Whatever the weather, local Muslims meet for prayer at the Islamic Center of Ocean County.
“Open the gates of mercy for all of us,” Imam Maqsood Qadri prayed as congregants trickled in for Friday afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Ocean County in Toms River.
A violent storm had just rolled through the region, pouring down rain and hail, flooding roadways, and making travel dangerous. The communal prayer time, known as Jumu’ ah, was understandably more sparsely attended in the aftermath than it had been when Patch visited June 17.
After offering prayers in both Arabic and English, Qadri’s sermon, or Khutbah, picked up from where it had left off the previous week. He talked again about a miraculous night journeythat Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad took from Mecca to Jerusalem and then from Jerusalem to heaven, where he encountered Jesus and Moses and received revelation about five-times-daily prayers. …
