Islamic Center Of Vallejo المركز الاسلامي

History of the Islamic Center of Vallejo

In year 1985, we started gathering in Br. Abdul Khabir’s basement on Sacramento St. for Friday prayers. There were a few of us at first, but after a couple of years we out grew the space we had and decided to purchase a place of worship. It was around 1989 that we bought a house located at 727 Sonoma Blvd. Br Khalil Rehmani volunteered as an Imam all these years and Br. Abdul Khabir filled in when needed. Thus we started five time daily salat at this location. Soon the house was not enough to accommodate all of the musaleen, so we decided to remodel the existing garage and use it as the prayer hall. This was extended a couple of times with the help of some very dedicated brothers. We used the house for weekend Islamic school which was originally stablished by Br Mujibur Rehman another dedicated brother in Pinole. The weekend school was run by volunteers and students came from Vallejo, Benicia, American Canyon, and even as far as Clear Lake, Fairfield, Richmond and Berkeley. The weekend school was closed when Al-Noor School was opened.

In the nineties we bought the adjacent land next to our current Masjid which is now being used as a parking lot. We planned to build a Masjid from the ground up on this land, and went to the city of Vallejo before the planning commission. After proper procedures and hearings, we got the zoning changed from commercial/residential to religious. This was our first step because many other communities had run into zoning problems. Than we hired a team of engineers: Wahid Hussain as the Chief Architect, Dr Jameel Sirajeldin as Architect, Br Mohammed Hussain as Soil Engineer, Br. Marmoush with several other engineers to work on the plans for the Masjid, and Michael Moore, a Landscape engineer, whose plans were submitted and approved by the city. A professional surveyor was also hired to conduct land surveys of the property.

Fees were paid to the City as well as the engineers. A local contractor gave us an estimate of $2 Million to build the new Masjid. The city believed that we did not have adequate parking space in our design for the size of the building in our drawing, and we struggled to find a structural engineer qualified to design for us the dome and minarat. In short, a lot of hard work was put into trying to build a new Masjid.

After the crash of the real estate market, someone from the city informed us about a church on Florida St. We took people from the community to look check out the new building, but in the end it went back to the lender in court. While we were in the process of planning to build the Masjid, we tried to raise funds. We received pledges but only collected 5% of those pledges. The rest of the pledges were never collected, because we were waiting for something solid to happen. I know a lot you have a lot of questions but I thought this might clear some of the misunderstandings and you know the rest since we have found a much better building in a safer/better neighborhood for a cheaper price. At almost one third of the price of building the Masjid, we thank Allah SWT, we decided to purchase the new building.

The new building is about 7 years old. It has 1.37 Acers of land and over 9000 SF of building space. It has two halls, kitchen, dining room, five class rooms, two sets of commercial bathrooms, and two offices all on one floor. The original asking price was 1.67 million; we made an offer of 1.2 about a year ago and it was not accepted then, and now by the mercy of Allah SWT we got it for $600,000. It will cost another $100,000 to fix the code violation that the city has brought to our attention. $260,000 is to be paid at the close of the escrow which is December 2nd.

Alhamdulilah, we have successfully purchased the new building and remodeled it into a beautiful house of Allah. We thank Allah again and the people who contributed to making this possible. So far we have paid of the first payment for escrow and first year paymant. We still have two more payments left over the next two years. We still need all of prayers and financial support. Allah loves those who give charity.

Islamic Center of Vallejo is a registered non-profit organization under sec 501c since year 1989. It has a registered Board of Trustees. We have big plans for our center and we will keep you posted as we go