'The Mosque That Saddam Built'

"I really had conflicted feelings," he said.

In the end, though, Al-Banna decided the mosque's planners could not turn down the gift. "I accepted the money because it belongs to the Iraqi people," he said. "It is not Saddam Hussein's money. He stole it."

Damalouji and a Christian Calvert resident donated six acres, directly across the street from the hospital, to build the mosque. The 7,448-square-foot building, which cost $650,000, was completed in 1986, according to property records, and opened the next year.

An official from the Iraqi Embassy snapped pictures during the opening and sent them to Hussein. But the mosque leaders decided not to create a plaque honoring his gift or to honor him in any way.

"At one of our meetings, someone said, 'What do you think about putting his name on the mosque?' " Al-Banna recalled. "Ninety-nine percent of the members said: Absolutely not."

The hexagon-shaped mosque in Prince Frederick, with a slender minaret spiraling into the sky and three arches framing its entrance, sits not far from Calvert's remaining tobacco fields along Route 4.

"When I first moved here, I used to think: Boy, does that mosque stick out like a sore thumb or what?" said the Rev. Russell McClatchey, a minister at a nearby church.

But until recently, the mosque attracted little attention. Most county residents never knew about Hussein's donation and even Ellen Boyd, director of the Calvert County Historical Society, expressed shock when she learned about the donation last month. "Are you kidding?" she said. "I never knew Saddam Hussein had anything to do with Calvert County."

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, though, everyone paid a lot more attention to the mosque.

Vandals broke the windows soon after the attacks, said Anwar Munshi, a mosque board member. And soon malicious gossip accused members of the mosque -- especially Al-Banna and Damalouji -- of being terrorists and spies for Iraq.

Much of the rumormongering was fueled by some individuals suspicious of the mosque's connection to Hussein, McClatchey said.

One day when the mosque leaders re-tarred its roof, causing smoke to billow up, neighbors began claiming that FBI agents had raided the building after they identified it as a terrorist cell, according to one rumor Al-Banna heard. Another time, a woman yelled about him loudly in the checkout aisle at the supermarket.

"Did you hear that Dr. Al-Banna and his family were just arrested because they are terrorists?" Al-Banna recalled the woman asking.

McClatchey, then-president of the Calvert County Christian Clergy Council, said some members of the group refused to attend a meeting shortly after Sept. 11 because he had invited Al-Banna to speak. When he organized a unity service that fall to show support for the mosque, McClatchey said fewer than 20 of the 70 or so clergy members he invited showed up.

"A number of them just didn't want to attend a meeting in the same room as a Muslim," he said.

The mosque's worshipers, now including a core grout of 20 families, also received some poignant signs of support, such as interfaith events and a bouquet of flowers placed on the front of the mosque by a patient of one of the worshipers.

Al-Banna said he strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq because of the violence that any war inevitably causes and its potential impact on his three sisters and brother, who live in Iraq.

As for Hussein's trial, Al-Banna said it is a waste of time. He said there are far more important priorities for his war-torn country -- security, education and infrastructure.

"I have very mixed feelings about this trial. It's definitely going to open some painful wounds," he said. "And more importantly, why would I want to waste my time thinking about Saddam Hussein?"