Called to prayer

Native of Egypt leads Islamic community

By Rachel Adams, radams@bgdailynews.com — 270-783-3256

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

A tour of the newly built Islamic Center of Bowling Green begins not in the foyer, but in the dressing room.

The womens room is on the left as one enters the mosque; the mens room is on the right. Immediately inside each room is a large dressing room, thickly carpeted in green and lined with shelves made to hold hundreds of pairs of shoes worshippers may not wear them inside the sanctuary.

Men and women alike wash their hands, faces and feet before leaving the dressing room short pillars sit facing knee-high shower heads for ease of feet-washing and women don scarves to cover their heads.

This cleansing ritual is very important to the Muslim faith, said Dr. Nagy Morsi, a Bowling Green gastroenterologist and chairman of the Islamic Center. Restrooms in the mosque are equipped with Washlets sort of a portable bidet that attaches to toilet seats and the dressing rooms also contain showers, which are used during the last 10 days of the holy month of Ramadan, when many Muslims choose to sequester themselves inside the mosque.

Outside the dressing rooms is the foyer, a socializing area complete with couches. Double doors lead into the sanctuary, a room with tall windows and rich black tapestries hung on the walls. The tapestries, which are imported from Egypt, are decorated with heavy gold braid that spells out stanzas from the Koran, Morsi said. Extra-comfortable carpet is laid in strips of light and dark green comfortable, Morsi said, because worshippers kneel during the prayer service, and striped to help members of the congregation kneel in a straight line.

The prayer room, which can hold 300 worshippers, faces Mecca, the most holy city in Islam. The leader stands on an altar or kneels at the front of the room to lead the weekly prayer service, which takes place at noon on Fridays. The mosque also opens five times a day so Muslims may come for their daily prayers.

When Morsi came to Bowling Green in 1997, he worshipped with a group of people at Western Kentucky University who would meet regularly at the house of one of the participants. Eventually the small congregation rented space on Willoughby Lane, then moved to Old Morgantown Road, where they stayed for four years until the mosque opened earlier this year.

The congregation of 250 is mostly Bosnian, Morsi said, but his native land is Egypt. He moved to Houston 20 years ago, but moved to Bowling Green to be near Nashville, where his wife a Kentucky native studied at Vanderbilt University. Morsi, whos also a member of the Islamic Centers board of trustees, opened a successful gastroenterology practice on Ashley Court.

Bowling Green has been good to the Islamic Center and its congregants, Morsi said.

(The people are) extremely tolerant they have reacted in a superb way and they have been extremely supportive of me and the Muslim community, he said. They showed substance and generosity in their way of reacting to this. … Many people have commended me on what I have done and theyre very proud of the congregation here.

There are a few things Morsi would like people to know about Islam, however.

We worship the same God as the Christians and the Jews, he said. We have about 90 percent of commonality between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. … No Muslim is considered to be a Muslim unless they believe in Christianity and Judaism, and believe in Jesus and believe in Moses.

The differences are few: Muslims believe in Jesus as a prophet, not as the son of God, Morsi said. They believe God is one entity, who was never born, had no son and no partners. The prayer services dont include singing, and Muslims worship God five times a day: dawn, noon, afternoon, dusk and night.

Morsi would like to stay in Bowling Green, he said.

I love it here in Bowling Green, especially after the incredible accommodation … of the community to the Islamic Center, he said.  Daily News ·813 College St. ·PO Box 90012 ·Bowling Green, KY ·42102 ·270-781-1700