Sayed Hassan's family is celebrating Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, by praying daily in a makeshift mosque: a suite in the Wilde Lake Village Center. By the year 2000, the family likely will be praying in Howard County's first free-standing mosque.
The planned Clarksville mosque will be "a place for people to come and gather and children to know that they belong to something," said Mr. Hassan, 53, president of the county's only mosque, Dar-Al-Taqwa.
The county's estimated 200 Muslim families have worshiped in Suite 415 in the Wilde Lake Village Center since August 1992. Before that, they traveled to Washington or Baltimore to worship. Limited room forces the congregation to rent space in the Wilde Lake Middle School for Saturday youth classes in Islamic studies, the Koran and Arabic.
The Wilde Lake suite is very busy these days with the county's Muslims celebrating Ramadan, which began Feb. 2. It marks the revelation of Islam's holy book, the Koran, to the Prophet Mohammed. From dawn to dusk each day, Muslims must abstain from food, beverages, sex and bad behavior.
"It's [about] being a good human being and being a good Muslim," Mr. Hassan said of Ramadan. "And you try to read as much as you can from the Holy Book."
Mr. Hassan, an engineer who was born in Ismailia, Egypt, said continued membership growth has prompted the congregation to seek its own building. He said he is excited about worshiping in the proposed 120-seat, $1 million brick mosque, for which the county Planning Board recommended approval this month.
The Board of Appeals will hold its own hearing March 21 to rule on the special exception sought for the proposed mosque on Clarksville Pike just east of Manor Lane.
The 9,800-square-foot mosque would feature a 29-foot-high dome, 34-foot-high minaret and a multipurpose room for weekend school and social activities.
Plans call for members first to worship and study in an existing house on the 6.8-acre property until the mosque is built.
"The mosque is not only for the grown-up people, it's more important for our children to know they have a place of worship and a place of their own," said Mr. Hassan of Clarksville. "It's a place for people to come together and children to know that they belong to something."
He said only one or two children in each county public school are Muslim, which makes them feel isolated.
But residents who oppose the mosque being built in their community complain that the worship center would damage the landscape and the rural character of the community, create traffic jams and strip away woodlands for wells and septic tank systems.
"At a minimum, we see our quality of life being adversely" affected, James and Debra Sagmiller, who live adjacent to the site of the proposed mosque, testified in writing. "There are going to be car lights and noise, and early morning Dumpster trash pickup where they were not before.
"Another concern is that this will have a negative effect on our property value. The very thing that drew us to the area and that we valued, namely the rural setting, will be eliminated."
The couple said the area already has two special exceptions -- for a veterinarian and a hair salon. They worry that more exceptions will trigger more rezoning petitions.
"A recommendation for the special exception petition could greatly destabilize our area, taking us from a rural residential to a quasi-commercial situation," the couple testified.
Mr. Hassan, who came to the United States about 25 years ago, said the Muslim congregation met twice with residents to try to allay their fears and concerns. The congregants agreed to comply with residents' requests and create designs that suit the neighborhood.
Additionally, the congregation reduced the size of its proposed mosque from 20,000 square feet to 9,800 square feet and cut the total number of proposed parking spaces. Congregants also said there would be no regular outdoor activities.
Nevertheless, Mr. Hassan said some residents still tried to find new problems to complain about.
". . . they ran out of ammunition, and the board passed it," Mr. Hassan said.
During the first public hearing in November, testimony was heated. One opponent said he was worried about religious extremism and terrorism.
Such stereotyping is unfair to the world's 1 billion Muslims, Mr. Hassan said.
There are about 7 million Muslims in the United States, according to the American Muslim Council in Washington.