Tucked away in central York County sits Holy Islamville, a small Muslim community that has been in the county since 1983.
Founded by Muhyyudin Abdul Rauf, Kamal Shakir, Ali Abdul Rashid and Abdul Sabur, the community is still continuing today, bringing its history and culture to York County.
The founding members of the community originally lived in New York City and shared a common trait, they were United States natives who converted to the Muslim faith.
Shakir says that during their time in New York City, the community was going through turmoil in terms of their understanding of Islam, but were taught the proper way to practice Islam by a man from the Middle East named El-Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gillani.
“During that time, Khomeini, who was a leader in Iran had taken some hostages, and people in our community back then, not the punitive community that we are now, were going through a lot of turmoil and strife in terms of our understanding of Islam, the correct understanding of Islam, and many of us cheered what had happened,” Shakir said. “But, in 1979, there came a man to us from overseas and when we were sharing what was happening with the American hostages, he told us in very clear terms, he said, ‘This is not Islam,’ and he began to teach us real Islam.”
Gillani told them that in order to practice Islam, they had to leave the city and go to a place where they can establish real Islam and raise their families in a wholesome, Muslim environment.
This inspired Rashid and Sabur to get on the highway and go down Interstate 85 where eventually they came across Charlotte, North Carolina.
They discussed this idea with the community and their spiritual guide Gillani, who told them that this was a good idea because “people in the South love God and they’re God-fearing people.”
“So we’re like, oh, this is nice, you know, myself, because I’m a child from the 60s and 70s, I had my impressions of the South being completely opposite of that,” Shakir said. “But he reassured us that no, this is a good place to go.”
Eventually, Rashid and Sabur found the land in York County that the village is on today, but it was all woodland and was going to have to be developed.
“We couldn’t see anything but woods,” Shakir said. “So it was raw and we were all city people, so it was a lot of learning on all levels for us. But what we did, by the grace and mercy of Allah, the most kind, and following the instruction, and the guidance of our spiritual guide, we bought the property and we had local people who were willing to help us, which again, you know, cured a lot of angst that we all had in regards to being in the South, being African Americans, most of the members of our community here are African American.”
After the land was developed and all of the families were moved there, the community established a place of prayer, or masjid, and their own homeschooling system.
“We built a masjid from the ground up and the unique situation about this is that there were very few masjids in the state of South Carolina, much less the South as a whole, that was built from the ground up that was never anything but a masjid,” Shakir said. “We established our own homeschooling situation because we didn’t want to put our children in public schools because part of the purpose of leaving the cities was to remove ourselves from environments that we couldn’t control and when you have your children in public school environments, as you see nowadays, a lot of things are taught that you almost have to deprogram your children from.”
Also at Holy Islamville is a shrine where Shakir says a miracle was manifested.
“That miracle was that Allah’s name was seen shining on the wall, in what was at that time, a person’s residence, and everybody looked around and couldn’t see how this name could be there because there was no sunlight coming in,” Shakir said. “It radiated, and when they explained this to our spiritual teacher and guide, he said, ‘This is a miracle.’”
The community received national attention from The Guardian in 2016 due to Donald Trump’s rhetoric regarding Muslims and local attention from The State in 2015 after police took a visit to the village to make sure that the community felt safe after York County citizens were making claims that it was a “terrorist training camp.”
Police found no evidence of that claim during their visit, and members of the community told The State that they are “law-abiding American citizens who are living a normal life like anyone else.”
These claims escalated to the point that former South Carolina House of Representatives member Mick Mulvaney made a visit to the community himself to try and calm his constituents down.
“Mick Mulvaney had contacted my son and said that his constituents in this district, were concerned about a compound that was right here in his district and they want to know, what was he going to do about it,” Shakir said. “So he contacted my son, he said, ‘Look, my constituents are irritated, hot and bothered, they want to know what’s going on, can I come down,’ and he was offered the opportunity to come down and sit down, and he did an interview and the interesting thing about this is that he saw exactly the opposite of what he was told.”
Mulvaney’s visit was covered by The Herald and he told them that he heard complaints about Holy Islamville for years, but was reassured by former York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant, that the community posed no threat to anyone.
“There is no training camp there,” Mulvaney told The Herald. “This is a group of law-abiding American citizens who are practicing their faith, and I saw no reason for anyone to see a threat.”
“I would encourage any elected official who is hearing these same untrue things about Islamville and the people who live there to ask about visiting and see for themselves,” Bryant told The Herald.
“All this talk from other people in fear, and everything else that was circulated about us, was put to rest, just by this congressman,” Shakir said. “So, Holy Islamville has done what our spiritual guide and leader told us to do, we’ve accomplished that mission in that we have saved our children, and some of our children are sitting right here today, who were little children when they came down here, but some of them are now grandparents, in 39 years. This is the success of applying ourselves to the teachings of our spiritual guide.”
