Inside a Complex Community

No place in Southern California symbolizes the tension over Saudi Arabia’s influence in the world like the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City.

This marble mosque on Washington Boulevard, built entirely with Saudi funds, tests many of the stereotypes that have surfaced about the oil kingdom since Sept.11.

The mosque’s leaders admire Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th century evangelist. Al-Wahhab inspired the so-called Wahhabi movement, which is prominent in Saudi Arabia but criticized by detractors for oppressing women, shunning non-Muslims and inspiring Osama bin Laden’s jihad.

The chairman of the mosque’s foundation, a former Saudi Embassy official, has helped funnel millions of dollars in Saudi funds to Southland Muslims. Critics suggest this aid comes with a price: suppressing a more flexible brand of Islam in favor of the oil kingdom’s puritanical creed.

A close look at the 4-year-old mosque and the faithful who nurture it, however, reveals a more complex picture than the caricatures that have shaped public perceptions of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.

Inside the mosque community, there are those who are sympathetic to jihad and suicide bombings and those who are not. Some object to non-Muslims visiting their sacred space; others warmly embrace them. Some women veil their entire bodies; others throw off such practices as outdated.

The King Fahd Mosque’s struggles to unite a people drawn from a broad range of ideologies, culture and race seem familiar and quintessentially American. The diversity belies the notion of an insular people in ideological lock-step, beholden to a distant desert sheikdom.

“We do not want to be seen as a Saudi outfit,” says the mosque’s imam, Tajuddin Shuaib, a Ghana native who studied Islam for a decade in Saudi Arabia and was sent to the U.S. a quarter-century ago. “We are like the United Nations ... no one nationality dominates.”

Suspicion of Saudi Arabia Surges

Since Sept. 11, American suspicion of Saudi Arabia has surged, particularly because most of the suspected hijackers were Saudi-born, as was Bin Laden himself. Other critics charge the Saudis with encouraging the jihad movement by financing religious schools that preach extremist hate. Saudi officials have vehemently denied the charges, noting that they stripped Bin Laden of his Saudi citizenship and that they had long been condemned by him for their alliance with the United States.

In Culver City, Shuaib acknowledges problems with extremism in his mosque--but says those problems have nothing to do with Islam.

“This is not Wahhabism,” he says. “This is a political agenda cloaked in religion.”

On the Friday after the terrorist attacks, the imam says, he gave a sermon condemning suicide bombings and was shouted down by some men who leaped to their feet and accused him of “changing the Koran.” Patriotic banners supporting President Bush and the families of terrorist victims were torn down from the mosque and stolen, he says.

The same hotheads, Shuaib says, have also tried to foment hatred against Israel for its actions against Palestinians and the United States for its bombing campaign against Afghanistan.

“Most of these people want to turn this masjid [mosque] into a vehicle for extremism,” Shuaib says. “I tell people that we don’t have the right to deny another human being the God-given right to live, but today, when Muslims are suffering all over the world, this is very difficult to sell.”

Shuaib says he kicked out four members of the mosque in October in part because they were fomenting dissent and extremism.

One of them was Abdo Ghanem, 39, a Yemeni native who joined the mosque community 13 years ago when it was still housed in a rented storefront on Venice Boulevard, half a mile from the King Fahd Mosque.

Ghanem, a designer-clothes salesman, seems like an unlikely militant. He has an open manner and wears Versace suits and Gucci shoes. He is married to a Catholic and says he has not pressured her to convert. He praises America’s political freedoms even as he castigates its moral decadence. And he confesses to an imperfect observance of Islam’s do’s and don’ts--forsaking a beard, for instance, because he says his wife thinks he’s cuter without one.

But Ghanem volunteers that he chauffeured Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman around the Southland in 1993, two years before the blind imam was convicted of conspiring to blow up New York landmarks and imprisoned for life.

Ghanem says he agreed with Abdel Rahman’s call to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the grounds that he was killing fellow Muslims with a repressive and torturous regime.

