New York Qazi Office

verted to Islam. Our searches lead us to closed doors and tears of frustration, until we found Qazi Qayyom. My husband was raised Jewish and I was raised Muslim, but neither of us practice. We wanted to have an inter-faith ceremony to please our parents. We were definitely unwilling to convert to each other’s religions even for ceremonial purposes. After more than a year of searching, we finally found Qazi Qayyom. He officiated our ceremony without demanding that my husband convert. Qazi Qayyom is fluent in English, but does have an accent. During the ceremony, he was quick and poetic. Exceeding our expectations, he even spoke to our Cantor prior to the ceremony to make it more of an interfaith ceremony than two stand-alone ceremonies. The few words of wisdom he spoke regarding interfaith marriage and marriage in general were definitely the highlights of our ceremony. Although he delivered beyond our expectations, the one criticism is his style – prior to the ceremony, when we met with him, he told us he would do it, quoted a price, end of conversation. He was unwilling to go over the details of the ceremony itself. After our year-long search and a few disappointing leads, we were very eager to know the details. Unfortunately, he did not allay any of our fears and apprehension prior to the wedding despite our requests. He just repeated, “it will be fine, it will be fine.” That said, he delivered 110% on our special day. Lastly, he was the only reasonably priced Qazi we found. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of ASMA quoted us $10,000 (highway robbery!) and Imam Khaleel Mohammed quoted us $3,000! Qazi Qayyom was far lower at under $1,000.