70 MUSLIMS IN THE UNITED STATES
Yet, distinctly among Syracuse Muslims there exists a high degree of mutual
familiarity and a sense of belonging characteristic of smaller towns. Most peo-
ple know one another by their first names. Children have developed their own
friendship cliques. Outside of the mosque activity, people may gather infor-
mally at numerous occasions over dinners, wedding parties, or picnics,
whereby children have fun running around in the park or the lakeside. Despite
great distances between homes, ethnic backgrounds, and racial histories, Mus-
lims of Syracuse share with one another their joy and sorrow together. When
Diana lost her daughter in a car accident on an icy road, about a hundred
  sisters  of all colors gathered to give a ritual bath to the body and pray for
her salvation before she was buried. When Ba-Yunus mother died in Texas af-
ter a long illness, the whole Juma congregation prayed for her in Syracuse.
Almost half of the Syracuse Muslim community, we are told, was present at
the wedding dinner of Tanvir s daughter.
But, Dr. Rafil s case (see chapter six) touched deeply almost every one in
the community. One dark, snowy day in February 2003, Dr. Rafil was stopped
and arrested by the FBI at five in the morning while on his way to join the
Fajr prayers at the mosque ten miles away. Three other individuals were also
apprehended (but later released on bail). A general feeling of resentment and
helplessness took over the whole population, we are told. It was like a pall
hanging over the whole Syracuse Muslim community. The FBI also inter-
viewed three hundred families, some several times. Several people, including
those released on bail, were fired from their jobs. Whatever the outcome of the
case,   everyone was in a state of shock and disbelief. It was like it happened
to my own brother,  said a local Muslim. For months, prison officials could
hardly cope with the influx of visitors who wanted to see Dr. Rafil and assure
him of their help. The Muslims of Syracuse offered their properties to raise
bail worth three million dollars. So far, he has been denied bail four times. It
seems that as long as the Iraq war does not settle one way or the other, prose-
cutors are in no hurry to start proceeding against him and the judges continue
to treat him as a flight risk, denying him release on bail. Ironically, Dr. Rafil
was once treated as a flight risk while behind bars under Saddam Hussein s re-
gime whose grips he escaped only to become a respectable oncologist trying to
save and comfort hundreds of women suffering from cancer. Trying to comfort
was Dr. Rafil s mission, whether they were cancer-stricken women in upstate
New York or starving children in Iraq a mission for which he is being dis-
graced and penalized like an ordinary hoodlum.
To the southeast of Syracuse, in the nation s largest city, a small street cross-
ing at Fulton and Bedford in Brooklyn is overwhelmed with the Muslim wor-
shippers on Friday afternoons. In a small house turned into a mosque at this
crossing, Imam Siraj Wahaj leads the Juma congregation. He has been doing
this every Friday for the past twenty-five years or so. Siraj Wahaj started his
Islamic career as a follower of the late Elijah Mohammad. Just before Elijah s
death in 1975, Siraj Wahaj, along with few others, broke away from the Nation
of Islam movement. They moved to Brooklyn and declared Sunni or the