EVERETT — A small Muslim congregation must come up with $80,000 to pave its gravel parking lot or risk being turned out of its home by city code officials.
“Right now our funds are $9,000,” said Aurangzeb Akbar, who owns the land where the mosque, known as the Islamic Center of Everett, is located. “I don’t know where we’ll get the money.”
The Muslim group has been meeting in a small house on W. Casino Road since 2001, but its trouble with the city of Everett began two years ago, when a neighbor complained about trailers parked in the mosque’s lot.
When city officials looked into the complaint, they discovered the mosque, which is on a lot zoned for duplexes, small condominium buildings or other medium-density residences, Everett spokeswoman Kate Reardon said.
The city’s investigation also revealed that a second house on the lot is being used as a boarding house — another use that’s prohibited by the lot’s current zoning, she said.
To add to Akbar’s woes, the city also told him that he must pave the gravel lot in order to accommodate the dozens of cars that pull in on Fridays for the best-attended prayer service of the week.
There are just two other mosques in Snohomish County, both larger. They are the Evergreen Islamic Institute, also known as Dar Alarqam, in Lynnwood, and Muslim Association NW, also known as Masjid Umar al Farooq, in Mountlake Terrace.
But the location of the Islamic Center of Everett makes it popular with Boeing employees, who can easily stop by for afternoon prayers on their lunch breaks.
The Islamic Center’s neighborhood is filled with large apartment complexes, strip malls with small ethnic grocery stores and other markets and a few churches.
Akbar, a Pakistani man who came to the U.S. in 1980, said he’s trying to address the code violations.
Two years ago, there were four trailers on the lot, all offered as temporary housing to the homeless, he said. Now, there are just two trailers. One is used for storage, and the other is the occasional residence of a Pakistani immigrant who frequently travels between the U.S. and his homeland.
There is much work left to do to save the mosque. On June 12, Akbar and other mosque leaders will attend a public hearing to make their case for a special use permit seeking to change the lot’s zoning to allow for a place of worship.
“I don’t think anyone will protest us,” Akbar said, adding that the mosque is a good neighbor and hosts an annual feast for all the residents of W. Casino Road.
“It’s a free meal, once a year,” he said.
Now, the mosque leaders plan to ask their neighbors to help them raise the money to pave the parking lot, Akbar said.
The Islamic Center of Everett was formed in 2001, when a small group of Muslims, mostly Boeing employees, began renting the W. Casino Road house, Akbar said.
In 2002, the owner of the house put it up for sale. Akbar said he bought the house to make sure the Muslim community could continue meeting there.
In 2006, the house next door to the mosque went up for sale. Akbar bought that one, too, to preserve the mosque’s parking lot, which stretches between both houses.
“The previous owner had been renting rooms there for a long time, so I just kept doing that,” Akbar said.
There are seven people currently living in the boarding house, he said.
Akbar has avoided making many changes since the complaint about the trailers was filed two years ago, Reardon said. It wasn’t until city officials threatened him with tickets for code violations that he applied for a special use permit, she said.
Special use permits are considered on a case-by-case basis. It’s not unusual for churches in residential areas to operate under such permits.
The city has gone out of its way to work with Akbar, Reardon said.
“We’ve been working with him for two years to get to a point where he’ll be in compliance,” she said. “We began to move toward enforcement, and that’s when compliance began.”
Mosque leaders bristle at the city’s suggestion that they’ve been bad neighbors.
“This is an official mosque, and any Muslim who wants to can pray here,” said Kyle Smith, one of the mosque’s imams. “But as far as zoning, that’s not how the city sees it.”
If the mosque’s permit application is denied, the congregation will be upset, Akbar said.
The mosque is small, and already asks much of its members, Akbar said. It exists entirely thanks to voluntary contributions, known as sadaqa among Muslims. More women would attend, but many prefer the larger mosques in Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace, where they have a separate entrance.
At the Everett mosque, women must risk brushing their shoulders with men as they remove their shoes, wash their feet and duck into a small room protected by thick curtains.
“We are a nonprofit, trying to do community development,” Akbar said. “But we don’t have the money.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
