Westchester Muslim Center

I'm attending this Muslim center since last two years & found this Center highly diverse, very active & productive management. What I really like about this Muslim center is multicultural environment. Arabic, Pakistani, Indian & African Muslims gather for prayers as Umma. There is separate women area in basement & ample parking space. Every Friday there is couple of food stalls which offers quality Asian food. There is Sunday Islamic school for kids & also NYS approved elementary school. In last Ramadhan there was very good arrangements for breaking fast, every day 100s of Muslims individuals & families gather to break their fast & enjoy good food. Food was offered by Arabic community as well as Asian community on alternative day basis.

This masjid goes through phases of being very open and clean and being hostile and not clean. The bathrooms for the women downstairs are, like the rest of the downstairs, subject to a lot of flooding and mold. Hence, it is often damp. They have tried to fix this situation for years, and it has gotten better. They also have problems retaining and keeping people who will clean the masjid daily or weekly. There was a closed circuit television showing the khutbah, but a woman ripped it out a few years ago, saying that TV was haram. I'm not sure if they've ever fixed this. Other than at Jumu'ah time, women pray upstairs with the men. This includes tarawih. Contrary to what the sister above says, many of the women do hang around for the picnicking and such afterwards. I attended WMC for four years, and was never made to feel that it was wrong of me to buy food or goods for sale (sometimes there is a bazaar there after Jumu'ah). The problem with this community is that it is very closed off to strangers, especially strangers who are not part of the dominant ethnic group. Many of the programs serve that population. It can also be uncomfortable if you are not well to do, as many of the people who are in charge of the day to day activities and programs are. The final problem is that even though they have Sunday school and a summer day camp, other congregants frown upon children being in the masjid (for Jumu'ah and tarawih).

I went to jumaah here a few months ag and it was my first time. I entered the masjid through the front door and didn't realize that the sister's entrance was around to the back. The men's prayer space was large and well lit, very nice. I was directed downstairs to a dark musty smelling basement where the bathrooms were not that clean and found praying difficult because the woman's prayer space was gloomy with a room in view of the prayer space that was quite unsanitary in appearance. When I exited the masjid, it was raining and I walked around to the front where the men were grilling chicken and eating. There were no women in view and I wanted something to eat but the brothers gave me stern glances and I left the grounds of the masjid feeling sad. I would not pray there again. (The women tended to pray with their pocketbooks beside them on the prayer mat which they don't do at my regular masjid). Please make this mosque more women friendly!