Elizabeth Song | How West Philly was won

Before Judith Rodin ascended to the Penn presidency and busted the West Philadelphia crime cartels, there was the 45th Street mosque and its war on drugs.

In the early 1990s, West Philly was at the center of a murderous imbroglio of gang wars and gun violence. Just blocks from campus, Cambodian drug peddlers and prostitutes occupied the abandoned lots and Victorian rowhouses.

"There was a dead body on the corner every few weeks," said Lauren Hauber, a spokeswoman for the 45th Street mosque run by the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects.

To dispel the dealers, AICP members joined with other community organizations and local officials to monitor the streets for drug activity. Today the corner of 45th and Walnut is now home to Saad's Halal Restaurant. In place of hard drugs, you can get your fix of tooth-achingly sweet hazelnut baklava and certified Halal cheesesteaks.

And the Cambodian drug dealers? Some have joined the congregation, renouncing the drugs and booze that the Quran prohibits. The rest have fled the area for greener pastures.

As a religious anchor for the black and immigrant communities, Islam is shaping the renewal of West Philadelphia for the better.

The AICP mosque, for example, bridges the gap between University City and West Philly. Its massive domed ceiling shelters members from both communities. The mosque also serves as a platform for HIV education, women's empowerment and prison-education programs. Last year, the AICP even sponsored an Islamic youth summit featuring Muslim hip-hop rappers.

Along with local mosques, Islamic schools offer Muslim youth a pillar of discipline and stability in a tough urban neighborhood.

To learn more, I headed over to the Quba School, a K-12 Islamic day school on 43rd and Lancaster Avenue.

Unlike local public schools, the Quba School operates with virtually no government support. (And definitely no $6.6 billion endowment, $3.5 billion capital campaign or skinny blonds in strapless crimson).

Instead, the school holds old-fashioned pizza fundraisers to supplement tuition money. Classrooms are decorated with streamers, laminated character-education posters and hand-colored signs. At the end of the school day, the principal hands out pretzels and orange juice while waving goodbye to students. According to 10th grader, Mecca Islam, "it feels like family."

In this atmosphere, delinquency has lagged and learning has flourished. The Quba School consistently scores above its peers on state exams, and students respect a zero-tolerance policy for violence. It emphasizes the importance of interfaith programs to teach students how to negotiate barriers, both religious and socio-economic.

The Quba School offers a standard curriculum, plus Arabic classes, kung-fu lessons and college hopes to their students. Yet it only receives a tiny amount of public funding under Title I. Fortunately, the big dreams of students like 11th grader Ibrahim Mohaimin (who hopes to attend Penn one day) are coming more within reach.

University ethnomusicologist Carol Muller leads an academically based community-service class that records Quba students' recitations of the Quran. In return, the students have spoken before Penn classes, helped to archive and edit texts in the music labs and even visited the admissions office.

Muller first became interested in her field as an undergrad in South Africa when her scholarship allowed her to transcend cultural and racial barriers. Her ABCS course allows her students to do the same.

Yet Penn's campus can be fraught with invisible lines. According to Muller, some Quba students "feel Penn is an imposing place." Likewise, our own secularism sometimes makes us feel uneasy toward outwards signs of faith like the occasional headscarf or skullcap on Locust Walk.

We should be careful not to allow the flarings of radical Islam to eclipse the positive roles of local Muslim organizations. Contrary to media images of jihad, mosques like the one on 45th street function as pillars of moderate Islam and community-building.

The tale of how Philadelphia's Wild West was won is still unfolding and it's time we got more involved. Penn can help fight the battle by supporting grassroots religious centers. Partnerships like that between Penn and the Quba School offer a model for how Penn can engage locally in West Philly.

After all, if local Muslim groups helped drive away the drug czars, just imagine what we can do by working together.

Elizabeth Song is a College junior from Salem, N.C. Her e-mail is song@dailypennsylvanian.com. Strike a Chord usually appears on alternating Wednesdays.

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