Shami Haq, secretary of the Islamic Society of Schuylkill County, in prayer.
Writing and photos by Wes Cipolla
This story originally appeared in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on August 29, 2021.
I have fond memories of Route 61. During my childhood summers, it was a yellow brick road to the paradise that was Knoebels Amusement Park. The lush mountain scenery and small towns my family and I passed through, along with the increasingly elaborate billboards advertising the park (a 3-D ferris wheel!), made the journey as exciting as the destination. Last winter, I had the idea to do a column about interesting places people can visit on the way to Knoebels. During my research, I found that Knoebels is surrounded by an unusually large number of religious sites. Route 61 is a sort of pilgrimage route, probably the only one on Earth that ends with roller coasters and baked potatoes. You can call it El Camino de Kozmo. In this column, I seek to reveal the histories of these holy places and what they mean to the people who worship there. From great churches to one man’s passion, these sites tell diverse stories of faith, love and humanity’s relationship with the divine in Northeast Pennsylvania.
POTTSVILLE - On a recent Friday afternoon, Shami Haq, Secretary of the Islamic Society of Schuylkill County, is alone in the carpeted mosque. He removes his shoes, kneels and prays. In Islam, Friday is the holiest day of the week, but in today’s workaday world, how many Muslims can take time off from work to pray? When worshippers join Haq, he greets them with a perfunctory “As-Salaam-Alaikum,” Arabic for “peace be upon you.”
Mohamed Meeran of Pottsville, responds with “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” meaning “and unto you peace.”
The Islamic Society of Schuylkill County was established in 1986 to house the county’s growing Muslim community. Along with religious services, it hosts community events and fundraisers for local charities. Meeran is a surgeon at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Pottsville who believes that God guides him as he works.
“Faith is the most important thing in everybody’s life,” Meeran said. “How we interact with people, not only our obligation to God but also how we conduct ourselves and each other.”
More and more Muslims join Haq and Meeran, and they start to pray. There is musicality in their voices, but they are not singing. In Meeran’s words, they are “reciting the Koran (Islamic holy book) in a beautiful voice.”
They, and all other Muslims, pray to Allah (Arabic for “the God”), the same god worshipped by Christians and Jews. They are distinguished from those other faiths by their belief that Muhammad, who died in the seventh century, was Allah’s last prophet. There are no paintings and statues of Allah, and depictions of Muhammad are rare and often frowned upon. The infinite nature of Allah and His creation are represented by intricate geometric patterns, Arabic calligraphy and splendidly-decorated Korans that fill the Islamic Society. The centerpiece is the wooden qibla wall that shows the direction of Mecca. Mecca is a city in Saudi Arabia that dates back to the time of Abraham, and is where Islam was founded. All Muslims pray facing Mecca, and able-bodied Muslims are required to make hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, before they die. Meeran performed hajj in 1989.
“It is most spiritually uplifting and humbling,” he said. “It does change people’s perspective on life. I wanted to be a better person than I was before I went.”
The Society also raises awareness of developments in the Muslim world.
The mosque accommodates people of Pakistani, Indian, Russian, Moroccan, Algerian, Libyan, Uzbek and Afghan descent. On this recent Friday, the crisis in Afghanistan was on everyone’s mind, and one of many topics touched in that day's sermon. Erich Scherfen, an airline pilot who lives in Schuylkill Haven, was that day’s imam (priest). He calls himself a “supply imam,” who preaches when nobody else can make it.
“You start to hear, with what’s going on in Afghanistan,” he said, “that Islam is a violent religion that only wants to hurt women and small children… We really have to look out for what is being said about us in the media.”
Erich Scherfen in the Islamic Society pulpit.
Stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists are a constant problem for the Society.
“There’s people out there who thought we worship the Devil, believe it or not,” Scherfen said. “The misconception is that we worship Muhammad, we do not. We worship an invisible god, who is all-surrounding. I don’t want to use ‘Star Wars’ metaphors, but it’s kind of like The Force.”
