Mosque hosts clinic
Outreach to the Muslim community includes vaccine information, access
LANSDALE >> As COVID-19 vaccination campaigns continue to roll out, faith-based organizations across Montgomery County are becoming increasingly used as pop-up clinics.
To that end, 650 people were inoculated April 4 at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at the North Penn Mosque, located at 600 Maple Ave. in Lansdale.
“I’d like to thank East Norriton Pharmacy for providing great support for our community members. I would also like to thank all of our volunteers for making the event successful. Thank you all,” read an April 4 post on the North Penn Mosque Facebook page.
State Sen. Maria Collett, D12th Dist., praised the organizers.
“Faith and cultural communities and their partnerships with local providers are instrumental in creating a more accessible, comfortable vaccine experience for everyone, and I look forward to seeing more and more clinics like the one at the North Penn Mosque as eli
gibility expands and supply increases,” Collett told MediaNews Group.
Lansdale Mayor Garry Herbert agreed, acknowledging that religious institutions including the North Penn Mosque and Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, located at 1000 W. Main St., are trusted “landmarks” in the Montgomery County borough. Trinity Church opened Friday as a community site for county vaccinations.
“The faith based communities have a great level of access, and have a great trust with their members, and so they’re the perfect locations to have these mass vaccination sites, because people feel comfortable at them,” he said.
Herbert stressed that expanding access and removing “as many barriers and obstacles as possible” is vital for increased participation.
“You’ve got to make sure you’re reaching everyone, and the only way to reach everyone is to go to where they are, and so this is a great example of ... meeting them where they are, and integrating into that moment, and making sure they get the information, and the vaccination that they need,” Herbert said.
He added that the borough will continue to work with various faith-based organizations throughout the inoculation process. The efforts to partner with religious communities have expanded statewide.
State health officials and area Muslim leaders participated in a recent press conference at the Allentown campus of St. Luke’s Hospital in the hopes of reassuring listeners of the COVID-19 vaccine’s safety and efficacy.
“Vaccine clinics like this one are really essential in providing all Pennsylvanians access to vaccines no matter where they live, what race they are or what religion they practice,” said Alison Beam, acting secretary of health for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
As of April 2, 3,847,164 people had received their first shot, while 2,208,680 people in Pennsylvania had been fully vaccinated, according to figures from the state health department.
“Recently, I received both doses of my COVID vaccine, and I urge all of you to receive the vaccine as soon as possible to protect yourself, your loved ones and the community,” said Rabiul Chowdhury, of the Muslim Aid Initiative.
Chowdhury spoke to reporters during the April 7 press conference about the work his organization has done to help others throughout the ongoing public health crisis.
Launching the nonprofit last March, Chowdhury said the agency sought to “disseminate health information and resources to communities in [the] greater Philadelphia region.”
Specifically, securing personal protective equipment for the homeless and a number of different religious community centers was top of mind. The organization also put on webinars focusing on various topics including mental and physical health.
Most recently, he said the organization released a “multilingual informational video” aiming to explain [the] vaccine experience and urge [the] community to get vaccinated.
Chowdhury added the video, which he said has garnered 100,000 views on Facebook and Youtube, had messages in English, Spanish, French, Bengali, Hindi, Arabic, Turkish, Mandarin and Urdu.
Mohammad Elshinawy, religious director of the Islamic Education Center of Pennsylvania, and an imam at the Jesus Son of Mary Mosque in Upper Macungie in Lehigh County, stressed the importance of getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We also have been trying to mitigate the hesitancy that happens in virtual echo chambers [with] certainly lots of misinformation out there,” Elshinawy said. “We’ve been presenting at webinars to let people know there are no religious reservations in Islam with any of these ingredients in the vaccines for instance.”
“Also, although we as a devotion to almighty God this upcoming month of Ramadan abstain from food and drink in the day times, we explain and educate actively as best as we can that this has nothing to do with medicinal injections because they’re not nutritious, they don’t take the place of food and drink and therefore they are inconsequential to this act of devotion of ours,” he continued.
Elshinawy noted that his “anecdotal” experience shows many “have been either taking the vaccine or looking forward to doing it at the earliest possible time.”
Raising awareness of vaccination opportunities is of great importance for religious leaders like Elshinawy, and he looks forward to possibly using religious centers as vehicles to increase the number of inoculations.
“But also because religion … teaches us very heavily that every Muslim has the personal individual duty, whether you’re part of a community or not, to be a civil servant, to be someone that recognizes that all of humanity is one family with one creator and one of the greatest ways to earn the love of our creator, the almightyGod is to be most beneficial to humanity,” he said. “So we’re looking forward to more and more opportunities.”