It's been a crazy week, but major progress has been made turning a house that was trashed by its previous "libertarian" tenants into NH's first full-time mosque. The Masjid al Latiff and Interfaith Community Center (MALIC Center) is Will Coley's vision that is becoming a reality, thanks to an interfaith group of people who have over the last week been removing junk, cleaning up a unspeakably disgusting mess, repairing damage to the home, painting, removing trees, and more. Whether Muslim, Christian, Panentheist, or even agnostic or atheist, it's been awesome to see that the MALIC Center is already creating an interfaith community despite not having officially opened its doors.
(Multiple full truckloads of garbage and junk were removed this week, totaling several hundred dollars in dump fees.)
When Will, who will be the future mosque's Imam and caretaker, approached the Shire Free Church about property availability in Keene for a mosque, I'd have been excited about just that opportunity to help him with that idea, but his vision was much bigger than that. In addition to its full-time mosque function, as an interfaith community center, the MALIC Center will also be usable by other smaller area religions looking for a house of worship, like the Quakers. Plus, Will plans to operate a homeless warming center in the colder months.
As the Shire Free Church is an interfaith peace church, the MALIC Center vision dovetails perfectly with the mission of the Church. It's an honor to have the opportunity to assist with this by both donating the property in question on behalf of the Church and helping clean it up. Thankfully we don't have to do it all alone, as it's a big job. We've had multiple libertarian community members from across the state come to help us including a mayoral candidate in Keene, Bob Call who joined us early on to help haul out the initial junk and trash, and Libertarian candidate for governor in NH for 2018, Jilletta Jarvis who today was helping scrub the floors.
(The interfaith cleanup crew has included Christians working alongside Muslims, and others!)
We've made great progress, as the video below documents, but one of the challenges beyond the cleanup effort itself has been fundraising. Will and his family have raised nearly 50% of their $11,000 goal at crowdfunding site LaunchGood.com and have made the move on faith despite not having reached their goal.
In order to assist further, the Shire Free Church is going to match donations from now until the $11,000 goal is reached! The fundraiser as of now has $5,256 raised by 93 contributors. Only six days remain. If you donate $10, the Church will double it to $20. If you donate $50, the Church will double that to $100, and so on. Please take a moment and give here at Launchgood. (Bitcoin and Litecoin donation QR codes are on the Launchgood page too!)
Here's a megavideo compilation of the several facebook livestreams Will has done from the Center over the last week via his personal profile and the MALIC Center page:
This story originally posted to my main blog site, Free Keene:
https://freekeene.com/2017/09/24/interfaith-group-turning-trashed-home-into-nhs-first-full-time-mosque-donations-now-matched/