SPRINGFIELD, MASS. ? It’s about 20 minutes into a Friday afternoon prayer service and Rasul Seifullah, the leader of Springfield’s small community of Sunni Muslims, is putting some passion in his sermon.

He’s wound his way from the pitfalls of idol worship to talking about his congregation’s mosque, a converted school that was burned down last month — the target, police say, of teenage vandals.

The region’s interfaith community has offered to help raise money for the Al-Baqi Islamic Center and give the congregation space to hold its services until the mosque is rebuilt. On this day, they’re praying at the Nation of Islam’s mosque. The week before, services were held at the Jewish Community Center.

But Seifullah, Al-Baqi’s 56-year-old imam, isn’t about to let his people be carried by others.

“We can’t sit back and have other people fund-raising for us and we’re not raising anything for ourselves,” he tells the 28 people sitting in front of him on prayer rugs.

The goal, he tells them, is for the congregation of about 100 to raise $250,000 to help rebuild a mosque that looks like a mosque, not an old building that’s serving as a house of worship.

“When people drive by it, they’ll know what it is,” Seifullah said. “They won’t have to ask, ‘Is that the mosque?”‘

However obscure the building may have been at its inner-city address, Al-Baqi’s congregation has been visible in Springfield’s religious community. The offers of help aren’t merely a knee-jerk reaction to a needy cause.

During his six years as imam, Seifullah (pronounced SYE’-foo-lah) has steadily built ties with other faiths.

“What has always impressed me with Al-Baqi is that the congregants are very present in the community,” said the Rev. Karen Rucks, executive director of the Council of Churches of Greater Springfield. “If you look up, you will always see them represented in community gatherings or promoting religious understanding. Imam Seifullah has done a lot to encourage that.”

For Seifullah, it’s been a mission that reflects his own yearnings for religious connections.

Born Anthony C. Francis, he grew up in Harlem and served as an altar boy in the Catholic church. But as a teenager during the civil rights era, he started questioning his religion. “I never saw any pictures of black saints or black prophets,” he said.

A stint serving in the Army in Vietnam, followed by his return home, only bolstered his increasingly bitter feelings towards whites, who he felt were responsible for the war. “I hated white people,” he said. “I know my hatred was misguided, but it was easy to feel.”

Searching for a place of spiritual comfort and social acceptance, he found it in the Nation of Islam. “I sat down with a can of beer and a plate of pork chops one night, put on the TV, and there was Louis Farrakhan,” he said. “He was fascinating.”

The minister drew him in with his message of black nationalism.

“I was asking God, ‘Why am I black?’ and ‘Why am I catching hell for being black?”‘ Seifullah said. “I found the Nation had a rationale for why we were catching hell — it was because white people were giving it to us.”

He was a member of the Nation of Islam until the mid-1970s. But after the death of Nation leader Elijah Muhammad in 1975, the group split and Seifullah embraced the shift toward Sunni Islam led by Muhammad’s son, W. Deen Mohammed.

Mohammed “taught us the universal message of Islam,” Seifullah said. “He taught us it wasn’t about our skin color. Islam involves everyone — all people, all cultures. When you look at true Islam, you see people from every place in the world. And that was amazing to me.”