All in good faith: Oregon’s Muslim community has become an unexpected haven for families in need

By Stacy Brownhill, Staff Writer

Zakat, one of the pillars of Islam that obliges all Muslims to practice charitable giving, is at the heart of Islamic Social Services of Oregon State (ISOS). In the nine years since it started, the little-heard-of nonprofit has helped at least 300 families, Muslim and non-Muslim, with $300,000 of financial support.

In contrast, Muslim Americans are still more likely than other religious groups to report discrimination, even though the vast majority say they are loyal to the United States, according to a Gallup poll released in August. And testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year showed that anti-Muslim bigotry has significantly risen in communities, workplaces and schools since Sept. 11, 2001.

Laila Hajoo, president of ISOS, started the 501(c)(3) partly to raise awareness. “There is no more effective way to get people to listen to our message of friendship than when they need help,” says Hajoo.

Street Roots sat down to talk with ISOS’s president on everything from their charitable cases to her thoughts on Muslim-American relations after 9/11 and the controversial bombing plot in Pioneer Courthouse Square earlier this year.

Stacy Brownhill: What services does ISOS provide, and is it just for Muslims?

Laila Hajoo: In the beginning, we served only Muslims and mostly refugees. But that scope was limited. There were other people that needed help. Now we serve everyone of all faiths in Oregon and southwest Washington, whether you’re Muslim or non-Muslim.

Our cases are really unique. Over 45 percent of the people we help are single mothers. A large percentage are disabled. We look at each case based on its individual merits and try to sit down with each person and look at what’s happened and how she can lift herself up by her own bootstraps. We ask applicants to come up with a self-sufficiency plan, and we want to see what other agencies they’ve gone to first. Once we figure out what additional services she needs, then we reach out.

One woman lost her family’s whole income when she lost her job teaching and her husband returned home from Afghanistan. She came to us. When her husband found out that an Islamic social services organization was helping his wife, it really hit him — how can he look at a person (in Afghanistan) who may be innocent and find out that a Muslim organization is helping his wife at home?

Another female client wears the full veil, has two young daughters, grew up in the U.S., and cannot get hired for a job. Every employer has said she needs to remove her veil. Even DHS told her she needed to remove her veil in order to assimilate. She’s faced enormous challenges because people think of her as a hostage, even though she’s wanted to wear the veil since she was 13. We’ve been supporting her with rent and food for years. She’s hoping to get a job with Intel.

I think the best solution for these women is to create your own business. Islamic Relief USA is piloting a program in Washington D.C. that would provide seed money for small, home business proposals.

For Ramadan fasting during the month of August, we have a fundraiser to buy Winco food cards. That way people can shop for food they want to eat. Throughout the year, we also provide hot meals and moving assistance.

S.B. What do you think of Muslim/American relations right now, and how can we get to a better place?

L.H.: When you hear how many Americans are automatically suspicious of Muslims, that’s crying out for attention. (A poll one year ago by Time magazine found that more than 4 in 10 Americans say they have an unfavorable view of Muslims, significantly more negative than opinions of other faiths).

Jews, Vietnamese, Japanese … many groups went through the same discrimination. We can get through it. There’s good and bad in everybody. You can’t stamp all Muslims.

Working with youth and neighbors, getting the next generation into politics and the police force — that’s the way we can make an impact. Our measure of success would be to have advocates speak out on our behalf who are not Muslim.

That’s where ISOS comes in. So many times people have come to me saying, “you were my last hope. And not only have you given me hope, but you have also given me awareness.”

S.B. How did the September 11, 2011 attacks and the November Pioneer Courthouse Square attempted bombing affect your own community and ISOS?

L.H.: There was a silver lining in 9/11. American Muslims realized that we have isolated ourselves so much. It’s our own fault that a majority of Americans distrust us. How would they know? We never gave (most Americans) the opportunity to get to know us.

It changed after 9/11. All of a sudden mosques that closed their doors to non-Muslims opened their doors and welcomed their neighbors to learn about their community and understand their values.

After the Pioneer Courthouse Square attempted bombing, Japanese Americans really kicked into action. Japanese Americans, including my husband, testified in court about the discrimination and profiling that happened to their families during World War II.

I believe the case of Mohamed Mohamud was a way to justify the need to have the JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) in Portland. We know we can’t trust the FBI. The FBI has a lot to do to prove themselves to Arab Muslims.

Our relationship with the Portland Police Bureau is much better. They’ve tried to extend themselves. We work with the Arab and Muslim Police Advisory Council to encourage the Muslim and Arab communities to report hate crimes.

The police department wants to get Muslim youth interested in joining the police force. Parents, especially refugee parents who come from dictatorship countries, are the biggest hurdles to this goal. For the future of the community, we have to find a way to reeducate parents, because we need policeman, firemen and politicians from the Muslim community.

S.B. How do people hear about your relatively small organization, and how do you get funding?

L.H.: Thirty percent of people we help say, “I know you because you helped my friend.’ People hear about us through mosques, 211, United Way and nonprofits who link to us.

Funds come mostly from individual donations. Although, we received a $3,000 grant from the McKenzie Foundation to create a youth program for kids that are falsely stereotyped — Jewish, African American, Somali Muslim, Japanese American, Pakistani and Bangladeshi. A handful of high schoolers signed up for eight workshops. We asked them to write down stereotypes of each other anonymously on index cards, and by the end of the sessions, they realized they were more like each other than different.

It was a really positive group, and something I think is desperately needed in this country with terms like Islamophobia and so many negative pictures and connotations of Muslims.

ISOS is all volunteers. Each person on the board comes from a different cultural background. No one can accuse us of being homogenous.

We decided money could never compensate for the work we do, so we all have other jobs. Sometimes you take ISOS’s work to bed with you, but when you get through it and you see there’s light at the end of the tunnel, it reenergizes you for the next case.

S.B.: Health-care wise, what is ISOS doing to help?

L.H.: A while back, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center contacted us and said, “we don’t know how to deal with health care for Muslim patients.” So we sat down with their chaplain and created a brochure that talks about Muslim modesty, food, grieving customs, and comfortable interaction between doctor and client. OHSU got wind of the brochure and is also very excited about it.

A lot of Iraqis coming to the Portland area have mental issues, especially PTSD, and it takes a while to get disability funds and find jobs. We try to help them.

S.B. Who are your collaborators?

L.H.: We collaborate with Catholic Charities, Lutheran Community Services, Neighborhood Housing Services, Friendly House, Jewish Family Services, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO), and the Oregon Food Bank. We reach out to mosques, including As-Sabr mosque on Capitol Highway, Bilal mosque in Beaverton and the Muslim Educational Trust in Tigard. Right now, we are trying to network with JOIN and Outside In to get homeless off the streets. We work with the Oregon Islamic Chaplains Organization to help ex-prisoners get on their feet again and also address domestic violence.

S.B. What is it like for refugees you help adjusting to life in the U.S.?

L.H.: A couple years ago, it wasn’t that hard for a refugee to find a job, but now it’s very hard. They only have eight months to find a job, house and learn English before TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) runs out. The nice thing about IRCO is they extend support after eight months. In comparison, when the Vietnamese came to the U.S., they were provided with three years of support.

Refugees to the U.S. wait in their home countries to get into the U.S., and they think it will all be OK once they get here. It’s a shock when it’s not. It begs to ask, if we have the ability to help make them self-sufficient in their own countries, why don’t we help them rebuild their own countries?

Photo by Ken Hawkins.

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