‘HE WAS A PILLAR’
Stamford Islamic Center mourns loss of a founding father
“It’s the end of an era. But also the beginning of a new one.”
Talay Hafiz, president of the Stamford Islamic Center
STAMFORD — Abdul Rahim, entrepreneur and a "founding father" of the Stamford Islamic Center, died Tuesday after a twomonth battle with liver cancer. He was 70.
For about four decades, Rahim quietly helped guide Stamford's Muslim community from its infancy. Alongside other local Muslims in the 1990s, Rahim purchased a small house on Outlook Street that became one of the local centers of religious life. Islamic center members believe the mosque, founded in 1998, to be the first built from the ground up in lower Fairfield County.
Of the community he helped create, "he was a pillar," Stamford Islamic Center President Talay Hafiz said Wednesday at Rahim's funeral, which drew more than 100 mourners to a service held on the mosque roof.
Easmin Begum, one of Rahim's eight daughters, said Rahim was an orphan from Bangladesh who dreamed of coming to America. He left his village, Bahkthiyar Para in Chittagong, in his mid-20s to make money across the ocean. Rahim's wife, Nurun Naher Begum, and nine young children stayed behind.
He worked as a cook on a ship, then landed in New York, his daughter said. Ultimately, Rahim moved to Milford, where he worked at a Greek restaurant. Easmin Begum said the hours were long and brutal, but they also helped lead her father toward one of his biggest professional accomplishments: opening Lucy's Pizza on the West Side with the help of his longtime friend and business partner Mohamed Shahjahan. Shajahan also helped found the Stamford Islamic Center.
"For a South Asian man to be making Italian pizza so well was beyond astonishing," Begum said. The money he made by working at Lucy's helped Rahim create his own "American dream," his daughter said, and it also helped him bring his family to Connecticut. Once the household came stateside, the youngest child — a son — was born.
But if hard work was one cornerstone of his life, piety was the other, his daughter said. Before he flew his young family to the United States, they made a stop at the cradle of Islam: Mecca, Saudi Arabia. All Muslims must make a pilgrimage to the holy city at least once in their lives; Rahim fixed on having his children make that journey before moving to the other side of the globe.
With his family in the United States and his financial future secured thanks to his small business and subsequent investments, his loved ones say he set his mind to serving his community, whether in Stamford or Bangladesh. Begum said her father helped build Baitun Noor Jama Masjid, a mosque in his home country.
He "built roads, homes, served the less fortunate," she said. It was integral to both his character and his faith.
Rahim is survived by his wife, Nurun Naher Begum, and 10 children: Rozina Begum, 47; Noor Begum, 45; Sultana Sharif, 37; Emran Rahim, 35; Kamrun Mannan, 34; Nazmun Begum, 32; Easmin Begum, 30; Nasrin Begum, 28; Nazma Akter, 27; and Abdul Nurun, 23.
His biggest goal in life was to see those children educated, Easmin Begum said.
"He embedded in our mind that education is the way of life," she continued. He said that all his children ultimately made him proud, she remembered.
The lines between the Rahim family home and the mosque itself are blurred. There is no gate between their backyard and the Islamic center's roof, only a gap in the wood fence. After the funeral service, mourners filtered freely between the funeral service and the backyard.
During the later stages of his illness, Begum remembers her father ambling from his home to the yard and to the mosque. In those moments, he'd take a deep breath "out of fulfillment," she said.
His community was his life, she explained after the service, and the Stamford Islamic Center would always be a monument to that life, no matter how many years went by.
"It's the end of an era," Stamford Islamic Center President Hafiz replied, "But also the beginning of a new one."