Islamic Center of Washington
mosque in Washington, D.C.
The Islamic Center of Washington is a mosque and Islamic cultural center in Washington, D.C. It is located on Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue just east of the bridge over Rock Creek. When it opened in 1957, it was the largest mosque in the Western Hemisphere.
History
20th century
In 1948, Egypt appointed Kamil Abdul Rahim as Egyptian ambassador to the United States, succeeding Mahmoud Hassan. The project of building a mosque lay dormant during the war years and was not revived until Rahim assumed his position.
Rahim was appointed president of the mosque foundation and its executive committee. He was instrumental in assembling all of the heads of the accredited emissaries of Muslim countries in the U.S. He made several trips to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Muslim countries to solicit funds for the building of the mosque.
Howar (Mohammed Issa Abu Al Hawa, 1879–1982) and other Muslim diplomats helped found and provide early funding to a committee to build a mosque in the U.S. capital. In 1948, Howar, placing a silver dollar on the ground for luck, began work at the site.
The Washington diplomatic community played a leading role in the effort to construct a mosque. Egypt donated a bronze chandelier and sent specialists who wrote Qur'anic verses to adorn the mosque’s walls and ceiling.
The public source identifies “Islamic Center of Washington” as mosque in Washington, D.C. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Islamic, Center and Washington.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q583299. Authority coordinates are 38.917, -77.057. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1948, 1879 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Islamic Center of Washington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.