Mosque is under construction in Gloucester County after a three-year fight for approval

When the Washington Township Zoning Board finally gave its blessing to a mosque expansion plan — after turning down two earlier versions — local Muslims celebrated with cheers, tears, and prayers.

“It was like a dream come true,” said Saira Ahmed, a leading member of the Minhal Academy congregation.

Construction is underway on 3,000 square feet of new space for the mosque at the Ganttown Professional Plaza, across a parking lot from a former medical office where Minhal Academy has held prayer services for 10 years.

But the three years preceding the board’s 6-1 vote in April “were like a nightmare,” said Imran Hasan, who also helped spearhead the effort. The Gloucester County township “gave us a very tough time,” he said.

As South Jersey has become steadily more diverse in recent decades, the Muslim community, which includes a variety of races, ethnicities, and countries of origin — including the United States — has grown.

A Pew Research study of religious affiliation estimates that 3% of New Jersey adults identify as Muslim. Community leaders said about 7,000 Muslim families live in South Jersey, where the number of Islamic schools, community centers, and mosques has grown to about 20 in Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Atlantic, and Cumberland Counties.

“When I moved here from Atlanta in ’07, there were only two mosques I knew of in South Jersey. Now there are 10 just in Camden County,” said Muqaddas Ejaz, of Cherry Hill. She serves as director of communications for the Muslim Network, a New Jersey nonprofit that aims to connect communities statewide.

“For any house of worship to flourish, it needs to provide religious services and observances, and outreach to the larger community,” Ejaz said. “Communities need to get to know each other.”

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Mosques typically offer educational, social, and religious services under one roof, often in existing commercial buildings, which is what was proposed in Washington Township.

In 2012, Saira Ahmed and her husband, Ahsan Abdulghani, and other founding members established the nonprofit Al-Minhal Academy for Islamic Learning at the Ganttown Professional Plaza, a commercial complex built in 1989. It’s mostly occupied by health-care and wellness-oriented service providers.

Ahmed and Abdulghani, both physicians, said they found it challenging to close their separate practices every Friday, the Muslim holy day, to commute to services at the nearest mosque in Voorhees, Camden County.

Only a handful of local Muslims attended prayer services at Minhal Academy in the beginning, but the number grew, and in 2018, Minhal purchased, at auction, a long-vacant cluster of three other offices at the plaza and drew up plans to move the mosque there.

Minhal applied to Washington Township for a zoning variance for a house of worship in a neighborhood commercial district and was denied.

In January 2020, Minhal Academy filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Camden alleging that the board’s refusal to approve the expansion violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

In September of that year, the zoning board rejected a tentative settlement of the dispute. But the two sides settled in March, and the township council is expected to sign off on the new agreement.

“The township and the board vehemently deny that the denial of the original application or [the] subsequent denial ... were motivated in any way by the applicant’s religious affiliation,” Matthew Madden, a lawyer who represented Washington Township in the litigation, said in an email.

The denial “was the result of legitimate land use concerns,” Madden said. “The board and the township have denied liability throughout the course of the litigation, and the matter has been resolved without any admission of liability by the township or the board.”

Said zoning board chairman Joseph Bennis: “I’m glad this all worked out. I wanted to give them their chance. I’m glad they’re here, and I hope they do well.”

Purpose-built mosques, such as the Garden State Islamic Center in Vineland, are unusual for newer Muslim congregations locally and nationally. In Salt Lake City, for example, a mosque opened after renovating a free-standing former bank building.

And as the market for suburban office space evolves in the region, nontraditional tenants are becoming more common, said Jason Wolf, managing principal of Wolf Commercial Real Estate in Marlton.

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“We are seeing interest in older buildings from churches” and other religious organizations, he said, noting the conversion of the landmark Danzeisen & Quigley sporting goods store on Route 70 in Cherry Hill into the High Place Church.

“Given the cost of construction, if you have the site and the infrastructure already in place, and you only need an interior renovation and a zoning change, it can make sense” for a religious organization to consider office or other commercial spaces, Wolf said.

The 50-or-so local families active in the Washington Township congregation hope to move into their new quarters within a month.

“This will be the main prayer hall for men, which will be carpeted,” Abdulghani said earlier this month as he showed visitors around the new space, where about $150,000 in renovations are underway.

“This is a town where we want to feel welcome, even if we aren’t,” he said.

The prayer hall for women and children likewise will be carpeted and also is far larger than in the current cramped quarters. The new mosque will include more restrooms with fixtures for traditional Muslim ablutions, such as the washing of the feet before Friday prayer.

“People who were opposed to the mosque kept asking about [the mosque] overloading the septic system, as if all the Muslims were going to come here to use the bathrooms at once,” Ahmed said. “We said: ‘We live in Washington Township. We have bathrooms in our homes. We’re good.’”

Faheem Lea, the iman of the Quba School and Islamic Center in Camden, noted: “A mosque is not only a center for prayer. It’s an opportunity to do more community service. Muslims have a duty to be active and serve their neighbors.

“These are people who are looking to make their mark,” Lea said. ”They’re looking to be part of the American fabric.”

Aymen Aboushi, a lawyer who represented Minhal Academy, said the settlement has “essentially removed the barriers that were in place to inhibit a mosque, which is an inherently beneficial use, as are most houses of worship” from opening in the township.

“Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of this type of work,” said Aboushi, who also represented the Garden State mosque in its discrimination case against the City of Vineland and is the lawyer for an Islamic center seeking a building permit in Teaneck, Bergen County.

“Minhal Academy’s success is everyone’s success, as it shows that new uses [for existing properties] are beneficial to the community, and can add much-needed revitalization,” Aboushi said. “It certainly is good news. But Minhal Academy has been struggling with this since 2019.”