Cover Story

by Benjamin Tertin

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Friday Prayers at Portland Mosque Challenge Student

At 10323 S.W. 43rd Ave., in Portland, the Masjed As-Saber mosque is tucked into a typical suburban neighborhood. -- Benjamin Tertin, photo

Had I been attending a Church of Satan gathering, I would have been less terrified. Smoky images of exploding airplanes, burning skylines and rocket-propelled grenades filled my imagination.

Hail and freezing rain were pouring outside, but I was sweating.

As a Christian, an infidel (to Islam) and a freaked-out white kid from the Midwest, I crept into the foyer of the Islamic Center of Portland, the Masjed As-Saber mosque. A toddler barely old enough to walk scooted past, kicked his shoes off and shoved them into a cubby hole. So I followed suit.

I was there for weekly Khutbah, the Islamic sermon delivered after the time of eid prayers and before Friday prayers. (Normal eid prayers begin when the sun is three meters above the horizon and last until the sun reaches its meridian.)

During that hour-long Khutbah sermon, my over-simplistic preconception about Islam dissolved.

Aside from an eye-catching minaret rising from the two-story building's east end, the mosque is nonchalantly tucked into the middle of a Southwest Portland suburb behind a white picket fence. Single-family homes, apartment complexes, Portland Community College and other businesses surround the gray stone building erected in 1998.

Masjed As-Saber reports an 800- to 1,100-person membership. Its Friday prayers attract the largest group of Muslims -- close to 1,000 regulars -- of all the mosques in Portland.

The Masjed As-Saber community made international headlines in 2002 when six men and one woman who attended the mosque were arrested on a variety of charges such as conspiracies to levy war against the United States, to provide material support to al-Qaeda and to contribute services to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, along with money laundering and possessing firearms in furtherance of crimes of violence, according to an Oct. 4, 2002, FBI press release.

Six were later convicted, and the seventh, Habis Abdulla al Saoub, remained a fugitive with a $5 million price on his head, according to the Associated Press. In October, 2003, he was killed by Pakistani forces in Afghanistan while fighting as an al-Qaeda operative.

But I wasn't considering any of that when my feet sank into the plush green carpet of the mosque's square sanctuary. The stillness inside relieved my anxiety, and I felt as if I were in a holy place.

Men and boys all wore socks and sat or stood on the same smooth, clean floor. Symmetric simplicity, high ceilings, small windows, plain white walls and the lack of other distractions all served to calm and focus my thoughts.

Qurans and other Islamic books were the only objects in the room, except for the imam's microphone. Wooden cases packed with Islamic scriptures covered the front wall.

All around, men and boys either prayed -- doing a routine stand up, raise hands, kneel down, bow to floor, sit up, bow again, stand up and repeat -- or they sat quietly, reading their hefty books.

Before the service began, every time someone walked through the sanctuary doors, he momentarily paused and said, "Salam," to which the men immediately surrounding him uttered the same greeting back in unison.

Nobody was drinking coffee or chit-chatting about the week's happenings. No cell phones beeped or buzzed. No music played. No one engaged in any activity other than prayer and Quran reading.

Three boys younger than 10 years old sat cross-legged on the floor with big Qurans in their laps, quietly studying beside their fathers.

In more than 20 years of Christian churchgoing, I've never witnessed boys quietly sitting in a church sanctuary, reading the Bible with dad.

When the imam stepped into the small pulpit, which is housed neatly inside the base of the minaret, everyone quit reading and paid attention.

"Allahu Akbar ("God is great")," the imam said, not wielding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

"Allahu Akbar," the congregation responded. They repeated this several times, and a short Quran reading followed.

During the sermon, the imam switched between Arabic and English as he urged his congregation to observe Allah's command to fast during Ramadan. He warned against seeking material possessions and energetically proclaimed that Allah's commands are "obligatory, not optional!"

He discussed sin, judgment, repentance, the value of Allah's revelation through prophets and the importance of recognizing Allah as the only true God. He said, "Yusuf Islam [Cat Stevens] searched throughout the world for God, but when he found Quran, he said, 'I felt God speak to me for the first time when I read its words.'"

After the sermon, a man sang the closing prayers in Arabic, and the whole group synchronized their routine prayer motions of bowing and standing. They organized in straight rows on a prayer-mat grid printed into the carpet, everyone facing east.

As I exited, a thin man in a wheelchair near the back extended his arm to me.

"Is this your first time?" he asked, shaking my hand.

I told him it was, and after a short introduction, he smiled, motioned horizontally from left to right across the men and said, "You are welcome here always...here, we are all equal." Of course, he referred to only the men and boys.

Males and females never entered the same room. Each woman was covered head-to-toe in traditional Muslim dress.

The women entered the mosque through the women's door in the back, met upstairs (the women's floor) and gathered to chat at the back end of the parking lot after the services.

Every time I met eyes with a man or boy, I found a warm greeting and a smile. In just an hour, and in part due to the lack of shoes we all had in common, I felt comfortably at ease in a group I previously was terrified of.

Not only were no shots fired all afternoon, but these men also treated me with genuine kindness.

The experience was so inviting and gentle, and the reverent, respectful approach to worship was so impacting, that I found myself resolving to truly explain the difference between "God" and "Allah" in my mind.

Strolling back to my car, I wondered if I would experience the same warm reception if I returned to the mosque and proclaimed the truth that Jesus Christ is God of all creation and the Savior of the world....

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