Born and raised in Indonesia, Kustim came to the US in 1986 to continue his education. After studying and working in Kentucky and then Texas, Kustim came to Indiana, PA in 1999. When we spoke, he was a professor at IUP and a member of the board at the mosque.
Why did you decide to come to Indiana, PA?
“I like IUP. […] I don’t feel that I like Northern Kentucky University because it’s close to Cincinnati. It’s a big city. And I was in Jakarta before I came here. It’s not only big, but huge […] and I know it’s not good for my family. So at that time I have three children. […] So therefore I applied to other universities […] I choose IUP because, you know, salary-wise almost the same, but IUP is a small city, like where I was born, before I came to Jakarta. Crime rate is very low. School system is very good, and cost of living is moderate, lower than other cities. But the most important, there is a small mosque here that I like to be involved in.”
When Kustim arrived, the community used the house on Philadelphia St as a mosque
Interviewer: How were things set up in the house? Like I visited it once when I first got here. So how did it operate? ‘Cause it was just a house, it had bedrooms and stuff upstairs. How did it?
Kustim: So we beat the wall, the whole [downstairs] become one [room]. […] It’s become one room. So this room, we use it for prayer.
Interviewer: Did the women tend to pray downstairs in the same room with the men?
Kustim: Because we have this and then we have a small room there. But usually a woman does not like this room. I don’t know. They like to be in the second floor. You know, because in this room, there is no restroom, nothing. It’s just a room. But upstairs, there is a restroom, you have a chair, there are two rooms upstairs for woman. So most women like to be there.
Kustim describes the process of deciding to relocate the mosque
See from the first time I’m here, everybody say that the mosque is not adequate because the number of students. Most, the number of students that, usually at that time, number of students […] about 1000, if 10% of them are regular mosque-goer, about 100, and sometime we have about 150. So the small house is not enough. So sometime during the Friday jummah we’ll stay outside of the building. And then we have very small parking lot. So from the first time we always say that this is not adequate, we have to have a bigger place. But we don’t, there is no drive at that time to really, you know, to find a place. So when I came and then of course I joined the board and then we started looking for, usually we start looking for an old church to buy. Yeah, because there are so many churches that it’s not that it’s not active anymore. So we are trying to find an old church or old funeral house. Why? Because church or funeral house, they have a bigger parking space and a bigger room, you know? So we always try to find that.
And then, and then one day we found this land is available and it’s very cheap. I’m not mistaken, it’s only 48,000, for one acre. […] It’s a good place. So we decided to buy it. We don’t have money. [laughter] So of course, we chip in, everybody. This is a belief in Muslim that if you chip in or you donate something to, for a mosque, Allah will build a house in jannah [paradise]. So this is become a very big motivation. Not only for me, but also for everybody in a Muslim community. And we chip in. So when we say that we are going to buy the land, we didn’t have money, but in less than one week, we got more than $50,000.”
More to come as we finish transcribing Kustim’s interview…
Muslims in PA 