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Their Spiritual Thirst Found a Desert Spring: MUSLIMS IN LAS VEGAS / PART 4

Their Spiritual Thirst Found a Desert Spring

By Peter H. King, Times Staff Writer

One grew up on a farm in Pakistan, the other was a child of Detroit. One was born into Islam, the other was brought up a Baptist. From these disparate starting points, Iqbal Khan and Mustafa Yunis Richards set out as young men to explore the most fundamental questions of faith.

They took different paths. One wandered the world as a seaman, the other bounced from one belief system to the next. In the end, oddly enough, both wound up here, working in the casinos of Las Vegas, praying in the city's mosques — strangers to each other, but in spirit the closest of travel companions.

"I wanted to find all the truths," said Khan, a 53-year-old security guard at the Main Street Casino. "I wanted to see all the holy places. Growing up in Muslim society, I was kept like in a cave, in life's cave, even though I was from a very educated family. It's a cave that had no information from the outside: What's right? What's wrong? How can you verify?"

For years Khan toiled in the engine rooms of commercial ships that supplied U.S. military bases overseas. On shore leave he would hunt for used books on history and religion and make visits to the landmark shrines of all faiths. While at sea he studied the texts and also taught himself languages — German, Greek, Arabic — preparing to converse with people he encountered at ports of call.

"I checked everything," he said. "I talked to people. I learned about humans. I learned about their livings, their religions, how they act. I started going to churches. I went to synagogues. I learned about Catholics, about Orthodox, Protestants. All of that."

He frowned.

"I still don't know a lot about Mormons."

Richards, a soft-spoken, 52-year-old black man, worked as a bellhop at the Imperial Palace hotel and casino on the Strip until circulatory disease forced him into early retirement a few years ago. He has been a practicing Muslim for a decade, the last leg of a journey that began in his late teens with a visit to a Detroit synagogue.

Richards was a physical presence back then, weighing a well-muscled 215 pounds. As he stepped into the doorway, the rabbi thrust his hands into the air, as if expecting to be robbed.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I want," the 18-year-old replied, "to learn about the Jewish religion."

For the next three years Richards studied Judaism. Though there was much he admired about the religion, he said, "I recognized fairly early on that it was not really an embracing moment." He moved on.

Over the next several years, he would spend time with Episcopalians in Boston, with Mormons in upstate New York, with followers of the Nation of Islam on the streets of New York City. He read the Greek philosophers, studied Hinduism, Taoism.

"I went to a weekend retreat, a Catholic retreat," he said, describing a typical leap of faith in his low-key, laconic way, "and that lasted for about six weeks."

Richards had wed young, and his wife could not understand his spiritual wanderlust. In time, it cost him his marriage. He knew what was driving him, but it was difficult conveying it to others: "Back and forth, back and forth. I studied a lot of different religions looking for the same thing — understanding. I wanted to understand God. For some reason, understanding God became very important to me.

"But it wasn't something I could talk about, because when you started talking to people about God, they'd think you were nuts. That would kill any conversation."

He remarried and moved to Las Vegas. It was here that he entered his numerology phase, tutored by a gambler who persuaded him that numbers clustered in predictable patterns — a valuable theory, if workable, at the slots and blackjack tables.

One day Richards dropped into a bookstore and spotted an English translation of the Koran, the sacred book of Islam.

"I'd read everything else," he said. "And so I said, well, I'll go ahead and read the Koran."

He took the book home and put it on a shelf. A few days later he picked it up and began to read.

"By the time I had finished reading that day," he recalled, "I said, 'This is what I've been looking for my whole life.' "

August 22, 2004 at 08:15 AM in Muslim background | Permalink | TrackBack (8) | Top of page | Blog Home