THE PROMISE: The imam and his Cedar Rapids neighbors

CEDAR RAPIDS — On an unusually warm Saturday night in the middle of February, more than a hundred men, women and children trekked to the Islamic Center on the southwest side of the city. They toted dishes of herbed rice and pasta, fragrant meat on beds of spiced beans and tomatoes, homemade cake and packaged sandwich cookies.

After at least 10 of them urged me to eat, I broke down and accepted a plateful, barely managing to stave off a second heaping helping. Women kept asking if I felt welcomed. But they were not there to eat, really. They came to discuss their anxieties in a nation that seems to have changed all around them.

The Cedar Rapids' Islamic Center is one of two mosques in the city.

The Mother Mosque, built on the northwest side in 1934, is one of the oldest and longest-standing mosques in North America, and still is going. But the wooden structure became too small to hold its growing number of worshippers.

So in 1971, the new Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids was built. The sprawling white building — with two bright blue qubba, or domes — contains a large prayer room with a rich red carpet, a common space with a kitchen and a gym and classrooms for a small private school.

Hundreds of Muslims — Iowans and immigrants from the Middle East and parts of Asia, of all races — worship at the Islamic Center.

Their young imam is Hassan Selim, a man in motion these days. He is 29, slim and straight in posture. He wears glasses and a short beard. Selim is the kind of person who weighs each word he says, yet is somehow warm and welcoming. And he has an intense resolve to explain the tenets of Islam.

Like all the members of the center, Selim knows Islamophobia has been lurking in his city at least since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. But he senses that the presidential campaign and the winning candidate's actions since have taken things up a notch.

The subject of this Saturday gathering was ostensibly how to help Muslim adolescents manage stress — both the normal American-teenager stress, which can be more than enough for most young people, and the new and special breed of stress born of President Donald Trump's Jan. 29 executive order, which attempted to stop citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country for 120 days. (Since then, he has issued a new, superseding order affecting travel from six Muslim-majority countries.)

The meeting wasn't really all about the teenagers. While the younger kids were busy playing tag and the teens huddled and whispered at a table in the corner, the adults focused intently on a presentation about this new level of stress. In the last month, the parents had heard on the news that two Texas mosques had been burned. They had heard of how some American Muslims had been detained at airports because of the president's ban. They knew what one of Trump's counselors, Kellyanne Conway, had said a few days earlier in an interview, that Iraqi refugees had been responsible for a Bowling Green, Ky., 'massacre,' though there had been no such massacre.

For this evening's discussion, Selim asked a pair of psychology doctoral students studying at the University of Iowa to provide guidance.

Ramsey Ali and Nikki Grunewald, both members of the Islamic Center, stood at the front of the large room, pointing to slides that illuminated a wall behind them.

Among other things, Ali and Grunewald told the group, certain warning signs occur when children are experiencing stress or anxiety based on how others perceive their identity. They also explained a 'stereotype threat' — when people are afraid their actions or parts of their identities will confirm a negative stereotype about the group to which they belong.

The two said they understood it is difficult for parents and children to address the stereotypes stamped on Muslims.

Part of the solution, the graduate students said, is to be proud of their Muslim identity. It's OK to be scared, Ali said. 'But is that going to freeze me from doing what I need to do to create my identity?'

If people practice 'owning their identity,' Ali said, the fear will 'start to erode.'

BEGINNINGS IN EGYPT

Religion wasn't the plan, initially, for Hassan Selim. After he graduated from secondary school, he studied geology in the deserts of Egypt, where he was born, for two years — rocks and formations, tectonic plates. He had been studying Islam since he was a young child, but he wasn't sure he wanted to make teaching the ancient religion his life's work.

History intervened.

The United States had been fighting a war in Afghanistan for years, and the Iraq War was drawing to a close. Muslims in the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa were facing unrest.

Stereotypes were churning in the minds of both Muslims and non-Muslims. It was a time of fear, confusion and polarization.

It was a time to focus. As Selim put it, the situation made him want to own his Muslim identity and to show that the core of the religion is not synonymous with conflict.

'You have Islam that is defining itself in opposition to everything else — what Islam is not,' he said. Or, you have 'a quest of understanding what Islam really is.'

Selim began to study at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the oldest Islamic learning institutions in the world. Later, through an online language program meant to help students practice English or Arabic, he met his wife, Alida, who now is 31 and helps to raise the couple's two young daughters. She had grown up, it turned out, in Cedar Rapids.

