lawyers and activists to the mosque to speak. A health team offers free screenings and referrals, as well as connections to Muslim mental health counselors.
“We are set on a course . . . to be welcoming, to be diverse, to be open, to reach out to our neighbors, to reach out to the interfaith community, to make a positive difference for Muslims in America,” said Hossam AlJabri, a board member of the mosque. “That is exactly the vision Imam Suhaib promoted, and that’s exactly the position we’re sticking to moving forward.”
Many imams in the United States are natives of Muslim countries who trained overseas, said Cesari. Though knowledgeable, they sometimes lack the language skills and cultural fluency to connect with the next generation of American Muslims, build relationships with interfaith leaders, and challenge misconceptions about Islam in American society.
The mosque leaders in Boston are “people who are well-educated, who are professional, who want to educate their children about Islam and also project to the outside a certain vision of an educated, enlightened form of Islam,” she said. “They will not compromise.”