Scherfen was raised Lutheran in Northern California. As a soldier in the First Gulf War, he visited a mosque in Saudi Arabia and was amazed by what he saw.
“I was really attracted to the idea of one unseen God that wasn’t white or black or male or female,” he said.
Even though he was a soldier in uniform, the Saudis were hospitable. Scherfen’s father was tolerant of his son’s conversion to Islam, but his mother was concerned due to the religion's treatment of women. The men and women of the Islamic Society worship separately, partitioned by a waist-high barrier. Scherfen married a woman from Schuylkill County and has prayed in the Islamic Society for 25 years. From his congregation, he has learned respect and patience.
“Another misconception is violence, especially now today,” he said. “I was a soldier in somebody else’s country when I learned about Islam. With every war you have people who are victorious, but at the same time we humble ourselves to religion when we just got done conquering its people.”
Shortly after Scherfen returned from the Gulf War, he nearly died of heat stroke in the country of Georgia. The nickname for heat stroke is “heat prostration,” in the same manner that Muslims prostrate themselves in reverence for Allah. Overcome by heat, he fell to the ground, as if in prayer.
“It is a very humble thing to do, to prostrate my head on the ground like a slave,” he said. “That was one of my bigger religious experiences.”
Muslims have many words for the “electricity to the body” that can occur during prayer. His favorite is Noor, which he calls “light shining through the body.”
Scherfen acknowledged the COVID-19 pandemic during his sermon, saying that those who died of the virus would be granted paradise and that Muslims should follow Muhammad’s example and wear “two coats of armor” to protect themselves.
He also celebrated the Tenth of Muharram, a very significant day in the Islamic calendar (Muharram is the first month of the Muslim year). It is the day that Jonah was saved from the belly of the whale, the day that Moses parted the Red Sea and the day that Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali was martyred in the Battle of Karbala. The Muslim calendar is based on the Hijrah - the time when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution.
“We may have to flee because of disease,” Scherfen said. “We may have to flee from each other again, God forbid, because of the coronavirus. We may become refugees. Some came here for financial stability, some came here for just a better life, some came here because they were fleeing an oppressor. I’m sure there are some people in this room who fled from an oppressor.”
Scherfen left the military in 2005 and now considers himself a pacifist.
“The weapons we have today on all sides are just too massive,” he said. “Nobody’s gonna teach anybody a lesson these days, they’ll just annihilate the world before they annihilate the enemy.”
After the September 11 attacks, his Army buddies had some jokes at the expense of his religion. Mohammad Akbar, a physician from Orwigsburg, remembers it as a time when Schuylkill County’s Muslims wanted to “keep a low profile, not stir anything up.” It was a time of fear not just for Muslims, but anyone who looked foreign. As a white man, when Scherfen took off his traditional garb, he was no longer foreign.
“Walking down the street, they don’t know me from Amish,”
His flock could not shed their identity easily, but their community stood up for them. Akbar’s friends told him that if anyone caused trouble for him, he’d be there for him. Meeran said he does not “feel any discrimination or animosity” from the people of Schuylkill County.
“I practice the principle of respecting everybody regardless of their color or their race,” Akbar said. “We are equal. We are all children of Adam and Eve.”
Muslim Americans are divided on former president Trump despite his harsh rhetoric on Islam. Scherfen believes that Trump didn’t really mean the “bad stuff” he said about Muslims, but just wanted to fire up his supporters. One Pakistani Muslim Scherfen talked to about Trump referred to a proverb from his homeland: “The dog that barks loudest doesn’t bite.”
Akbar believes that politics and religion shouldn’t mix.
The Muslims of Schuylkill County know they will be judged based on what images of Muslims are in the news, and must act accordingly - and turn the other cheek, if necessary.
“We need to express very good behavior to the people who are here,” Scherfen said, “even if they treat you badly, to show them Islam. Please help the poor, the innocent, the powerless. Allah please forgive us for what we have done and what we have left undone. Allah please let us unite in these very interesting times.”
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