Riverside Mosque

It was just past one o’clock on an ordinary hot and sunny Friday afternoon at the end of August in 2003 when I first walked into Riverside Mosque, a square, two-story yellow brick building topped with a green dome, adjacent to a Christian Reformed Church and an elementary school affiliated with the church, in a quiet neighborhood near one of the busiest roads in the city of Riverside. With neither a pair of the distinctive minarets ¹ that adorn the majority of mosques around the world, nor a sign board declaring the affiliation of this congregation, Riverside Mosque was no more striking than most other places of worship across the town. In fact, even many of the Muslims who were new to this area would easily pass it as one of the many churches in town. At the time I did not know if this religiously generic façade was a deliberate strategy to keep the community from unwanted and negative attention or if perhaps the architect’s personal plan was to blend the mosque into the local landscape. Nevertheless, although the building might not be very eye-catching, it was probably striking for those passing by the building at this hour on a Friday afternoon to see people dressed differently than ordinary Americans rushing into the building.