There is no sign, nothing to indicate this is a place of worship, just an open door in an alley near the Goodwill store and the sound of Arabic crackling over a tinny sound system.
The mosque is behind a real estate agency on Main Street in Fort Morgan. On Fridays, the Somali men come — standing, kneeling and pressing their foreheads to the floor in the rhythms of Islamic prayer.
The imam, or spiritual leader, does not have time to talk after his sermon. He has to hurry off to work second shift at the Cargill meatpacking plant.
The latest wave of immigrants to remake the face of this rural agricultural community of 12,000 is black, Muslim and scarred from experiences in a failed state.
An estimated 900 to 1,100 Somalis — most of them refugees — now live here, drawn by employment at Cargill in the past six years…
…The first Somalis arrived in Fort Morgan in 2005 — young men at first, there to feel the place out.
The meatpacking industry was struggling to find workers at the time, said Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, the manager of the Cargill plant in Fort Morgan. So company representatives fanned out to workforce centers across the country offering relocation packages, temporary lodging and food vouchers.
The company, which employs 2,000 in Fort Morgan, does not target particular ethnic groups, Johnson-Hoffman said.
But Somalis, like others before them, were willing to do work others would not. As the first wave of men contacted friends and relatives, families began arriving…
…Police Chief Keith Kuretich started to field complaints: Groups of 30 Somali men were loitering and littering outside a store. Somalis were haggling over prices at Walmart and holding up checkout lines. Their driving was dangerously bad…
…Kuretich has been at the forefront of refuting falsehoods about the newcomers. He recently discredited an e-mail that claimed two Somali men had attempted to abduct a child from the Walmart parking lot.
Real problems, however, do exist, including two or three domestic violence cases…
…On Nov. 3, 2009, a Somali man from Greeley fatally stabbed his 27-year-old Somali ex-girlfriend in a Fort Morgan apartment hallway — the eighth homicide in the city since 2000 at that time.
An out-of-town website that is critical of refugee resettlement spun tales of an honor killing. Kuretich dismissed that characterization, describing it as a domestic incident unrelated to religion or ethnicity.
The killing, however, provided fuel to those already unhappy about their new neighbors… Read more here
Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
