My Favorite Mosque

I've brought this point up in my blog before, and maybe it's been the theme of my life ages 18-22, but you've gotta love your hometown. I know too many people that hate where they came from. And yes, maybe when you we're 18 you went off to college and found someplace better. And maybe you've calculated it all out and you can't ever feasibly sustain yourself in your hometown as an adult, you'll have to live elsewhere. If that's true, that's cool. But I get angry whenever I see people dissing their hometowns. That place, no matter where it is, was the backdrop for your childhood. It was around for and probably helped in the formative process. Your town made you the warrior you are today! Embrace it!

That being said, I love Toledo, and hate people who hate Toledo.

Toledo Ohio. Yes, it has it's faults. Like any non-Chicago great lakes city, the industry is drying up. And downtown Toledo, compared to similar sized down towns, is lacking...on the surface.

The series of bars on Adams St. are as good as any for a pub crawl that I've been. The food gives you Tony Packos chili, Calvino's Meat Beasty, and kielbasa, kielbasa and kielbasa. You've got the Old West End, The Toledo Museum of Art, and the World Famous Toledo Mud Hens. No matter where I go in America, people of heard of the Toledo Mud Hens- the quintessential minor league baseball team.

                                                    thank you M*A*S*H*

And we've also got what time magazine once called the best Mosque in America, the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo.

Picturesque and symbolic of Islam in America, the glittering dome and minarets stands off the side of the highway in a cornfield. When I lived in Cincinnati, my road home to Toledo was a straight shot north on I-75 until I merged on the outer loop of 475. This mosque stands at the split of the highways; every time I'd come home, the mosque welcomed me. Every time I left, the mosque waved goodbye. It's as much a sign telling me to change lanes as it is a smile telling me we missed you. Sure, I've never been inside the mosque and I'm not a Muslim, but this building is an irreplaceable piece of my hometown.

It caught fire on Sunday afternoon. It was ruled an arson, and currently there's no concrete word on when it will be inhabitable.

If you attack that mosque, a Toledo landmark, you've got a problem with Toledo, and you have a problem with me. Here is the person of interest. I'm putting this on the blog because I don't want him getting away with this.


I have a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that when they catch the man who did it, he'll say he did it for Jesus. Now, it's either pathetic or brilliant thing that I'm about the cite the movie Dogma as a theological source, but i think at this time, we all need to see this:


If you love Jesus, you don't burn things down in  his name. He's disappointed right now. I'm disappointed to boot. But no matter what, I love Toledo, I hope the arsonist is brought to justice, and I can't wait to come home and be greeted by a mosque.