Alida, who had converted to Islam shortly before meeting Selim, was studying Arabic in Egypt when the couple met. Alida's intellectual approach to understanding Islam and world religions appealed to Selim. They talked, he said, and had 'the kinds of conversations I knew I would never grow tired of.'

He and Alida were married in 2010 and lived in Egypt, although Alida often flew back to the United States.

It was around this time that Selim first fully experienced what he called 'injustices of the Egyptian regime.' Before 2011, the government had been largely ruled by military and police forces. On Jan. 25, 2011, when Selim was walking back from the airport after his wife caught a 6 a.m. flight, Selim felt the fierce tension.

Police and military officers lined the sides of closed streets. It was the first day of the Egyptian Revolution.

Selim had heard about the uprisings in Tunisia, and he had heard whispers of Egyptian demonstrations against the then-president, Hosni Mubarak. Selim said he had not been sure that he wanted to join protests. He had seen Egyptian police enforcement before.

Still, instead of heading home that day, Selim kept walking until he met the crowds — thousands of Egyptians in Liberation Square in downtown Cairo. Protesters were demanding an end to police brutality and to Mubarak's presidency, as well as social and economic reforms.

He looked at his phone and found that it didn't work. The authorities 'blocked the network so that people can't call each other or call their families,' Selim said.

As he approached the square, he could see them using gas to disperse people. 'You could see the gas, and people were running out of the square,' he said. 'It was a moment of confusion.'

He was caught up in a revolution. For the next 18 days, Selim didn't go home. He slept on the streets with others, sharing blankets and food as the government and military worked to shut down the protests.

'The moment you hear guns, and people running and screaming, your mind blurs,' Selim said. 'You go into a surviving mode. You don't really think rationally, but you just want to avoid being killed. Your mind doesn't process anything.'

Using a digital camera his wife had left behind, Selim documented injured protesters in the small field hospital in Cairo that popped up during the demonstrations. By the end of the uprising, 846 people were killed and more than 6,000 were injured. And Egypt changed.

In 2012, Selim and Alida moved to Cedar Rapids, a safe place to raise a family without the political corruption and economic struggles of life in Egypt.

By 2013, he was leading the Islamic Center after the previous imam abruptly left. He is leading the center, as it turns out, at what seems to be a critical moment.

Though Selim has done his best to purge his traumatic memories of the Egyptian revolution, he says his experiences there color the way he sees the political tumult of 2016 and 2017 in America. Experience in Egypt made him cautious.

'The idea of protesting can be symbolic,' Selim said. 'But I don't know if protesting is the best and safest way of making a change and statement, especially living in a great country like ours, where they have the ability to speak or write to your senators, or write to the editor.'

Still, it is time, he says, for Cedar Rapids Muslims to show their community what Islam really is. 'Just because a group is trying to be scapegoated doesn't mean that you have to be a part of that stereotype,' he said. Instead, he urges his people be part of the community outside of the mosque.

'Education is great, facts are great, but it doesn't mean anything without relationships,' he said. 'Showing it and being able to talk to your neighbor, that goes a long way.'

Selim has spent his time in Cedar Rapids hosting community events, teaching free classes at local colleges to explain Islamic traditions and, most of all, joining forces with other local worship centers.

It is difficult to have an hourlong conversation in Selim's office without a member from a Christian church stopping by to propose a joint event or ceremony. That is just what happened during a Friday afternoon in late February, when a member from First Congregational United Church of Christ stopped by.

'As much as I want to defend the Muslim community, I also want to be real, so we can make real progress,' Selim said. 'The core message that I keep repeating is to get out of the mosque. You need to get out of your comfort zone. You find where you are needed in the community and fulfill a need.'

Selim said he knows the fear in the hearts of his congregation. He recalls his own experience after a friend told him he had caucused for Trump during the 2016 Iowa caucuses. 'I was a little shocked,' Selim said.

'But I remember that it didn't take me long to say, 'So what? It's his view. If I claim that this person is close to me, let him have his choice.' I'm glad that he said that to me so I can confront my own fears of 'the other.' '

His time on the streets of Cairo during the revolution was traumatic, Selim said, but he also learned a lesson there.

In some ways it was the best time of his life, 'because I met with people who were very different,' he said. 'We had differences, but we had one cause that brought us all together.'

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles called 'The Promise,' a weekly report from a collaboration between The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, the Monitor in McAllen, Texas, the Vindicator in Youngstown, Ohio, and thebigroundtable.com. Over the course of time, journalists from the three communities will share the ongoing tales of people in their communities as they tell the story of three cities in the age of Trump.

l Comments: (319) 368-8516; makayla.tendall@thegazette.com