Word: minareted
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...Flushing High School in Queens, more interested in basketball than in books, and he was a silent watcher at the Hazrat-i-Abubakr Sadiq mosque. His imam in those days, Mohammed Sherzad, remembers Zazi's visits to the white two-story building topped with a blue dome and minaret: "Every Saturday and Sunday, I had a class for the younger generation. Some students would ask me questions, but Najibullah never asked - he was listening...
Zazi would turn up for afternoon prayers each Friday - Islam's holy day - parking the ABC van in the parking lot outside the sprawling brick complex with its black dome and narrow minaret. Other regular worshippers agreed that he never spoke to anyone and usually rushed off immediately once the service ended. Many are suspicious of the charges against Zazi but say that, if true, Najibullah Zazi could not possibly have been indoctrinated in Denver. "He was like an outlier," says a mosque official who didn't want his name used. "This is a community that is very close...
...aspect of mosque design provokes more anger than most: the minaret. Across Europe, minarets on city skylines have become a political issue. In the Netherlands, Filip Dewinter, a leader of the right-wing Vlaams Belang party, decried a new Rotterdam mosque because its minarets were higher than the lights of the city's soccer stadium. "These kinds of symbols have to stop," he told Radio Netherlands Worldwide. In 2007, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that minarets shouldn't be "ostentatiously higher than church steeples...
Debate is playing out within Western Muslim communities, too. "The immigrant Muslims often want [a minaret], because for them it symbolizes a mosque," says Omar Khalidi, an archivist at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But they cost a lot, and there are others who argue that [economically,] they're a luxury Muslims can't afford...
...design also earned Erkoçu a commission for the An-Nasr Mosque in Rotterdam, where again he is tweaking tradition. An-Nasr's minaret will be glass - transparent and subtle, rather than dominating the skyline. The call to prayer will be broadcast in lights, pulsating to the rhythm of the muezzin's voice. Once the mosque is built, Erkoçu hopes Rotterdam's citizens will see the call to prayer beamed across the sky. Muslims will be able to look up and, no matter where they are in the city, turn their thoughts to prayer...