Muslims Celebrate Progress on Long-Awaited Mosque : Religion: Hundreds of members pray in San Fernando Valley center, which is 75% complete. They hope it will help dispel misconceptions about their faith.

When Shazia Mohiuddin looks at the partially completed mosque in Granada Hills, she ignores the rooms without doors, the dusty floors, the spackle-striped walls.

To her, the walls are exquisite canvases painted with hope.

“We started with nothing. Now we’ve gotten to the point [that] walls are surrounding us,” she said. “This is a place we’ve been working 10 years to have.”

Mohiuddin’s excitement came Sunday as members of the Islamic Center of Northridge celebrated a milestone: Their mosque is more than 75% complete.

Several hundred people milled about, their conversations echoing off bare walls. They were celebrating a mosque of their own--the first permanent mosque in the San Fernando Valley.

Women in turquoise, gold and teal hovered near toasty samosas, the spicy hors d’oeuvres filled with potatoes and ground beef. Men in crisp Nehru jackets mingled with men in button-down shirts.

Shortly before 1 p.m., the echoes of conversation ceased and the knots of people moved silently to the main hall for prayer. Shoes set to the side, the men in front and the women in back, they knelt toward Mecca on makeshift carpets of cardboard.

“We can pray anywhere,” said Misbah Elderieny, an imam for Southern California. “But this is what gives us pride of living here and praying the way we like to do.”

Having a home and, with it, the recognition of a place in society is critical to Masood Rana, president of the Islamic Center of Northridge. Battered by misconceptions about their faith, American Muslims such as Rana find themselves constantly explaining their religious beliefs.

“What we have seen in the building of our center is a complete lack of understanding,” Rana said. “We need to change our image.”

Particularly painful were initial news reports from Oklahoma City that blamed the bombing of the federal building there on Middle East militants.

And the misconceptions continue. At the moment, Rana and others are patiently explaining that there is no connection between them and today’s Nation of Islam’s “Million Man March” in Washington.

The more people learn about Islam, says Kathryn Alaf of Hollywood, the more “they’ll realize [terrorism] has nothing to do with what this mosque represents.”

The community hopes that its new mosque will help dispel the untrue notions and serve as a neighborhood symbol of what their faith is all about.

Getting the mosque built was in its own way as complicated as explaining the tenets of their faith.

Yielding to building restrictions, the center skipped traditional domes and put in a skylight. A minaret, the traditional identifying symbol for mosques, will be added after the building opens.

Rana insists it will be visible only from the freeway near the site on Encino Avenue in Granada Hills.

But in the excitement of the open house, Rana skipped over the complications as he toured the 16,800-square-foot building. He used one hand to indicate the sweep of the vast main room, its arches reminiscent of traditional Islamic architecture and its expansive ceiling bathed in natural light.

He gushed about the multipurpose room that will be available for neighborhood meetings. He used a pointer with a tiny red light to indicate the vast spaces and stairwells.

But he quickly got to what is clearly one of his favorite parts of the premises.

“Look,’ he said, hurrying to a door opening out on piles of dirt. “Parking!”

The Islamic Center has spent $1.8 million so far on the structure, and Rana estimated that $500,000 more will be needed. Yet the fund-raising task that lies ahead was at least momentarily eclipsed by the unchecked pride of people such as Mohiuddin.

Nine years ago, she remembers canvassing the proposed site of a mosque in Northridge. It was never built. Though she was only 14, she came to believe that the Northridge neighbors’ objections to the proposed center went beyond concerns about traffic and the like.

“That was the first time I realized it was not the same for us,” said the UCLA senior. “All I can remember is that it was OK to have a church, it was OK to have a school. But somehow, if you add a mosque, it was not safe.”

She and her family lobbied hard for the Granada Hills site. In her appeal to the Los Angeles City Council, Mohiuddin said she had often been invited to other religious-based social events, such as bar mitzvahs, but that she “was never able to return the favor.”

As she looked around the unfinished building, she noticed that the mosque’s neighbors were not there. She pledged to correct the omission, inviting them personally when the building formally opens. Community leaders hope that will be within six months.

“Thank God,” she said, “it’s almost done.”