Shakil Patel is a British architect who has lived and worked in Oxford and Loma Linda, California. He is best known for his work designing mosques for Muslim congregations in the latter.
A British Indian, Patel was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. He moved to Oxford in 2015, choosing the town because, as a religious Muslim, he does not drink alcoholic beverages, and was attracted by the fact that Oxford, which was founded by Seventh-day Adventists, was legally dry. [1] Patel served a 10-year term as City Planning Commissioner, consistently voting against lifting the ban on selling alcohol. [1] [2] He is a member of the Board of Directors. [3]
Patel is known for designing mosques that fit into the California landscape by combining elements of California's Spanish colonial style with traditional Islamic features such as minarets and/or tower and pointed arches. [4]
Patel's buildings include the Islamic Center of Riverside, [5] the Islamic Center of the South Bay, [6] and the Ontario, California masjid. [4]
A mosque, also called a masjid, is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Islamic prayers are performed, such as an outdoor courtyard.
Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire and in Riverside County, and is about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is also part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Riverside is the 61st-most-populous city in the United States and the 12th-most-populous city in California. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 314,998. Along with San Bernardino, Riverside is a principal city in the nation's 13th-largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario MSA ranks in population just below San Francisco (4,749,008) and above Detroit (4,392,041).
The Barelvi movement, also known as Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah is a Sunni revivalist movement that generally adheres to the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of jurisprudence, and Maturidi and Ash'ari schools of theology with hundreds of millions of followers, and it encompasses a variety of Sufi orders, including the Chistis, Qadiris, Suhrawardis and Naqshbandis as well as many other orders of Sufism. They consider themselves to be the continuation of Sunni Islamic orthodoxy before the rise of Salafism and the Deobandi movement.
Islam is the second-largest religion in the United Kingdom, with results from the 2021 Census recording just under four million Muslims, or 6.0% of the total population in the United Kingdom. London has the largest population and greatest proportion (15%) of Muslims in the country. The vast majority of British Muslims in the United Kingdom adhere to Sunni Islam, while smaller numbers are associated with Shia Islam.
The Islamic Center of Washington is a mosque and Islamic cultural center in Washington, D.C. It is located on Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue just east of the bridge over Rock Creek. When it opened in 1957, it was the largest mosque in the Western Hemisphere.
The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) is based in Plainfield, Indiana, owns Islamic properties and promotes waqf in North America. Many Muslim institutions founded by immigrants who arrived in the US during the 1960s have roots in the Muslim Students Association where they were college activists. In the 1970s and thereafter, NAIT helped provide college students with a place to provide worship services. NAIT does not provide any financial or other monetary support to the Muslim Student Association. NAIT serves as the trustee of about 200 Islamic centers, mosques and schools. The properties of those mosques are estimated to be worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Islamic Society of Orange County, incorporated on January 5, 1976, is one of the largest Muslim centers in the Western Hemisphere, with almost 7,000 worshipers. It is located on approximately 5.2 acres (21,000 m2) in Garden Grove, California. It is neighbored by the Islamic Center of Irvine. Its director, Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, is a scholar of Comparative Religion who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. ISOC is one of the first Muslim centers to be established in Southern California.
The East London Mosque (ELM) is situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets between Whitechapel and Aldgate East. Combined with the adjoining London Muslim Centre and Maryam Centre, it is one of the largest mosques in Western Europe accommodating more than 7,000 worshippers for congregational prayers. The mosque was one of the first in the UK to be allowed to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhan.
Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center is a mosque in Northern Virginia. It is located in the Seven Corners area of unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
The Markazi Masjid, also known as the Dewsbury Markaz or Dar ul Ulum, is a mosque in the Savile Town area of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, England.
The Baitul Huda Mosque is an Ahmadiyya mosque located in the Sydney suburb of Marsden Park, in New South Wales, Australia. The mosque is run by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (AMC).
The Islamic Cultural Center of New York is a mosque and an Islamic cultural center in East Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, United States. It is located at 1711 Third Avenue, between East 96th and 97th Streets. The Islamic Cultural Center was the first purpose-built mosque in New York and continues to be one of the city's largest. The mosque's older dwelling in a townhouse at 1 Riverside Drive is still in continual prayer use as a satellite location.
The Jamia Mosque is a mosque in Mid-Levels, Hong Kong. The mosque is the oldest mosque in Hong Kong. The neighbouring streets Mosque Street and Mosque Junction are named after this mosque. Mufti Abdul Zaman is the main Imam of this Mosque and he leads prayers and taraweeh in the month of Ramadan.
Park51 was a development originally envisioned as a 13-story Islamic community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The developers hoped to promote an interfaith dialogue within the greater community. Due to its proposed location, two blocks from the World Trade Center site of the September 11 attacks, the proposed building was widely and controversially referred to as the "Ground Zero mosque".
The Empire Strykers are an American professional indoor soccer team based in Ontario, California. Founded in 2013 as the Ontario Fury, the team made its debut in the Professional Arena Soccer League at the start of the 2013–14 season. The team plays its home games at the Toyota Arena under the leadership of general manager, head coach, Jimmy Nordberg. As of May 2014, the league is known as the Major Arena Soccer League. The team re-branded to its current name in 2022.
The Inland Empire is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County and Orange County to the west and San Diego County to the south. The bulk of the population is centered in the cities of northwestern Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County, and is sometimes considered to include the desert communities of the Coachella and Victor Valleys, respectively on the other sides of the San Gorgonio Pass and San Bernardino Mountains from the Santa Ana River watershed that forms the bulk of the Inland Empire; a much broader definition includes all of Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The combined land area of the counties of the Inland Empire is larger than ten U.S. states—West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.
On December 2, 2015, a terrorist attack, consisting of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing, occurred at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, United States. The perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, targeted a San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and Christmas party of about 80 employees in a rented banquet room. Fourteen people were killed and 22 others were seriously injured. Farook was a Muslim and an American born citizen of Pakistani descent, who worked as a health department employee. Malik was a Muslim and Pakistani-born green card holder. After the shooting, the couple fled in a rented Ford Expedition SUV. Four hours later, police pursued their vehicle and killed them in a shootout, which also left two officers injured.
The Islamic Center of Riverside is a mosque in Riverside, California. Built in 1979, Friday services regularly attract over 1,000 worshipers.
Ralph Kenneth Deleon is a Filipino, and legal permanent resident of the United States, who in 2015 was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder of members of the United States military and government, and providing material support for terrorists. Deleon is serving a 25-year sentence.
Marta Felicitas Ramirez de Galedary is a co-founder of the La Asociacion Latino Musulmana de America (LALMA) in 1999. LALMA is at the forefront of providing information and support to Latinos in Southern California. She is a former nursing director at the UMMA Clinic in Los Angeles. Galedary also works with LA Voice, and MuslimARC, She is also a registered nurse.