The MOSAIC Cross Cultural Center hosted the grand opening ceremony of the new prayer space at San José State located at the Boccardo Business Complex, on Thursday.
The MOSAIC Cross Cultural Center is a student resource center for students on campus that hosts events related to diversity and empowers students by advocating for their voices, according to an SJSU web page.
Cheska Dolor, a program coordinator at the MOSAIC Cross Cultural Center, helped to coordinate the event.
“We have been trying to open this new prayer space for about four years now,” Dolor said.
Souhaib Balmane, a business administration third year student at SJSU, said the new prayer space was needed because he and other Muslim students must pray numerous times throughout the day.
Islam is one of the three major religions of the world and Muslims must pray five times a day, which is known as the Salah, according to a Sept. 7, 2022 article from The Economic Times.
The first prayer starts at dawn and ends at sunrise, the second starts post-noon and ends at the beginning of the last part of the afternoon, the third begins during the later part of the afternoon and ends before sunset, and the final prayer begins at night and ends just before dawn, according to the same article.
“Without the prayer space, it would be really hard for us (Muslim students) to find a space to pray,” Balmane said. “Students who live far from home would have to go home and pray, and then come back to school which is a big inconvenience.”
All five prayers include bowing and prostrating to Allah, the Arabic word for God and reading the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, according to an article from the Muslim Accommodations Task Force (MATF).
Prostrating to Allah is a symbol of repentance, worship and praise, according to a web page from Understand Al-Quran Academy.
At the event, Albaraa Basfar, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, spoke about the importance of having a designated prayer space for Muslim students.
Basfar sang part of a prayer from the Quran and read some of the scripture pertaining to praying in the Islamic community.
Maryam Awais, an applied mathematics second year at SJSU, believes the past prayer space at the cultural center was inadequate for Muslim students.
“The old prayer room lacked ventilation which isn’t good because when we pray, we need to wash certain parts of our body like our hands, face and arms,” Awais said. “It was very difficult to do that in the past prayer room.
A Muslim prayer room on campus must be centrally-located and be accessible to students, according to the same article from the Muslim Accommodations Task Force.
It is useful for the room to have shoe racks, since Muslims remove their shoes during prayer time, according to the Muslim Accommodations Task Force.
SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said she was delighted to see the new prayer space come to life.
“When I came to San José State in January of 2023, it became clear to me from students that the prior space that we had was not sufficient,” she said.
Teniente-Matson said the prayer space took 17 months to complete.
“There were other problems with the room because there was only one shared space for men and women, but we had to pray separately,” Awais said. “If there was a boy in a room praying, we would have to wait for him which caused inconvenience because ideally, there would be two rooms, one for girls and one for boys.”
Dolor said the new prayer space now has two separate spaces for men and women.
“It took us some time to find adequate space to accommodate all the needs of the students,” Teniente-Matson said.
In the Islamic community, both men and women must wear specific clothing when praying, according to a website from the Islamic Association of Raleigh.
“Men must wear a robe and women must cover their hair with a hijab,” Souhaib Balmane said. “The idea behind this is to dress modestly to show respect.”
He said he believes the prayer space will make it easier for students to be able to focus on school and also their religion.
“I used to have to change into my praying outfit and then go to Tower Lawn to pray which was uncomfortable and not ideal,” Balmane said. “But I think the new prayer space is definitely going to make things a lot easier for Muslim students.”
Albaraa Basfar mentioned that Muslim students need a proper space to pray.
“That light shines through houses of worship which Allah has ordered to be raised, and where His Name is mentioned,” Basfar read out loud from Chapter 24 Verse 36 of the Quran.
The event concluded with students coming together to participate in the evening prayer.
“I think that the new prayer space shows that the school cares a lot about Muslim students and they are showing a lot of respect towards our religion which I appreciate,” Balmane said. “I’m really happy with this new space.”
