Journalist and Morgantown native Asra Nomani saw Islamic extremism up close when her friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan.
So when she returned home to West Virginia to raise her son, she saw warning signs at the local mosque: exclusion of women, intolerance toward non-believers, and suspicion of the West.
Her resulting campaign brought a storm of media attention, pitting her against the mosque's moderates.
Nomani's story is now a PBS documentary called "The Mosque in Morgantown." The documentary will premier in Morgantown Wednesday, and be shown on West Virginia PBS and across the nation Monday night at 10 p.m.
Reporter Ben Adducchio interviewed the current imam of the mosque, Sohail Chaudhry, about the documentary.
He says the documentary gives too much credit to Asra for the changes made in the community.
Q: What do you think about this documentary, what are your initial thoughts?
A: The first time I watched it, I found that it was not the way many people taught in the community. I thought it was a pretty fair assessment of the situation in Morgantown, but that being said, it did not show all aspects which somebody who is living in the community would understand. There are many dynamics of the mosque in Morgantown and the community in Morgantown.
Q: Do you think it’s accurate?
A: I do not think it’s entirely accurate. One of the things which it seemed to me was that the documentary shows that all the changes and all the good things are coming about due to Asra’s efforts in the community. And that is not accurate at all.
The community had always been struggling to resolve these kind of issues and problems. I think it gives a little bit of credit to Asra, where I think other people who worked really hard to bring about positive things to the mosque were not shown and they were not given the due credit they deserved.
Q: How specifically did Asra Nomani’s efforts to change the way women worship in the Morgantown mosque affect other Mosque members?
A: I don’t think it has brought about any change. There were no rules from the very start which said that women are not allowed to pray in the main prayer hall, women were always allowed to pray in the main prayer hall, and they are still. But many women, and the majority, chose not to, and that’s entirely up to them.
The women participation in the mosque has grown since the start, and now we have women teachers teaching at the Islamic school; we have women who are representing the community in the Executive Committee; we have women representing the community in the school board; so I mean women were always part of the community and now they are even more actively participating.
Q: The Morgantown mosque serves Muslims from many different cultures and backgrounds. Are the issues that Asra raised, in your opinion, about a culture clash between people from different countries who have different perspectives on what it means to be Muslim?
A: Those issues were always there. The problem was the way you resolve those issues. The mosque is run democratically, we have elections every couple of years, and that’s one of the things we told Asra initially. If she thinks there are certain things which need to be changed in the mosque, then she needs to run for elections and see if she has enough support in the community.
But instead of going that route, she took a very aggressive route and she put names of different community members in different papers in the U.S., labeling the mosque as an extremist mosque, led by people who are similar to those who executed Daniel Pearl, which is not true at all. So that cultural clash always existed and will always exist, because this is natural.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
A: One point I would like to add is that the documentary does show a few mosque members as extremists or fundamentalists. And I do not want anybody who sees that documentary to have that opinion about those mosque members. It is a place where we welcome everybody and I would encourage everyone to not just go by what the documentary says, but come to our mosque and see for themselves what goes on in there.
Tomorrow, we'll interview the producer and director of this film.
You can see more of the documentary and extended interviews with both Chaudhry and others on our television show "Outlook," Thursday night at 9 on West Virginia PBS.
The public is invited to attend the documentary premier and a round-table discussion at the Metropolitan Theater, Wednesday night in Morgantown.
For more information, go to our Web site.