Ghanem also says he supports jihad against Saudi Arabia and Israel, but stops short of calling for war against America, saying only that U.S. foreign policies against Muslim nations should be changed.

“When I see injustice to my people, I will stand up and speak,” Ghanem says. “I live in a free country.”

Ghanem says Shuaib’s charge that he was kicked out for extremism is a ploy to mask problems of financial accountability within the mosque.

Ghanem and others say that Khalil Al-Khalil, head of the foundation that owns King Fahd, has not publicly detailed why the mosque’s initial budget of $3.8 million ballooned to $8.1 million, why $200,000 is still owed in construction costs despite Saudi Arabia’s hefty gift and what happened to the $250,000 Ghanem says the community donated for a still unlaunched school.

“We say: Open the books to an independent accounting firm,” Ghanem says. “If we are wrong, we will make a public apology and close the subject forever. If we are right, they resign.”

Al-Khalil was in Saudi Arabia and unavailable for an interview. Shuaib said the charges of financial impropriety are bogus and called the claims of missing donations “a bald lie.” He said the mosque’s construction costs spiraled because officials decided to build it with marble instead of stucco.

Shuaib, 49, is a genial man who was sent here in 1977 by Saudi Arabia’s state-run University of Medina, initially to work with Muslim students. In 1980, Shuaib helped found the Islamic Foundation of Sheikh Ibn Taymiyah in Culver City and was working as imam at two of its mosques when he was tapped to lead the King Fahd Mosque when it opened. He says his salary is paid by the Saudi state university through the foundation.

The imam considers himself a follower of the teachings of Al-Wahhab--but sharply disputes charges that they promote extremism.

Al-Wahhab, he says, was merely an Arabian reformer who advocated a strict, back-to-basics approach to cleanse Islam of polytheistic corruptions and keep it as pure as the day it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1,400 years ago. Those inspired by Al-Wahhab promote literalist readings of scripture, advocate strict gender roles and perpetually guard against innovations, whether new interpretations of the faith or other expressions of Islam, such as mystical Sufism or the Shiite branch of Islam.

The movement’s fortunes have waxed and waned, but became dominant on the Arabian Peninsula in 1932 with the creation of Saudi Arabia. In the 1970s, the movement rapidly raised its global profile when the boom in oil prices allowed the Saudis to export the creed, experts say.

“Saudi bashing is in vogue,” says Shuaib, “and you get it from all sides. But I believe if you attack someone, you’d better know everything about them first.”

One frequent charge against the Saudis is that they use their petrodollars as leverage to spread their puritanical creed. The Saudi Embassy reports the kingdom has helped finance more than 1,700 Islamic centers and mosques, distributed more than 114 million Korans and established several academic chairs around the world.

In Southern California, Shuaib says that Saudis have supported virtually every mosque in the region, with gifts ranging from millions of dollars for construction to free copies of the Koran.

Whether the support comes with strings attached is disputed.

One Southland imam, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, says he stopped taking Saudi money because the kingdom’s emissaries here wanted to choose his board members.

Sabreen Abdul Rahmaan, a woman who said she attended Masjid al Salam when Shuaib assumed leadership of it, said the imam banished the Sufi practice of chanting God’s name, known as dhikr.

Mahmoud Abdel-Baset of the Islamic Center of Southern California says the Saudi government has never attached strings to the free Korans it sends them, usually around the Islamic holy month of Ramadan every year. The center is one of the most liberal in the region, promoting views that most puritans condemn, such as the optional wearing of the hijab (head covering), gender mixing and female leadership.

Shuaib says the oil kingdom has never tried to control the Islam he preaches. “My khutbahs [sermons] are not written in Riyadh or Jeddah.”

Dispute Over Outsiders Being Allowed In

Wahhabism is also accused of promoting hostility to non-Muslims. Some puritanical Muslims interpret Koranic passages not to make allies of Christians or Jews as a literal command to shun them. Shuaib acknowledges that some mosque-goers have complained about outsiders being allowed into the mosque--but says the critics “have problems in their understanding of Islam.”

