The Sacrifice That Built a Future
1969 – 1981
“The example of those who spend their wealth in the way of Allah is like a seed that grows seven ears; in every ear are one hundred grains.” Surah Al-Baqarah (2:261)
### Building Before There Was Money <a id="building-before-there-was-money"></a>
Every great building project in history has required resources: materials, labor, capital, time. The construction of Masjid Al-Rahmah required all of these. But before any of that material wealth could be marshaled, it had to be preceded by something that cannot be purchased or transferred by wire: the willingness of a community to believe, against all practical evidence, that what they were attempting was possible. The Islamic Society of Baltimore began its journey toward a permanent home with no land, no building, and very little money. What it possessed in abundance was faith — and, as its history would demonstrate, that was enough to begin.
### The Community’s Greatest Asset <a id="the-communitys-greatest-asset"></a>
The founders of ISB were not, by any standard, wealthy people at the time they began building the institution. They were physicians in the early years of their careers, engineers building their practices, graduate students living on stipends, business owners whose enterprises were not yet established. Their personal resources were modest. Their financial reserves were thin. And yet they were rich — spectacularly, irreplaceably rich — in the one currency that ultimately built Masjid Al-Rahmah: trust. Trust in one another. Trust in the integrity of their leadership. Trust in the principle of shūrā (consultation). And trust in Allah — the conviction that a community acting sincerely in His cause would not be abandoned.
### Every Dollar Had a Story <a id="every-dollar-had-a-story"></a>
The fundraising effort that ultimately enabled the purchase of ISB’s seven-acre property was one of the most remarkable community financial campaigns in the history of Muslim institutions in America. It was conducted without professional consultants, without online platforms, without social media, without the infrastructure that contemporary nonprofit organizations take for granted. It was conducted by hand.
Community members identified the addresses of Muslim households and student organizations across the country — in some cases using telephone directories and Yellow Pages — and mailed handwritten fundraising letters to thousands of recipients. Over five thousand Muslim Students Association (MSA) members nationwide received personal appeals, asking for contributions of even five dollars toward the goal of establishing a permanent Muslim institution in Baltimore. The response was extraordinary. Students and community members who could afford very little contributed what they had. The accumulated total of small contributions — five dollars here, twenty dollars there, a hundred dollars from a physician who had just received his first real paycheck — added up to approximately sixty thousand dollars raised locally. This was sufficient to purchase a seven-acre property for thirty-six thousand dollars.
Individual acts of sacrifice punctuated this campaign. Dr. Ibrahim Syed, the Society’s first secretary, sold his own stamp collection and donated the proceeds to the masjid fund — a small gesture, by his own account, but one long remembered as emblematic of a community that gave from what little it had rather than waiting for what it did not.
The founders were, justifiably, proud of this achievement — and of the source of the funding that made it possible. “The land was bought with local money,” they would say in later years, with quiet satisfaction. The funds raised by ordinary community members — by students and physicians and engineers and homemakers, through countless acts of modest generosity — had secured the physical foundation of Masjid Al-Rahmah. That was a point of honor that no subsequent donation, however generous, could alter.
International support did come — and it was significant and genuinely appreciated. Saudi Arabia, through Rabita al-Alam al-Islami, contributed eighty thousand dollars toward construction costs, facilitated through the efforts of Dr. Ahmad Sakr. Libya contributed eighty thousand dollars. Indonesia contributed ten thousand dollars. Senegal contributed five thousand dollars. These international donations were essential to the construction phase of the project and are gratefully acknowledged in this history. But they came after the land had already been purchased — purchased with the money of the Baltimore Muslim community itself.
### Integrity Above Everything <a id="integrity-above-everything"></a>
One episode from the fundraising years has become perhaps the most frequently told story in ISB’s institutional memory — and for good reason. When the donation from Saudi Arabia arrived, it came issued not to the Islamic Society of Baltimore but to Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan personally. Many institutions, and many individuals, might have accepted the funds under such circumstances and completed the transfer administratively. Dr. Mushtaq Khan did something different. He returned immediately to the Saudi consulate and insisted that the check be reissued in the name of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, not in his personal name. The consulate complied. The corrected donation was received, recorded, and deposited into ISB’s accounts.
This act — seemingly small in its mechanical detail, enormously significant in its moral weight — became a defining story of ISB’s founding generation. It said everything about the character of the people who built this institution: that they understood themselves to be stewards, not owners; that the resources entrusted to their care were not their personal property; that the trust placed in them by the community and by Allah required nothing less than complete transparency and impeccable integrity. Dr. Mushtaq Khan’s insistence on proper attribution was not merely a matter of institutional procedure. It was an act of faith.
### Consultation Before Commitment <a id="consultation-before-commitment"></a>
Every significant financial decision made during the years of preparation was preceded by extensive community consultation. No major expenditure was committed to by any individual leader acting alone. The principle of shūrā — consultation among community members before important decisions — was not merely a formal procedural requirement. It was a genuinely practiced value, reflected in the long meetings, the extended discussions, the willingness to delay decisions until consensus or at least broad agreement had been reached.
This consultative approach was not always efficient. It was not always fast. There were surely moments of frustration, of impatience with the slow pace of collective decision-making, of individual conviction meeting communal hesitation. But it produced decisions that the community owned — not merely decisions that leaders had made on the community’s behalf, but decisions that reflected the community’s collective will. And decisions made in that spirit were far more likely to be executed with full community commitment than decisions imposed from above.
### Volunteers as the First Investment <a id="volunteers-as-the-first-investment"></a>
Beyond financial contributions, the community’s investment in its own future took the form of labor — the volunteer work that reduced the cost of every project and simultaneously created an ownership stake for those who participated in it. When the land was finally purchased and preparation for construction began, community members showed up on weekends to clear brush, move debris, level ground, and begin the preparatory work for a building project. They were not paid for this work. They did not expect to be. They were investing their most precious possession — their time — in a project that would serve not themselves but their children and their children’s children. That investment, immeasurable in dollar terms, is perhaps the most moving chapter in ISB’s financial story.