From Vision to Institution
1969
“Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” Surah Ar-Ra’d (13:11)
### A Vision Takes Form <a id="a-vision-takes-form"></a>
By 1969, the informal Muslim community gathering in Baltimore’s living rooms and borrowed university halls had arrived at a crossroads. The community had grown. The need for structure had become undeniable. Spontaneous gatherings were necessary and precious, but they were not sufficient — not for a community with aspirations to permanence, to education, to service, to the establishment of an enduring Islamic presence in Maryland. Something more durable was required. Something with a name. Something with a constitution. Something that could own property, open bank accounts, elect officers, enter into legal agreements, and — most importantly — continue to exist and function beyond the lives of any particular group of individuals.
The decision to incorporate the Islamic Society of Baltimore as a formal nonprofit religious organization was not made lightly or quickly. It was the product of extended consultation among community members — discussion about what kind of organization they wished to build, what principles would govern it, what its name would say about its identity, and who would bear the legal responsibility of bringing it into formal existence.
### September 1969 — An Institution Is Born <a id="september-1969-an-institution-is-born"></a>
On September 2, 1969, the Islamic Society of Baltimore was formally incorporated as a nonprofit religious organization in the State of Maryland. The incorporation was completed by three African American Muslims: Yusuf M. El-Abdullah, Salativel Bey, and Aly T. Holley. Their signatures on the original Articles of Incorporation constitute the earliest written proof of ISB’s legal existence — documents of permanent historical significance that connect the institution’s present to its deepest roots.
The choice of these three individuals as incorporators was not incidental. It reflected something important about the character of the community that was being established. ISB did not belong to any single ethnic group, any single country of origin, any single cultural tradition. Its founding incorporators were African American Muslims — citizens who had been Muslim before the Immigration Act of 1965 brought large numbers of Muslim immigrants to American shores, whose presence in American Islam predated the community’s newest arrivals, and whose participation in the incorporation of ISB established, from the very beginning, that this institution would be genuinely inclusive: a masjid for every Muslim who came to its doors.
Oral history preserves more than one meeting from these founding weeks. Aisha Khan remembered a planning gathering on November 1, 1969, at Dr. Shami’s apartment, followed the next day by a structured Sunday program at Johns Hopkins — a sequence consistent with the Society’s dual life in borrowed apartments and university halls. Dr. Ibrahim Syed was named the Society’s first secretary, recording attendance, discussions, and decisions on a portable typewriter — records that mark the true beginning of ISB’s institutional memory. Yusuf M. El-Abdullah, in addition to his role as an incorporator, is also remembered as an early treasurer, his name appearing on a surviving masjid-fund receipt from the following year.
### A Constitution Built on Consultation <a id="a-constitution-built-on-consultation"></a>
Alongside the Articles of Incorporation, the community adopted an original Constitution and Bylaws that would serve as the governing framework for ISB’s operations. This document — produced through the deliberate, patient process of communal discussion and shūrā (consultation) — established the foundational principles upon which everything that followed would be built.
Those principles were clear and enduring: devotion to Allah in all of the organization’s purposes and activities; preservation and transmission of Islamic beliefs, knowledge, and practice; provision of Islamic education for community members of all ages; service to the broader human community; governance through consultation and collective decision-making; accountability of leadership to the membership; and responsible stewardship of all resources entrusted to the organization’s care.
These were not merely organizational principles. They were, in effect, a statement of Islamic ethics applied to institutional life. They reflected the founders’ understanding that a Muslim institution must itself embody the values it proclaims — that a masjid cannot teach honesty while practicing opacity, cannot preach generosity while hoarding resources, cannot celebrate unity while tolerating exclusion. The Constitution was, in this sense, as much a spiritual document as a legal one.
### Leadership Rooted in Service <a id="leadership-rooted-in-service"></a>
In the years immediately surrounding incorporation, Dr. Mohamed Zein Awad served as the community’s first informal president — a role he had effectively been playing since the earliest gatherings at Reed Hall and in private homes. His leadership was defined less by formal authority than by consistent service and trusted presence. He organized, he convened, he communicated, he followed through. Around him, other physicians, graduate students, and engineers volunteered their time and talents, forming the nucleus of a working community leadership that would, over time, become more formally structured.
Physicians volunteered their medical knowledge. Engineers offered technical expertise. Business owners contributed financial counsel. Homemakers organized community events, prepared meals, and created social warmth without which no institution truly thrives. The community was, from its earliest days, a genuinely collective enterprise — not the project of any single powerful individual, but the shared responsibility of everyone who believed in what it was trying to accomplish.
### More Than a Name <a id="more-than-a-name"></a>
The name chosen for the new organization — the Islamic Society of Baltimore — was itself a statement of identity and intention. Not the “Pakistani Society of Baltimore” or the “Arab Society of Baltimore” or any formation that would have identified the institution with a particular ethnicity or national origin. The Islamic Society of Baltimore. A society defined by faith rather than nationality. A society open — in principle and in practice — to every Muslim who came to its doors, regardless of where they had been born, what language they had grown up speaking, or what cultural traditions they brought with them from their countries of origin.
This choice of name embodied a vision of Islamic universalism — the principle that the Muslim ummah (community of believers) transcends all national and ethnic boundaries, that the bond of īmān (faith) is stronger than any bond of blood or soil. It was a vision that would be tested, across the decades that followed, by the natural human tendencies toward cultural clustering and ethnic affinity. And it was a vision that ISB, at its best, consistently honored.
### The Strength of Unity <a id="the-strength-of-unity"></a>
At the moment of its incorporation, ISB had no masjid, no land, no building of any kind, and very limited financial resources. What it had was something more durable: a legal existence, a governing document, a set of agreed-upon principles, and a community of believers who had committed — collectively, formally, in writing — to the work of building a lasting Islamic institution in Baltimore. That commitment was itself a form of wealth. It was the foundation upon which everything that would follow was built.
### Preparing for the Next Chapter <a id="preparing-for-the-next-chapter"></a>
With incorporation achieved and a governing constitution in place, ISB’s leadership turned its attention to the most immediate practical challenge: finding a regular, reliable gathering place. The living rooms of private homes had served the community faithfully in its earliest years. But the community was growing, and it needed a larger and more consistent space. The solution, which would serve ISB for over a decade, was found at Johns Hopkins University — specifically in Shaffer Hall, whose gathering rooms would become the spiritual home of the Baltimore Muslim community throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s.