From Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
BY TERRY EVANS
FORT WORTH — The melting-pot metaphor that’s applied to America annoys Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brooks.
“I think of America more as a stew, where a carrot remains a carrot and a potato remains a potato, but each contributes its own flavor to a dish that becomes altogether something else,” Brooks said Friday at the dedication of the Eastchase Islamic Center in east Fort Worth. “It is for this reason that we cherish the diversity of this community.”
Nabil Bawa, president of Al-Hedayah Academy, a 6.5-acre campus where the $1.5 million mosque was built, found that statement appropriate on a couple of levels. True, the mosque will serve as a community gathering and enrichment venue in addition to its role as a place of worship.
But Bawa also noted that, at noon, with 90-degree weather bearing down on a courtyard crowded with Muslims and local dignitaries: “We’re all melting.”
Bawa then quickly concluded the dedication ceremony and ribbon-cutting that officially opened Tarrant County’s sixth mosque.
The center provides a convenient place of worship for Muslims who call east Fort Worth and north Arlington home, and it’s associated with a school that’s been serving the Islamic community since 1992, said Dr. Nizam Peerwani, an Al-Hedayah Academy board member.
“We have a lot of Muslims in the Eastchase area,” Peerwani said.
Tarrant County is home to 60,000 Muslims, said Peerwani, the county’s medical examiner.
