More interesting than a Coat Factory
Houston's Menil has ties to the New York Ground Zero mosque
Phillipa de Menil
The Menil CollectionCourtesy photo
Feisal Abdul Rauf
Whatever your views on the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York City, at least one prominent Houston native has gone on record in support of it.
Philippa de Menil, the youngest of Dominique and John de Menil's five children, has spoken out in favor of the Islamic community center's construction. In fact, the controversial worship center, called Cordoba House, would be something of an expansion of a mosque de Menil founded after converting to Islam in 1979 shortly after her mother, Schlumberger heiress and Menil Collection founder Dominique de Menil, financed a United States tour of the Whirling Dervishes — a Sufi, mystic sect of Islam.
De Menil, who lived in Houston until she was 12 and was raised Catholic, has been a practicing Muslim for more than 30 years, and is now known as Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi, having been officially designated a teacher in 1980.
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam at de Menil's Farah Mosque and the man most associated with the proposed community center, knows de Menil well. He led the Friday prayer at her New York City mosque for 20 years before heading up a search for a larger space, a search which settled expansion efforts on the hotly contested site near ground zero.
The site was formerly a Burlington Coat Factory, and will be named Cordoba House after the city in Spain where Muslims, Christians and Jews once peacefully coexisted. Rauf has spent his career improving understanding between religious groups.
De Menil told the New York Post that crowds for Friday prayer had grown so large that the flooring needed to be reinforced, and while she hasn't personally donated to Rauf's project, she supports Cordoba's construction.
