Source: The Los Angeles Times
This is a small mosque in a small town about as far as you can get — in more ways than one — from New York City.
Its minaret rises between a car lot and a veterinary hospital on Road 26, a couple of miles north of town. There are nothing but wide-open fields across the street from the recently vandalized Madera Islamic Center.
The men praying here on a recent night included a cardiologist and a pediatrician from Pakistan; two grocers from Yemen; a part-time farmer from Morocco; the owner of a trucking company who was born a McAllister, a member of a black family that arrived in Madera during the Dust Bowl; and a 77-year-old retired mechanical engineer from Syria who takes a shortcut through the fence to get from his house to the mosque.