Murtaza Sanwari is a natural, if sometimes reluctant, leader.
“Most people take one step back and you’re the one left in the front,” he said of how he became a community leader within the Muslim community in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles.
Sanwari’s story illustrates the messiness of authority in the age of religious flux, and the difficulty of creating a community that is both authentic to your faith and your experiences.
Sanwari and his family moved to the San Fernando Valley from India when he was 7 years old. As immigrants, their social lives revolved around the local mosque. Sanwari described his upbringing as open-minded and liberal, and the mosque encouraged its young people to take initiative.
For instance, in high school, he and his friends instigated a haunted house and Halloween party at the mosque, despite objections among some Muslims to a holiday seen as celebrating the devil. “In hindsight, we probably went pretty far,” Sanwari admitted.
Indeed, his high school friends were “the rebellion group,” he said. “The friends at the mosque were the ones who actually…kind of got me off track.”
“A lot of our friends and friendships were formed inside (the Muslim American Society).”
Friendships, though, also brought him back to his faith in college and his 20s. He and his wife joined the Muslim American Society, a national organization, when it started chapters in the Valley. “People joined because it was very connected to young people,” Sanwari said. “A lot of our friends and friendships were formed inside that organization.”
But during his time with the group, he found his faith becoming more rigid and closed-minded. Even as he became the head of the organization, he said, “as I was learning more and more about it, it just wasn’t resonating with me.”
“You go and live a life outside of the mosque, and then you live another life in the mosque, and that hypocrisy was really frustrating.”
At the same time, he and his peers weren’t finding a place within the mosques. Political divisions between various factions of their parents’ generation, the influx of conservative belief systems and a culture focused on “back home” disillusioned many young Muslim Americans, Sanwari explained.
“We’re now starting our families and we have nowhere for our kids to go. And we didn’t feel comfortable taking our kids to the existing mosques because we weren’t connected to the rhetoric, to the stories, to the environment,” he said. “We felt like we were being asked to live two separate lives. You go and live a life outside of the mosque, and then you live another life in the mosque, and that hypocrisy was really frustrating.”
So people started talking about the need for a community center. Using his background in strategy and development, Sanwari mapped out a business plan. Years later when somebody brought the idea up to him again, “I said, ‘Let’s do it,’” he recalled.
In hopes of avoiding the usual community politics, Sanwari specifically sought out new people for a steering committee, in addition to representatives of the Muslim American Society.
The group brainstormed the values that they wanted the organization to espouse—ideas like excellence, faith, authenticity, citizenship, diversity, collaboration and inclusiveness. To achieve this, they decided that the board should be 50-50 men and women, and the women wouldn’t be required to wear hijabs. They built the board based on the skill-sets needed—business, marketing, technology—rather than religious knowledge. Styling their project as a community center and not a mosque, they decided not to host daily prayers or Friday’s Jumu’ah prayers.
The leaders did not want to compete with the existing mosques, and they also wanted to create a different sort of place. “Faith” was a value—but it was not defined as Sunni or Shia. They did not want to feel a disconnect between their lives inside and outside the mosque—for instance, not having to divide by genders in one space, when you have no problem living and working in mixed gender company otherwise.
“Part of the vision was everyone’s in a different place on this journey and so let them come wherever they may be on that journey,” Sanwari said.
In this spirit, the Ehsan Center developed some creative—and successful—programs. One of their first programs, for instance, was “Tails from the Quran.” Kids would come in their pajamas for story time, but the real purpose was to allow the parents to go out on a date and strengthen their relationship.
Within a few short years, the Ehsan Center’s Sunday school welcomed about 100 children, from pre-school to teens.
The Ehsan Center hosted dialogues on Ramadan and health, and received news coverage for a program covering women’s sexuality, aging and body images. The older generation organized poetry readings and yoga classes for themselves at the center.
“We were so open to having people come and do stuff, and allowing them to use this space,” Sanwari said.
“Everyone’s in a different place on this journey and so let them come wherever they may be on that journey.”
Getting people to take ownership of projects was one of the challenges of running a community center. Fund-raising was also difficult, especially considering many Muslims primarily give to their masjids.
Many seemed confused by the fact that Ehsan was a community center rather than a house of worship and thought the center had taken the wrong course. Amid competition from a new center two miles away, the Ehsan Center’s board decided to close.
Those who didn’t like what the center had become lashed out against Sanwari, claiming he had taken over—and ruined—the project.
“You give your blood and sweat inside of this space only to be told, ‘No, you’re not one of us anymore.’”
“That was painful, because you give time and energy and your blood and sweat inside of this space only to be kind of told, ‘No, you’re not one of us anymore,’” he said.
The experience was disillusioning for Sanwari. After a lifetime of serving in Muslim organizations, he decided to step away completely. “I’d gotten so disenfranchised and frustrated and disappointed and hurt,” he said.
He still prays daily and observes Ramadan, but he has stopped attending prayers at a mosque regularly, and his two children are not in a Sunday school or youth group. Now that the Ehsan Center doesn’t exist, there isn’t a spot that reflects his beliefs and experience, he says.
“Now I’ve made a decision in my life, saying I’m going to live my life for me. I’m not going to live it for others.”
That hardly means Sanwari has become selfish.
He sees his work at Kaiser Permanente as supporting the community, and he has served on the board for UMMA, a clinic started by Muslim doctors to serve the people of South Los Angeles. He also joined the board of Meet Each Need with Dignity (MEND), in the city of San Fernando. It’s a Christian organization, “but it also aligns with my personal values,” he said. He finds “a sense of belonging” through the friendships he’s developing at MEND and outside of the Muslim community.
“I’m a believer in that your life as a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew is not activated when you go into the place of worship,” Sanwari said. “It should be actually active when you leave in that you then espouse values to people around you.”
