In the 1990s, Maryland’s universities drew students from across the world, but many chose to stay after graduation, establishing new lives. Among them was Abdullah, a young Sudanese engineer who came to the University of Maryland, College Park, on a scholarship.
Abdullah had grown up along the Nile, where his father was a farmer and his mother a schoolteacher. He carried with him both the discipline of his studies and the warmth of Sudanese hospitality. Arriving in College Park, he was struck by two things: the scale of the campus and the loneliness of being far from home.
He threw himself into his classes, civil engineering lectures, long hours in computer labs, and internships that introduced him to Maryland’s infrastructure projects. But faith remained his compass. He prayed in dorm hallways, broke fasts with whatever he could find, and soon discovered PGMA, the small mosque in Lanham.
At PGMA, he found not only prayer but family. Older Sudanese immigrants welcomed him, often inviting him to their homes for stews and warm bread. He quickly got involved in the mosque’s programs. He helped with youth tutoring, volunteered to design flyers, and even drafted proposals for how PGMA could expand its small prayer hall into a larger space.
After graduation, Abdullah accepted a job with a Maryland engineering firm, where he contributed to projects that shaped highways and bridges across the state. Yet, no matter how busy work became, he returned each evening to PGMA. For him, service to the mosque was not separate from his profession, it was an extension of it. “If I can design for Maryland,” he often said, “I can also design for my community.”
Years later, PGMA would unveil architectural improvements, a larger prayer space, classrooms, and parking that bore traces of Abdullah’s early sketches. Though he never sought recognition, his fingerprints were literally in the walls.
For the Sudanese community, Abdullah became a model: educated, rooted, faithful, and giving back. His story reflects the broader truth of Maryland’s Muslim history, that mosques were not just funded by donations; they were constructed with the professional skills, labor, and dedication of the people who considered them home.