Utah Shiites win $250K grant toward preserving their LDS chapel-turned-mosque

Northern Utah’s growing Shiite Muslim community got a $250,000 boost in its quest to preserve a historic Latter-day Saint chapel-turned-mosque.

But all the worshippers’ financial prayers have not been answered — yet.

While Taylorsville’s Alrasool Islamic Center is the happy recipient of a highly competitive grant from National Fund for Sacred Places, the award is conditional on the mosque’s ability to raise $400,000 on its own within the next year and a half or so.

So the 250 to 300 worshippers who gather there each week know they still have work to do.

The building’s beginnings

The original portion of the two-story brick building was constructed in 1894, predating Utah’s statehood by two years. Expanded in 1910, it began as a meetinghouse for early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and represents one of the few such places left from a time when each of the faith’s chapels brought something different to the architectural landscape.

“It is a survivor,” Utah architectural historian David Amott said, “of the ongoing destruction by the church of their architectural heritage.”

The building’s architects, Archibald Frame Sr. and Jr., were European immigrants who designed the place to serve as a gathering spot beyond worship.

“Buildings like this one were everything to a community like Taylorsville, which back then was a few scattered farmers west of the Jordan River, and to the families who lived in that remote corner of the valley,” Amott said. “It was their worship space and center of education, politics, entertainment, sport and other recreational activities. It was their everything building and how they pulled together and how they survived as a community.”

Muslims move in

Since 2008, the building has served a similar purpose for the Wasatch Front’s Shiites, a sect of Islam, many of whom are war-fleeing immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“We are a community that has come from the Middle East to find freedom of religion and freedom of speech,” said Hassan Mardanlou, who serves on the executive committee and board of trustees for the Alrasool Islamic Center.

He emphasizes that the space is not just for Shiite Muslims.

Among other things, the congregation invites the wider community to events such as Ramadan — a month marked by fasting, prayer and festivities — and serves as an educational resource to college students looking to learn more about the Shiite community.

“We open our heart and soul to everybody,” Mardanlou said. “This is for everybody.”

About the grant

The mosque teamed up with Amott and the Salt Lake City architectural firm CRSA to craft a proposal that, out of a pool of nearly 400, was among 16 to secure a matching grant — the first given to a Muslim congregation in the fund’s eight-year history.

This means that to unlock the check for a quarter of a million dollars, the Taylorsville Islamic center must raise nearly half a million dollars on its own.

The fund administrators provide additional support in the form of “wraparound training and technical assistance,” according to its website, to help guide grant winners through the process of acquiring that additional funding and putting it to use.

Even if the group succeeds in securing that amount, Mardanlou noted, it would still not be enough to complete the nearly $1 million in needed repairs.

Still, he remains optimistic.

“[There are] people who have a good heart,” he said. “They want to help.”

Those interested in supporting the effort can make tax-deductible donations on the community’s aicutah.org website.

“This is such an important building to see saved,” Amott said, “from one generation of immigrants to another.”