Dr Abdul R. Piracha
PRINCETON, W.Va. — In an interview on Thursday, Dr. Abdul R. Piracha expressed that, like all Americans, he was saddened by the senseless act of terrorism that claimed the lives of 14 people who were attending a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif.
“My heart goes out to the family, friends and all who care about these latest victims of terrorism,” he said.
When he came to the United States in 1966, Piracha, a cardiologist with the Mercer Medical Group at Princeton Community Hospital, had an experience that has remained with him since that time.
“In Pakistan in 1966, when a policeman stopped you late at night, they could take you straight to jail and hold you for not doing anything,” he said. “They were there to get a bribe of $5 or $10, and let you go.”
He had an experience in the U.S., after he earned his medical degree in Pakistan, he was serving his residency at Glen Falls Hospital in New York. He said he had worked a late shift and was walking back to the apartment where he and his wife were living, and a police man stopped him.
“It was around midnight,” Piracha said. “After I told him who I was and what I was doing, he offered to give me a ride. I told him it was only a couple of blocks, and said I could walk it. He asked me again if I was sure, and when I told him I was, he just drove off.
“I wrote my family in Pakistan and told them: ‘This is an amazing country. You have so much freedom.” He said that much has changed since then. “I am perfectly happy with the U.S. Constitution and its foundation on religious freedom,” he said. “That’s what this country was founded on.”
Piracha is presently a board member and was one of the founders of the Appalachian Society of Appalachian Region mosque in Mercer County. As an American Muslim, he is concerned about the Islam-a-phobia in the U.S., and said that the backlash from the terrorist act in California is unwarranted.
“If someone went radical from my mosque where we go for prayers, I would be the first to report them to the FBI,” he said. “Look at us. Look at me. We have lived as good people in the community. Please don’t brand us with some crazy ISIS leader…
