Metro breaks bread with Muslim community at ‘sacred’ event

Metropolitan Police Department officers and members of Las Vegas’s Muslim community broke bread together Monday night at the Summerlin Area Command for Laylat ul-Qadr, or Night of Power, a holy evening in the Muslim faith.

Mujahid Ramadan, a member of Metro’s Multi-Cultural Advisory Council, called the Night of Power the most sacred night of the entire month of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

“For us, it’s a sacred night,” Ramadan said. “It’s a night that says if you stay up and pray during the night and read during the night, it’s worth 1,000 months of worship.”

After a welcome from Metro Police Captain David Sims, Muslim community members prayed outside before sharing a meal with officers inside the police station.

“We like to break down barriers, to inject humanity into what we’re doing,” Sims said. “It starts to build the community trust. And there’s value in sitting down with people of different faiths, different backgrounds … we always want to represent the community we work in and police. We accept people from all backgrounds, all faiths.”

It’s the third time the police station has hosted the event. Metro says the tradition began several years ago after an attack on a mosque in Texas, when officers reached out to Las Vegas-area Muslims to offer support and reassurance. This friendship led to the idea of opening the Summerlin Area Command for the Night of Power.

“The (event) reinforces the agency’s desire and willingness to reach out to communities of different backgrounds and different cultural persuasions,” Ramadan said. “It’s a matter of the LVMPD having a very robust initiative to be engaged with different community members, and realizing the benefit of it is that it helps really prevent and reduce crime.”

While Night of Power is a Muslim tradition, Sims said Monday’s event was an “interfaith” event.

In addition to religious leaders and community members, Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones and Las Vegas City Councilmembers Brian Knudsen, Victoria Seaman and Francis Allen-Palenske were also in attendance.

“We have almost every major religion represented in the valley here tonight,” Sims said.

Contact Justin Razavi at jrazavi@reviewjournal.com. Follow @justin_razavi on Twitter.