Muslims Gather to Celebrate Ramadan : Religion: About 2,500 pray at CSUN to mark the end of holy month. Sermon urges patience in wake of disasters abroad.

Marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, about 2,500 Muslims assembled for prayers Sunday morning on a Cal State Northridge lawn and heard a sermon urging patience over the recent tragedies befalling Palestinian and Bosnian Muslims.

“Do not return evil for evil. Do not speak your anger, speak your mind,” said Ahmed El-Gabalawy, an engineer who served as imam, or spiritual leader, for the prayers.

Saturday was the final day of Ramadan, when devout Muslims abstain from food and drink during daytime hours and reflect on spiritual lessons of the Koran, the scriptures of Islam.

For 11 months of the year, observant Muslims rise daily at dawn for the first of five daily prayers. During Ramadan, most practitioners rise well before dawn to eat before the first prayer.

Worshipers assembled at 7 a.m. Sunday on the campus’ Sierra Quad, kneeling and sitting on plastic sheeting and prayer rugs. The men and boys outnumbered women and girls by a 3-1 margin--not unusual for a religion in which the obligation of public prayer falls mainly on males.

“This is a day of celebration and gratitude because Allah gave us the ability to fast successfully,” said Mahmood Qureshi. He and others attending the service said they planned to visit friends during the day to exchange greetings and enjoy festive sweets.

Like other Muslims, Qureshi said he was upset at media coverage of Islam, which he said readily calls radical Muslims “terrorists” but finds other, less inflammatory words to describe Jewish radicals.

“But we cannot let anger overwhelm us. Allah keeps us on the right path,” he said, using the Muslim word for God.

El-Gabalawy said in his sermon: “If you go after one Muslim, that is one thing, but if you attack the religion of Allah, then Allah will defend his religion.”

Later, in an interview, El-Gabalawy said he was not speaking of revenge for atrocities against Muslims in Bosnia or for a Jewish settler’s shooting massacre of 30 Palestinian Muslims at worship in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which occurred on Feb. 25.

“We are against violence and terrorism in Los Angeles, New York or Palestine,” he said. “The justice of Allah will be fulfilled either in this life or in the hereafter.”

Qureshi, a professor at Cal State Northridge, recited the prayers within yards of the quake-damaged, multistory building where he used to teach business courses. Now he teaches in temporary buildings as the university struggles to rebuild.

Facing the severely damaged Oviatt Library in the distance, worshipers were reminded by El-Gabalawy in his sermon that what humans can do, Allah can undo in a matter of seconds.

However, he told the crowd that the 6.8-magnitude earthquake had relatively little effect, other than some fallen block walls, on a site in Granada Hills where the Islamic Center of Northridge plans to build a $2.4-million mosque complex.

The center won city permission in 1990 to build. It now owns the land and a house on the Encino Avenue property and has paid $70,000 in city permits.

In his appeal for more contributions, El-Gabalawy said the grading work has been completed and the concrete foundation should be poured by June.