By Mustafa Mehdi Vural
Hundreds of Turkish Muslims flocked to the Millennium Theater on Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn on Friday evening to commemorate Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.

Little girls dressed in white bride dresses welcomed each guest at the entrance to the theater’s lobby, putting rose water on their palms and giving them a branch rose, the flower that in Islamic tradition is believed to have come out of a drop of sweat from Muhammad as he ascended to heaven.
The West “can hear the voice of David, the voice of Moses, the voice of Jesus in today’s world,” Islamic scholar Osman Simsek, 37, said in Turkish. “But, they cannot hear the voice of our prophet enough,” Simsek continued in his speech at Friday’s gathering for the Blessed Birth Week at the Brooklyn-based Islamic nonprofit Universal Foundation. “They know him as the lord of the swords, but in fact, he is the lord of roses.”
Simsek, who came to the United States 11 years ago and lives in Pennsylvania, works as adviser of religious affairs for the foundation.
Islam’s prophet was born on the 12th day of Rabi-ul-Awwal of the lunar Muslim calendar, which was Feb. 27 this year. The date, known as “Mawlid,” literally means the time and place of a birth in Arabic, but the word is used for the birth of Muhammad, which is commemorated by the Muslim world at the same time.
Besides the Mawlid celebration, which moves around from year to year on the solar calendar, the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs has declared since the 1990s that the midweek of April each year is Blessed Birth Week.
“We cannot celebrate Mawlid as we used to in Turkey,” said Cuneyt Sengul, 32, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and 4-year-old son. “That’s why these kind of activities are good for us.”
The 33-year-old president of the Universal Foundation, Numan Ozdemir, said, “we had to start the commemorations in advance because of the circumstances and our guest singer’s schedule,” explaining why they started to hold the celebrations in late March.
Besides the celebration in Brooklyn, the foundation will organize five more commemorations during the next month on the East Coast of the United States, from Boston to New Jersey.
“There is St. Valentine’s Day for lovers, there is Mother’s Day. This is our prophet’s day,” said Ahmet Avci, a 35-year-old math teacher at Brooklyn Amity School, a private school established by Turkish businessmen. Avci shook the stroller slowly to put his daughter to sleep at the entrance of the theater upstairs while his wife and older daughter participated in the event inside.
The program started with the singing of the Turkish and American national anthems followed by Quran recitation, speeches and anecdotes about the prophet’s life. Turkish pop star Murat Gogebakan played his guitar and sang his songs, including the song “My Sultan,” which was written and composed for the prophet. Gogebakan, a former leukemia patient, traveled from Turkey to be part of the commemoration even though his doctors advised against it.
The event was organized mainly for the Turkish Muslim community in Brooklyn.
“I could only understand Quran recitation because Quran is in Arabic,” 36-year-old Lebanese Zubeyde Karakus said in broken Turkish. A mother of four, Karakus is married to a Turkish man and lives in Brooklyn.
Out of more than 2.5 million people living in Brooklyn, 100,000, nearly 4 percent, are Muslims according to the United States Government’s Census Bureau estimate of 2008. The Turks constitute more than 5,000, 0.2 percent, of Brooklyn’s population.
“It is similar to Christmas in a way of commemorating prophet’s birthday,” Simsek said in an interview with the Brooklyn Ink. “But the Western commemorations tend to be entertaining and fun, but in the East, it is different and it has a side to gloom, melancholy.”
Some of the audience cried silently throughout the program. “People are facing with themselves, they are crying for themselves, they are not sure if they are decent and proper enough to confront the prophet,” Simsek said about the atmosphere in the theater.
All of the movie and concert posters hung on the wall of the Millennium Theater were covered with pink and light blue paper. Islam forbids image-making and visual representation of humans. And the Millennium Theater, a bastion of Russian culture in the heart of Brighton Beach, is embellished with colorful posters and advertisements for plays, concerts and comedy.

But it was not that easy to keep the mundane from marring the spiritual atmosphere in the theater. Loud music from a Latin-themed party downstairs intruded.
“It was not the first time it happened, this may be the 10th one,” said Daniel Rodriguez, who is in charge of security of the theater and was asked by Ozdemir to get the party to reduce the volume of the music.
“I cannot do nothing,” said Fidel Sanchez, who organized the party at the downstairs and expected 500 people to come. “They cannot get me to turn down the music. I paid the rent of the place.”
“It is our fault,” said Simsek, who had not known the disagreement between the two floors. “It is against our Islamic decorum to constrain people’s freedom, even to request to turn down the music. We could have rented somewhere else.”
The bass of the party downstairs kept making the floor of the theater upstairs tremble until the end of the night.
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