Altadena’s first mosque takes baby steps toward rebuilding after Eaton Fire

The Eaton Fire didn't just take the Abdus-Shakoor family's home, business and two rental properties. It also destroyed the mosque they co-founded, Masjid Al Taqwa, the first mosque in the Altadena-Pasadena area.

And in the year since the deadly and destructive fire, the family has rallied to provide a place of worship and belonging for other community members who are also trying to make sense of the loss and devastation.

“ It's just been a devastating year, never-ending process of recovery, and a rollercoaster of emotional ups and downs,” said Jihad Abdus-Shakoor, whose parents were among the mosque’s early founders.

Around 30 households from the Masjid Al Taqwa community were affected by the fire: Most lost homes; one woman’s daughter was killed.

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Since July, the congregation has met weekly in a space rented from the Pasadena Covenant Church. But their goal is to rebuild the mosque on its original grounds.

The need to bring the community together

Days after the fire, they brought the community together for Jummah prayers (congregational Friday prayers) at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pasadena. A few weeks later, when Ramadan began, the Abdus-Shakoor family decided to find a place of worship.

What remained of Masjid Al Taqwa, the first mosque in the Altadena-Pasadena area, after the Eaton Fire.

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Jihad Abdus-Shakoor said he wanted a break to focus on personal losses, but his father, one of the mosque’s early founders, insisted that the community needed a space for Ramadan.

 "I believe he was correct in saying this: ‘Hey look, we have got to do this for the community,’” he said. “I think he needed it also. It was good for my mother as well.”

The family found a space at New Horizon School in Pasadena to provide congregants with daily iftars and even an Eid celebration, continuing their tradition of providing gifts to the children.

" We just had to kick into gear and try to carry on in a normal way, hopefully to bring the community back and have for them ... a place to still come as a community of Masjid Al Taqwa,” said Delores Abdus-Shakoor, Jihad Abdus-Shakoor’s mother.

But, there were moments, she said, when it felt like too much.

 ”Then all of a sudden, one day I looked up and I said, ‘No, it's not too much,’” she said. “It made me think about where the Qur’an talks about how Allah will not put a burden on you greater than you have strength to bear.”

The Abdus-Shakur family: Jihad Abdus-Shakoor; his wife, Desha Dauchan; mother Delores Abdus-Shakur; and father Aaron Abdus-Shakur.

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Having the space at New Horizons School during Ramadan offered some reprieve. The community had a space to break their fast and offer communal prayers, and she could focus on dealing with the mountains of paperwork from insurance companies, the L.A. County assessor and others.

After Ramadan, they rented temporary places for Friday congregational prayers.

The need for a permanent place was apparent.

People needed a place to pray, said Kameelah Wilkerson, who is on the mosque's board of directors.

"If you look around, you see people just hanging out and talking to each other," she said. "And see my son behind me sitting and talking to the katib [imam], and that is what this space is about."

Interfaith relations after the fire 

Jihad Abdus-Shakoor and Amir Siddiqui, a board member at the mosque, took on the work of finding a “temporary, permanent place.”

This is where interfaith relations nurtured after the fires kicked in.

The representatives of Masjid Al Taqwa asked Pasadena Covenant Church, which had previously offered them a space for Ramadan.

The church was very accommodating.

“ We had two rooms,” Jihad Abdus-Shakoor said. “We opened up the wall in between and made it a connected space, bigger, and just put in new carpet.”

The church also allowed Masjid Al Taqwa to repaint the building and remove furniture so it could look and operate like a mosque. It's a spacious room, with thick, blue and gold carpeting, the kind your feet sink into.

Flyers for a Christmas friendship dinner between the Pasadena Covenant Church and Masjid Al Taqwa.

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Aaron Abdus-Shakoor, Jihad Abdus-Shakoor's father, said the response after the fire showed "one humanity."

 "It went across religions, different religions. Everyone was trying to help, and we found kindness in humanity," he said. "And it was our oneness, our kind likeness that people emphasized, not our differences."

The church, he said, welcomes the community for regular dinners for fellowship. After the final Jummah prayers of 2025, Aaron Abdus-Shakoor made an announcement to the congregation: The Pasadena Covenant Church had invited them for a belated Christmas celebration in the new year, and they had even made accommodations for halal food.

The rebuilding process  

In January 2025, I visited Masjid Al Taqwa soon after the fire. All that remained then was soot, ash and the charred skeletons of chairs in a line pointing toward Mecca.

“It was very painful to go and look at the site and see it all burn down and try to wrap our minds around that,” Delores Abdus-Shakoor said about the first time she saw the ruins.

Since then, the lot has been cleared, Jihad Abdus-Shakoor said, and mosque leaders are in talks with architects to imagine the mosque’s new iteration.

" We’re in flux on whether we're going to just be rebuilding on the one lot or we're going to be able to have the opportunity to acquire the adjacent lot to expand the mosque,” Jihad Abdus-Shakoor said.

There are also ongoing talks about whether to add other components, such as transitional housing. But, Delores Abdus-Shakoor said, before any plan can be finalized, they will gather community input.

Kameelah Williams, Kameelah Wilkerson, Kamal Wilkerson and Jihad Abdus-Shakur grew up attending Masjid Al-Taqwa.

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Soon after the fires, the greater Muslim community rallied around Masjid Al Taqwa, helping raise just under $1 million to support affected congregants and the mosque.

And Jihad Abdus-Shakoor is confident he can rely on the community again when it comes to rebuilding.

 "We're going to need more support. We're going to have to do more fundraising,” he said.

And that, he said, is true for all of Altadena.

"It's going to take a lot longer to rebuild, and it's going to take more resources, more money to bring the city back,” he said. “Hopefully, people will not forget about us and look closer into what are the actual needs in the community.”

Kameelah Williams, a longtime Masjid Al Taqwa attendee, said she can't wait to see the mosque rebuilt so the community can be continued.

" I also hope to see a space that is welcoming to all in terms of maybe creating some type of business within the masjid, maybe a coffee shop," she said. " Maybe we have a community kitchen, maybe we can do a Meals on Wheels. In my profession, I'm a funeral director, so maybe a Muslim mortuary."

Najla Henderson and her son Zavian stands next to her parents Daarina and Rashad Abdus-Samad.

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Loss of a space she grew up in

While some in the community are staying put and hoping to rebuild, others like Najla Abdus-Samad, who was born and raised in Altadena and grew up attending Masjid Al Taqwa, have had to leave Altadena.

Her new home in Los Angeles is “beautiful,” she said, but there’s nothing like Altadena. And though she has found a new place of worship and community at Islah LA in South Los Angeles, she misses Masjid Al Taqwa.

“I  was born into Masjid Al Taqwa. The women there, the people there, I've known since I was a baby,” Abdus-Samad said. “There's absolutely nothing that can replace that.”

She went from living 5 minutes from Masjid Al Taqwa to about an hour’s drive away in L.A. traffic. But she still makes the trek when she can “for my self preservation.”