Despite rain, wind, and cold temperatures, more than 50 West African Muslims and local elected leaders assembled on the Bronx Supreme Courthouse steps Wednesday morning to decry the court’s ruling on the sale of a property housing the Masjid Al Faysal mosque.

On September 17, Judge Howard R. Silver denied the Morrisania Mosque’s motion to prevent the sale of what the West African community believed to be its rightful property. Located at 3400 Third Avenue, the property was foreclosed upon and auctioned off on April 2.

“The weather is getting worse, but we don’t care,” said William T. Martin, attorney for Masjid Al Faysal. “We’re trying to save this mosque form being taken away by land speculators.”

After years of the Mosque’s failure to pay city property taxes, the city intervened and sold the property to the Bank of New York Mellon, which then sold it to BX Third Avenue Associates, a Bronx development firm, for $500,000 one fourth of its estimated value.

But as a legal 501C(3) not-for- profit organization, the mosque was exempt from federal income taxes and so claimed ignorance of its need to pay city property taxes. “We don’t know that we have to pay some tax to the city because we believe we have tax-exempt from the federal,” explained Imam Baba Diallo, the community’s 47-year-old leader.

When Masjid Al Faysal learned of its tax lien in 2007, five years after the property was purchased, the community’s leaders created a payment plan with the New York City Department of Finance to prevent foreclosure.

“No sooner had they worked it out then the city turned around – maybe the same day or moments there after – they then sold the tax lien to” the Bank of New York Mellon. “Why then would I sit down with you to work out an agreement to save my property and then you turn around and sell the property to somebody that can just sell it for what they will?” asked Martin.

Diallo said that in Africa, “We say that ‘When two elephants fight, the grass will suffer.’ So, in this case, we are the grass. We are caught between the city of New York and the powerful developer.”

He said the mosque was never served a notice of mortgage foreclosure, but that in March he saw an advertisement for the auction.

Eric Stevenson, district leader of the 79th Assembly District said: “This is a classic example of being railroaded. The bottom line is that the plaintiffs willfully failed to serve them properly under the law.”

The Bank of New York Mellon plaintiffs argued that they tried but were unable to track down Masjid Al Faysal, which they claimed to believe was a person, not a mosque. “Masjid” is the Arabic word for mosque.

Martin stated that the case will reopen on November 6. His motion to reopen drew upon 17 points that were left out of the original court record, including the mosque’s Real Estate Transfer Tax Return and Credit Line Mortgage Certificate, which “clearly indicates that the ‘Grantee’ is in fact a mosque,” said Martin. “How is it possible that the plaintiffs in their myriad efforts to track down the ‘person’ known as ‘Masjid Al Faysal’ failed to discover the tax record which would have greatly assisted them?”

Queen Mother Doctor Delois Blakely, the honorary community mayor of Harlem, said she believed this to be a case of “gentrification as predicated upon the Muslim community” and called on the City of New York to “stock the courtroom with all of the members of our society and every persuasion of religion” on November 6.

“If they can do this to a mosque, then they can do it to a church... and the church and the synagogue and mosque must stand as our culture base for our religious right,” said Blakely.