SACRAMENTO, CA — In a gesture of interfaith goodwill, the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims (SALAM) decided to lend a helping hand to an area congregation that had been facing an Easter holiday without a home this past Sunday.

Members of the Spiritual Life Center of Sacramento have their Easter morning services for their Christian church, at the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims (SALAM) auditorium next to their mosque in Sacramento, Calif., April 8, 2012.

The Spiritual Life Center of Sacramento lost the lease on their church just a month before their biggest service of the year, but the SALAM organization stepped up and let them hold their services in its mosque, a gesture of kindness in a state that recently has seen a rise in ‘Islamophobia’ in the past year.

“We are all children of Abraham,” said Dr. Irfan Haq of SALAM, who said he hoped to promote peaceful relations and understanding through the gesture.

The gesture echoed that of a Memphis, Tennessee church in late 2010 who opened its doors to Muslim neighbors who had nowhere to go while a new center was being constructed, and came during a time of media-driven Islamophobia in the state over the construction of a Murfreesboro, Tennessee mosque.

Reverend Michael Moran said he had a dream before the service that he read a newspaper headline that said ‘Easter at the Mosque,’ but then he awoke and didn’t believe it would happen until he got the call.

“For us, mosques, churches, synagogues are places where God’s name is mentioned and they are holy places, and this is the sharing of those faiths in one of those institutions,” Ifran Itaq of SALAM told News10 TV of Sacramento.

“Our mission from the very beginning was to bring the different faith traditions together in cooperative efforts,” Moran also told the station. “I love what the Dalai Lama said, he said, “Until there’s peace among the world’s religions, there will never be peace on earth. I think this is one of those steps towards peace.

— TAAN