With less than a third of the Islamic religious month of Ramadan left, American Muslims like other Muslims around the globe look forward for their `Eid celebrations. 

As the month follows the lunar calendar, it is expected that the first day of the Muslim festivity will fall in either Friday or Thursday, a number of Islamic centers has already announced Thursday as the first day of the `Eid following scientific calculations of the new moon.

To many Islamic centers the biggest challenge is finding the appropriate place for the community members to conduct the early morning prayers. As families pour from different directions, many of the mosques fall quite short of accommodating a space vast enough to absorb the worshipers. The challenge is especially greater to the smaller centers which are located within residential houses and are structurally incapable of hosting all the congregants.

The Islamic Cultural Center of Greater Chicago, one of the leading Islamic centers in the Windy City has been facing the same challenge for many years despite its relatively big facility. Though architecturally designed to serve almost 300 worshipers in its prayer area, still the facility falls short of having enough room for the `Eid crowd. In the past years, two prayers used to be conducted while utilizing the center’s social hall in addition to the prayer area, still that was not good enough to absorb the over 2000 worshippers who come in as early as 6 a.m. Finally the management of the center decided a few years ago to rent a banquet hall big enough for the prayer of its increasing crowd. 

In Barrington, another Chicago suburb, the Al-Azhar Islamic Foundation made a similar decision to rent a nearby banquet hall. Though the AIF has joined the growing tree of Chicago’s Islamic centers only three years ago, its increasing membership necessitated the search for a more spacious hall bigger than its current facility.

More than One Khutbah, More than One Prayer 

One of the traditions of many Islamic centers in the US is to hold more than one Khutbah and some times more than one prayer. Unlike Islamic countries, different languages, ethnicities and the dispersion of the Muslim population over vast distances produced a need for such a tradition.

Centers that have a strong ethnic majority tend to hold two khutbahs in two languages: an English one in addition to another conducted in the congregants’ native language, such as Urdu, Arabic, Bosnian or Spanish. 

Geography mandates also that center hold more multiple prayers to accommodate the widely scattered but increasing number of Muslim families, which may take a 90-minute drive to reach the closest Islamic center. It is a common sight in many mosques in the Metropolitan area of Washington D.C. to hold three prayers along a span of 4 or 5 hours as Muslims flock from the two neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia. 

Carrying the Tradition of the New Clothes

`Eid carries a fashion statement here as well, following the tradition of Prophet of having new clothes for the `Eid; Muslims spend the last few days of Ramadan shopping for new clothes for all family members specially the children. In the immigrant communities where the ethnic dress still carries a sense of pride and nostalgia, the prayer is also a fashion show occasion for jewelry and the modest Islamic dress. Adorned with beads, embroidery and colorful fabrics, children, women and men elegantly dress in the traditional outfits.