The Shah Jahan Mosque is famous for being Britain’s first purpose-built mosque, but one of the most incredible twists in the mosques story was that it was commissioned by a Jewish man, Dr Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner. He commissioned the mosque in 1889 to provide a place of worship for Muslim students at his Oriental Institute.

If a Jew commissioning a mosque seems a bit strange, a British Jew founding a University in Pakistan is probably just as strange. But these are just two of the contributions Dr. Leitner made to the Muslim world

http://www.judaism-islam.com/four-mosques-with-jewish-stories/

The Parisian mosque that saved Jews

During the holocaust, France was home to thousands of Jews and Muslims from North Africa. Both spoke Arabic, had similar traditions, similar dietary restrictions, their males were circumcised, spoke a similar language, prayed in a similar fashion, had the same names and even looked alike.

Against this backdrop, stood the Grand Mosque of Paris, a tiled, walled fortress the size of a city block which served as a place to pray, but also as a place of sanctuary where visitors could eat, relax and bathe during the Vichy occupation of France.

As the two people were so similar French Algerian partisans were able to provide assistance to Jewish families, by hiding them in the mosque, while Si Kaddour Benghabrit (the mosque’s imam and founder) issued them with Muslim certificates of identity.

With these papers between 500 and 1,600 Jews were able to escape Nazi France and seek refuge in nations where they wouldn’t face certain death.

http://www.judaism-islam.com/four-mosques-with-jewish-stories/2/

The New York synagogue inside a mosque

In Parkchester, New York there is a small orthodox Jewish congregation that worship in the Islamic Cultural Center of North America (home of the Al-Iman mosque).

The relationship between Jews and Muslims in Parkchester began when the Young Israel Congregation were running clothing drives for needy families. One of the recipients of their charity was Sheikh Moussa Drammeh, the founder of the Al-Iman Mosque, who was collecting for some of his poorer congregants.

Through that initial meeting, a relationship developed between the two communities and the synagogue continued to donate to the Islamic center. But in 2003, after years of declining membership, Young Israel was forced to sell its building (some of its chairs and tables were given to the mosque).

The remaining congregants were left without a place to pray and unable to pay for religious faculty. Rabbis from the Chabad of East Bronx (a pious congregation several miles away) volunteered to lead the religious services, but they were still without a building. When Drammeh learned of their plight, he offered to accommodate their congregation in the Muslim center, “They don’t pay anything, because these are old folks whose income are very limited now,” said Drammeh. “Not every Muslim likes us, because not every Muslim believes that Muslims and Jews should be like this,” he said. But “there’s no reason why we should hate each other, why we cannot be families”.

He went on to say how he admired the dedication of the Chabad rabbis, who walk 15 miles every Saturday to run the prayer services for this ailing community.

http://www.judaism-islam.com/four-mosques-with-jewish-stories/4/