Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Bed-Stuy Mosque Gutted in Blaze Seeks New Prayer Space as Ramadan Nears

By Noah Hurowitz | April 25, 2017 5:17pm
 BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — The owner of the Bed-Stuy building where a mosque was gutted by fire on Saturday has kept the city in the dark about the state of the building’s boilers for more than half a decade, according  Department of Buildings  records. 

 Amin Kobas, whose Coney Island-based company Kobas and Salih Realty owns a 50-percent stake in 986 Gates Ave. — home to the  Brooklyn Broadway Islamic Center  — has received half a dozen tickets for failing to submit a mandatory annual boiler report since 2009, and owes $2,500 in fines for the infractions, according to a spokesman for DOB.
Brooklyn Broadway Islamic Center
View Full Caption

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — The members of a Bed-Stuy mosque gutted by a fire on Saturday are scrambling to find a new home of worship as the holy month of Ramadan nears.

The Brooklyn Broadway Islamic Center, located at 986 Gates Ave. on the corner of Ralph Ave., went up in flames just before 6 a.m. on Saturday, as more than a dozen members were finishing up morning prayers, according to fire officials and the mosque's president, Gulzar Hossein.

More than a dozen worshippers were inside the mosque when the blaze began, but all managed to escape without injury, although one firefighter was brought to Woodhull Hospital with minor injuries, an FDNY spokesman said.

But the fire left the mosque community, which Hossein said numbers about 250, without a permanent home as Ramadan, which begins May 26, quickly approaches.

“It’s unbelievable. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Hossein, who founded the mosque in 2004. “There are some smaller mosques in the area for regular prayers, but we need a place to go for Ramadan.”


Hossein has begun searching for a temporary replacement, but it’s a tall order with so little time, he said. Others, meanwhile, have begun raising money to support the community in an effort to rebuild the building, in which the mosque has a 50 percent stake, records show.

Imam Khalid Latif, a chaplain at NYU and the executive director of the school’s Islamic Center, launched a crowdfunding page on Saturday that by Tuesday afternoon had collected more than $50,000. According to Latif, he is also coordinating with another crowdfunding page that had collected more than $8,000 by Tuesday.

Hossein said he was working with Latif to coordinate donations and was looking into launching his own crowdfunding page, but had not done so as of Tuesday.