During one wedding he performed, Shuaib says he was criticized for allowing non-Muslim women to attend without wearing proper covering. After news broke that the Jewish Defense League allegedly planned to bomb the mosque last year, Shuaib accepted flowers from a Jewish neighbor--and was condemned for doing so.

“Brother, are you out of your mind?” Shuaib says he told the critic. “Do you want a bomb or flowers?

“People with extremist views want you to come down very, very hard on non-Muslims,” the imam says.

But even if it wanted to, the King Fahd Mosque would be hard-pressed to keep its neighbors out. The mosque was destined for the public limelight ever since King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud announced his $4-million donation for mosque construction in 1995, followed by a $1-million gift for the land from his son, His Royal Highness Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Fahd.

The mosque, which opened in 1998, is the first the Saudis have fully funded in North America and is one of a handful in Southern California built from the ground up with full Islamic architecture. The structure’s twin domes, 69-foot-high minaret and Turkish tile present a distinctive cultural landmark on a thoroughfare better known for nondescript convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

Mosque community liaison Usman Mahda has given more tours than he can remember to curious schoolchildren, retired communities, Christian and Jewish congregations, and visitors from Japan and Europe. He regularly participates in interfaith events with a nearby Jewish temple and Catholic church.

During his presentations, the red-haired Myanmar native invariably presents Islam not as a harsh faith of intolerant rules but a universal creed of monotheism and peace.

During one recent tour with six members of the Unification Church, Mahda pointed out the mosque’s Koranic calligraphy condemning killing and praising Abraham as “neither Jew nor Christian” but a believer in one God.

“Abraham is the link of all of us,” Mahda told the group.

“Oh yes,” nodded Unification Church member Pasquale Santoro, “he is our father.”

“Come again. Do not be afraid,” Mahda said, escorting them to the door.

“We cannot be afraid of brothers,” a beaming Santoro replied.

Congregation Holds a Variety of Views

Many of the mosque-goers look startled when asked if they believe in shunning non-Muslims. Jamila Taniwal, an Afghanistan native, says she travels to Boston twice a year to see her Jewish best friend.

“We don’t care if this person is Christian and another is Jewish,” says Taniwal, 37. “God made all people.”

The congregation also seems to hold a variety of views on women’s issues. The mosque itself bears the earmarks of puritanical Islam, enforcing a full physical segregation of women, who enter through a separate entrance and pray out of sight of men on the second floor.

Here you will encounter women such as Samira Ellahi, a Pakistani native who veils even her mouth in the presence of men and home-schools her children to protect them from the drugs, alcohol and premarital sex that lure so many American youth.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Sehar, embraces her mother’s strict teachings, concealing herself in black even though she says non-Muslim kids taunt her as a “Halloween witch.”

Sehar says she doesn’t care. “The more people tease you, the more reward you get because you’re obeying God,” Sehar says cheerfully, hugging her mother. “If a man looks at you, God takes all of his blessings from you.”

The congregation also includes free-thinkers such as Sonia Arcangeli, 31. The Marina del Rey resident paints her nails red, views gender segregation as unequal and, to the horror of other women, dissents from the majority view that menstruating women must not touch the Koran.

“God created my body that way and wanted me with my period,” says Arcangeli, a Tunisian native educated in Italy who immigrated here in 1998. “I think it’s between you and God.”

Such views are quickly hunted down for correction, however. News that a Muslim sister prays during her period flies through the mosque. The imam’s wife is called in to track her down, but Arcangeli is nowhere to be found.

Later, Shuaib explains the rules: Islam forbids handling the Koran during times of impurity, such as menstruation. You can read the scripture on a computer. You can read it wearing gloves. You can flip the pages with a pencil. You cannot, however, directly touch the sacred words.

These rules, Shuaib explains, are a test of the true Muslim: Whether you follow the one God’s call to submission. This, he says, is the message of Al-Wahhab and the one true Islam the Saudis aim to promote.

“Either you go with what the Koran says or you don’t,” the imam says, waving a green and gold-edged sacred tome. “You don’t tell Allah to bend the rules for you.”