We need a mosque to serve our needs, just like the church and synagogue serves the needs of Jews and Christians.

I have to admit, that I was always envious of our Jewish and Christian friends and neighbors as I see them get in their cars with their families, wife and children included and head to the church or the synagogue.
My twin daughters, Laila and Diala always raised me the questions as to why the Muslim mosque does not take a role similar to that of the church and synagogue. I always struggled with an answer and I too ask my self time and time why the mosques does not serve and provide the same support a church or a synagogue its members, not only fulfill the members spiritual needs but social needs and economic connections.
To reach a conclusion for this posting, I had to travel back in time to the time I arrived in the US as a young boy of 16 to the City of Gary, Indiana on a snowy March 1962. Believe it or not, Gary, Indiana of all places had a thriving Muslim community of several hundred families, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrian, Turkish, Yugoslav, with Indians and Pakistanis coming in on Sunday from Chicago. Though it was a small community, it built a small mosque on West 11th street. The mosques were small compared to the surrounding churches and synagogue. My late father, who was back home in Palestine a mason, helped build the mosque together with many other participants who worked on the weekend to make sure the mosque, was ready for occupancy in less than two years.
During those days before more radical Muslims where able to take over the mosques all over the US and force their own brand of Islam, we used to go the mosque as a family. My late mother would cook and take food like other families so that after prayer and lesson we all would sit down at the tables and enjoy a meal together. In addition to my late mother and father, sisters and brothers will also join. Indeed the mosque in those days took us in and we participated in its affairs as an entire family and not male dominated institutions with no rooms for the family to be together.
Since those days when Islam was a more enlightened and much more enriching and supportive of the families and their needs, the mosques have changed quite a bit.
New Imams who for the most part do not speak good English and do not know much about the US let alone the city or the community they are, they took over the mosques and transformed the mosques in their own image and as they have back at home, where the mosques was not an institution oriented toward the families, but a place where men meet to pray, listen to some mediocre Imam tells them all the things they are doing, living in the land of non-believers. Of course and for the most part these new Imam have a very strict order of Islam, where women and children are not to be seen let alone heard. The mosque since those days in Gary, Indiana lost its unique place as both a spiritual and a social place, where families, made up of men and women, of children boys and girls would go and attend the prayers together, in the same room with a thin curtain erected during prayer, and once that is done, the entire family would rejoin each other and listen to the lecture and then go down stair and every one join together for a meal and family get together.
Unlike the mosques of these days, the churches and synagogue serve such an important community service to its members who also decide on the priest or the rabbi who lead their community and who also provide lots of social and spiritual advice. The members have a say so on all issues and policies with an executive board elected with real power and real authority unlike our mosques where small group of person appoint themselves as the guardian of our soul and sins and our mosques. In the church as well as in the synagogue, there is a real since of community, men and women, grandparents and children all are members of the community body and soul. The church and the synagogue plays a major role in helping introducing new families to the community, even help with business and commercial relation and of course support the families other social and families needs. There is sense of community that is totally messing in our mosques.
Yes, I want to sit together with my wife and children, listen to the lecture and the discussion. Yes I do accept the need to separate, men and women at prayer time, but not to banish them to the basement, but to give them a special section not to far from their families, and yes, I want us as family to get together with other families and not to be separate from my wife and children after the prayer time. This is time for the entire families to meet other families, husband and wife, and children. This is time for the entire family to meet another entire family. These days, at least away from the Muslim world there is major and urgent need to redefine the role of the mosques as a religious and social venue and not place where we hear retarded Imam tell us that Allah will roast us in hell rather than tell us that Allah loves us and care for us. We need to transform the mosque into a fee based membership organization where the members can make the decision as to who, yes, who will join our community, making sure that there is no room for the “takfeerieen” those who look at any one that does not obey them as a “kafer” a non believer. We need a mosque where the community makes the decision on employment and qualification and where members can question him/her as to where they stand on certain theological and social issues. Yes, we do need mosques where the Imams not only speak and understand the language of the country very well, but someone who also understand the culture and values of the country. We need Imams who also able and willing to build bridged within the community we live in and who are able to reach out to all members of the community, Christians and Jews and Hindus and others. Imams who knows and understand both the Jewish and Christian faiths and who also read the Torah and the Holy Bible. We need mosques that can take their rightful place within the Muslim community, taking us in as an entire family. Yes, I do look forward to the days when I can go together with the entire members of the family and share with them what Islam is all about. We need a mosques of the future not one of the past and not one of the Taliban type. We need enlightened Imam who sees us as members of the community, not living in the margins. After all we are part of this much larger community. Do not expect us to live in isolation from our neighbors and friends. Yes, there is nothing wrong and nothing in Islam that prevents a woman to lead prayer or for women to be active board members. Islam is not made up of men, only; it is made up of families.