Chicago is center for U.S. Muslim renaissance
Religious affiliation may be on the wane in America, a recent Pew study asserts, but you wouldn’t know it from walking into the storefront near the corner of West 63rd Street and South Fairfield Avenue in Chicago.
Inside a former bank in a neighborhood afflicted with gang violence, failed businesses and empty lots, a team of volunteers drawn by their religious faith is working to make life better for Chicago’s poorest residents.
The free medical clinic has expanded its hours; twentysomething college graduates are clamoring to get into its internship program; rap stars attend its alcohol-free poetry slams; and the budget has increased tenfold in the past decade.
