Minaret in Washington

The newest mosque in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most magnificent in the world was dedicated last week in Washington, D.C., and the President of the U.S. took his shoes off for the occasion. There had been considerable nervousness over how President Eisenhower would observe the Moslem custom of removing shoes on entering a mosque. Grey cotton slippers had been prepared to slip over his shoes, but Ike decided to go all the way, shed his new black oxfords before he put on the slippers; Mamie took off her white pumps and stood in her nylons. Then they stepped across the threshold on to a carpet sent to the Washington mosque by the Shah of Iran.

Above the visitors was a two-ton chandelier of solid bronze inlaid with nickel; around them were porcelain and plaster tiles of blue, green and gold in geometric designs. Verses from the Koran and the 99 formal Arabic titles of Allah gleamed in gold inscriptions on the walls and ceilings. Outside, the sun sparkled on the crescent that tops the minaret 160 ft. above Washington's stately Massachusetts Avenue. The $1,250,000 mosque (built with the contributions of 15 Moslem nations) stands canted to the street in order to face Mecca.*The world's only air-conditioned mosque, it is part of a new Islamic Center (two wings housing offices, a library and eventually a museum), will be the principal shrine for the 32,500 Moslems in the U.S. and Canada.

Only about 800 Moslems live in or around Washington, but not only Moslems may profit from the muezzin's tape-recorded summons that loudspeakers will carry out to a radius of eight blocks five times each day: "Come to .prayer. Rise up to your welfare!" And in the last hours of darkness just before dawn: "Come to prayer. Rise up to your welfare. For prayer is better than sleep."

*The mosque is built on a northeasterly line (56DEG 33 min. 15 sec. east of true north) though Mecca is actually southeast of Washington. Reason: this is the course of the great-circle route, the shortest distance between the Washington mosque and the Kaaba, housing Mecca's sacred Black Stone.

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