Annette John-Hall: In this community, "better angels" embrace people of all faiths

True story: Muhammad Ali wooed us to Cherry Hill from California 16 years ago.

OK, maybe that's not exactly the truth. Sure, we were lured by Cherry Hill's nationally recognized public schools, too. And the township's proximity to Philadelphia and central New Jersey, where my husband worked, made our commutes convenient.

Still, just knowing that Cherry Hill had been attractive enough for Ali to buy a home here in the '70s helped seal the deal. We thought, "Hey, if it was good enough for the champ, it's good enough for us."

And we didn't even think twice about the fact that Ali is a Muslim.

Just thought I'd mention that, considering how Islamophobia is running as rampant as an end-of-season cold.

These days, folks toss the M-word around - and in the president's face - as a slur. Every time you turn around, another mosque is defaced or vandalized. In New York, a knife-wielding lunatic asked a cabbie if he was Muslim - then slashed him across the face and neck. (I don't have to tell you how the cabbie responded.)

Saturday is 9/11, and until Thursday night, in a sick display of bigotry, the Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of a 50-member church in Gainesville, Fla., had been planning an International Burn a Koran Day, intending to set off a bonfire of Qurans to commemorate the 9/11 attacks.

And he says Islam "is of the devil"?

Maybe Thursday's visit from the FBI got Jones to reconsider. Or maybe it was a public lambasting from President Obama. To be sure, Jones took a lot of persuading - a shameful lot. Even when Gen. David Petraeus warned that Jones' hateful act could endanger the lives of American military personnel and civilians overseas, the so-called reverend had said he'd pray on it, and decided to move forward with the fire anyway. Now he is wavering - but the damage has already been done.

Makes me even more grateful for my community's "better angels," as Obama described them.

There are five synagogues within a mile of my Cherry Hill neighborhood. The township is also home to Buddhist and Hindu temples.

And soon it will boast its first mosque. In the final stages of construction, not a mile from my house, sits a magnificent masjid, the future home for the area's Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community.

I'm happy to report that no one has defaced it. Better yet, there has been not one peep of protest over its construction.

That's because it is the object of love and support, not of hate and scorn.

No one was happier than Cherry Hill Mayor Bernie Platt, who, if it matters, happens to be Jewish.

During the groundbreaking a few years ago, the mayor gushed, "Thank God we're going to have a mosque!"

When I drove past the other day, workers were furiously putting the finishing touches on the $1 million masjid (it doesn't have an official name yet) to make their completion date next Wednesday.

The edifice, its architecture inspired by Egyptian design, sits on three acres and includes a house of prayer, a conference room, and a dining room.

But the road was paved long before, says Quresh Dahodwala, who is secretary for the Dawoodi Bohra congregation and the masjid's project manager.

Dahodwala, a nuclear fuel consultant, lives with his physician wife and two sons in Cherry Hill, where he settled 30 years ago. From the very beginning, he says, he worked to foster understanding among all of the township's religious groups.

Platt remembers. "Quresh came and started to embrace us, and we in turn embraced him," Platt says. "I went to meetings at his home and observed holidays with him."

Now, says Dahodwala, "everybody knows who we are and what we believe in."

He dismisses Jones' antics. "It's the price you pay for living in a free society," he says. "Sept. 11 will come and go . . . and the world will move on. No one church is going to destroy 1.3 billion Muslims.

"The unfortunate part is that it gives our country a bad name."

But here in Cherry Hill, we're feeling pretty good.

We sure are. And the people's champ would be proud.