Syracuse, N.Y. — Irfan Elahi is an asbestos abatement expert who worships at the Mosque of Jesus, Son of Mary on the North Side.

He used his skills to create a prayer room covered in plastic with special ventilation that allows daily prayers to continue in the 116-year-old former church, as the holy month of Ramadan nears.

The room is lined with plastic, and two machines siphon air out of the room to create negative pressure. Air in the room is recycled every four minutes. Elahi used the materials and expertise from his day job to create what he called a “clean room.”

About 10 worshippers in masks are allowed in at a time, though rarely do that many show up. They stand far apart from each other as they follow a prayer leader standing on a plastic-covered prayer rug.

Before they arrived, Issa Hamadi, a neighbor, sang the call to prayer, which echoed around the empty mosque’s 50-foot ceilings. He walks from his home to do the call five times a day. This time, he wore a fabric mask and raised gloved hands to his head.

Volunteers disinfect the room after each prayer, and the room gets a deep cleaning after the last prayer around 9:45 p.m., Elahi said.

The mosque regularly draws hundreds of neighborhood Muslims for Friday prayers and meals during Ramadan, which begins April 23. But Friday prayers are canceled and likely so are the Ramadan gatherings, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A Syracuse.com reporter and photographer were allowed into the room for a prayer at 1:30 p.m. Monday. The small group of Muslims praised Allah and went through their prayers, mostly in silence, as the fans whirred faintly.

“May God accept our prayers and prevent all diseases from spreading around the world,” the prayer leader said in Somali, according to a translator.

Elahi said mosque leaders were worried that Muslims in the neighborhood, many of whom are refugees who speak limited English, would panic if their daily prayers were canceled. Their first impulse in times of crisis is to visit the mosque more and pray harder, he said.

Outside the prayer room, Elahi and others have covered the mosque floor in plastic, and it is disinfected daily. The mosque is serving as a home base for a food drive made possible through a $22,500 grant awarded to the nearby North Side Learning Center from the COVID-19 Community Support Fund.

The grant will feed more than 100 refugee families on the North Side, said Mark Cass, the learning center director.

A teaching of Islam is that crises like this are the moments when character is defined, said Yusuf Soule, president of the center’s board.

“We believe that the only thing that goes with you to the grave is your good deeds. None of your money goes with you," he said. “There’s a problem right now. There’s people that are in need. You have to do what you can.”

The mosque was once the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, but it closed in 2010 due to declining attendance. The neighborhood changed to become home for refugees, many of them Muslim. The former church sat empty for four years before the idea was hatched to turn it into a mosque.

Reporter Patrick Lohmann can be reached at PLohmann@Syracuse.com or via cell phone at (315)766-6670.

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