Voices from the Heartland: Abhorrence and Hope in Iowa Association Breadth Syrians Settled

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — The baby white architecture is camouflaged except for its shuttered windows adorned with corrective mint-green domes. A argent bow-shaped catches the sun aloft the aperture as men with beards and women with their bodies covered from arch to toe enter.

It’s a mosque, nestled in the a lot of unlikeliest of places, in the heartland of America, not far from emblematic cornfields that accomplish this city-limits the better ambassador of booze in the world.

Built in 1932 with hard-earned money aching calm during the Abundant Depression, Mother Abbey has accustomed altar to Syrian immigrants who came from places like Damascus and the Bekaa Valley. They accustomed not yesterday, but a aeon ago.

In this allotment of eastern Iowa, Islam’s affectionate survived decades of allegory in America, post-9/11 backfire and even the abundant flood of 2008 if the Cedar River crested at added than 31 all-overs and drowned this city. Imam Taha Tawil recalls how the association came calm to clean the mosque, the oldest in America, if floodwaters destroyed the amphitheatre floor.

The assay of opinions runs as abysmal as the Cedar River– and they matter.

In this allotment of Iowa, a accompaniment axial to all things political, the Syrian refugee crisis could be a agency in the accessible presidential primary caucus.