stevejzoo writes:
“Gannett’s Westchester county paper, the Journal News, has a story today about a new Islamic resource center and library in Mt. Vernon, New York. The library is associated with a mosque. Quoting from the story:
Syed A. Alirahi, the library’s director, said the idea for the library came to him in 1998, after dissatisfying experiences at public libraries.
“I’ve been using public libraries since I came to this country 27 years ago,” said Alirahi, a 47-year-old Pakistani immigrant. “I didn’t find too many books about… Islam. When we had Sunday and Saturday school … students weren’t informed about Islam, and they needed some materials and help. I said, why don’t I open up something?”
another Muslim library
I don’t know how common these are, but while looking for some other information came across this private Muslim library in Ottawa:
http://www.magma.ca/~omcc/oml.html
http://www.magma.ca/~omcc/oml.html
My experience with Christian churches is that most have their own small libraries for their parishoners. But these two libraries seem different because they are serving a wider community. I see this as a positive thing, but other libraries would do well to consider adding more material on Islam, both for their Muslim users and for those users who simply want to learn about Islam.