Coming out of the subway near New York University on a brisk Friday last week, I spotted women wearing hijabs and men in kufis filing into a nondescript brick and glass building. My plan had been to attend Jummah (Friday) prayers at NYU’s campus Islamic center. Instead I followed the evidently Muslim crowd into the Islamic Center of New York City, a still-developing “independent epicenter for Muslim spiritual, intellectual, professional, and social life in Manhattan,” according to its website.
Shortly afterward, I realized I had stumbled onto a powerful khutba (sermon) given by Imam Khalid Latif, a campus chaplain at NYU and Princeton University and to the New York Police Department.
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