My journey to a peaceful world
begins in the morning of September 11, 2001.
[Reporter] A plane has crashed into one of the towers
of the World Trade Center.
Immediately there was attachment
of the Muslim world, my religion, to the most heinous crime
in the history of New York City.
No hell no, this is not who we are.
This is not our religion.
This is not what I believe.
So from that moment on, I knew that our mission
of promoting peaceful coexistence has begun.
Since September 11th, 2011 Islam has been
at the center of many of our most
contentious political debates.
Immigration, religious freedom, foreign policy.
People across the political spectrum are angry,
confused, and frustrated.
This is the story of one man's efforts
to have a more productive conversation about Islam.
And it starts in New York.
New York is a place where every language,
every color and creed, every religion,
they co-mingle peacefully.
Sheikh Moussa Drammeh is a Muslim immigrant
from Gambia.
After I arrived in New York I said,
this is where I belong.
Eventually he met his wife Sharina,
they had some kids, and decided
to start an Islamic Mosque, school and cultural center.
They found a building, it's not your typical place
of worship, but it worked for them.
So after a few months of preparation
they were ready to start their Islamic school.
The date, September 11th, 2001.
We were excited, we had about 13 students,
and eight o'clock the school opened.
[Reporter] We understand that a plane has crashed...
The events of that morning threw New York City
into chaos.
People were calling Moussa, and telling him
to close his school.
Then he made a fateful decision.
The school will not close because if
this is happening, and immediately they are attaching it
to our religion then we have moral obligation
to be open and let people talk to us about who we are,
what we believe, what is the difference between us and
these Muslim extremists.
After September 11th, Moussa had a lot
of different feelings.
You know you can't describe it,
the feeling of embarrassment,
the feeling of hurt and pain and disappointment.
It led to seven months of introspection.
He reconsidered his faith.
The conclusion was in order for us to live
like real Muslims, then we have to respect the life,
and from there I realized that the best thing
that we can do as Muslims is to create environments
where there is a peaceful co-existence.
And one day he got a real opportunity
to demonstrate that.
I'm only gonna answer what you want because I could
go on for four days.
So this is Leon Blackman, do not ask about
the black eye, he didn't want to talk about it.
I told you over the phone, that's between you and me.
You guys should see the other guy.
I knew Musa for years because I had a few Muslims
that I was friends with.
At that time Leon was the treasurer
for his Jewish Synagogue in the Bronx.
That's right.
And Leon had a problem.
After years of declining membership,
this mostly elderly congregation was forced to abandon
their worship space and couldn't even afford
the small store front they were leasing.
We had no place to do anything.
Leon didn't tell Moussa,
who learned through a mutual friend of theirs Pat.
When the request came from Patricia
to help say call it my Jewish folks.
Immediately I said yes let them come.
Having the Muslims and Jewish co-existing at a Mosque
was an opportunity too good for us not to enjoy.
So almost every Friday,
a group of Jewish congregants and an Islamic congregation
pray under the same roof.
But when this first started,
some people in Moussa's congregation
weren't too pumped about that.
Well the Muslim community, majority of them
thought we were the craziest,
anti-Islamic people that God ever created.
Having a synagogue in a mosque was something
that they could not tolerate.
One day, they created an organized boycott.
He argued to his congregation
that there was nothing in the Quran
that prevented the practice.
It was about principle for Musa, he was pretty adamant.
We were not budging, we did not second guess,
we had no doubt, and we were not compromising.
The boycott organizers never came back,
but the people that they convinced all came back
plus they came with almost the same degree of understanding
that guess what, there is nothing wrong,
as a matter of fact it is Islamic for us to be hospitable
to these Jewish folks and others.
All of this meant a heck of a lot
to people like Leon.
To be honest with you, he's like an angel in heaven.
That's my honest to goodness opinion of him.
He's like an angel in heaven.
Moussa's Islamic cultural center was one of
the last places that Leon Blackman ever worshiped.
He passed away on February 11th, 2017.
Hosting Leon and this Jewish congregation
is just one of the things Moussa's doing.
He co-hosts interfaith events for kids
at the museum of Jewish heritage,
and events like this one
where scholars lecture on religious tolerance.
As human beings, what brings us all together
is our humanity first.
Moussa knows hosting the Jewish congregation
is a small gesture, but a meaningful one.
We are making sure that the majority
of these older Jewish folks will not live their last days
on this earth yearning for the days where they live
next to family and friends.
We are now taking care of them, we are taking care
of their needs.
He hopes that this is just a small part
of a broader counter narrative about Islam.
The motto of the Bronx is, we refuse to yield to evil,
and this is a message we want the world to know
that Muslims, and Jews, and Catholics,
and Buddhism you name it.
We're all human beings, and we all live symbiotically.
We're a single family now taking care of each other.