Napa women's group forms to spread information, good deeds

By KERANA TODOROV
Register Staff Writer

As men and women brought out dishes of couscous with lamb, hummus, pita bread, olives and baklava, Omar Salem stood in the community room of Rohlffs Manor in Napa and lectured the faithful on Gharib Nawaz, a friend of the poor and the friendless revered in the Islamic world.

“We’re here to give to people,” Salem, a volunteer chaplain at Napa State Hospital, told the four dozen people gathered at Rohlffs, a senior apartment complex north of Napa. Charity does not only mean to give money, he said, as he discussed the life and teachings of Nawaz, a Persian spiritual leader who was born in the 12th century. People need to be involved.

“Don’t just talk. Go out there,” Salem, 22, told the men and women from Napa, Pope Valley, Sonoma and elsewhere.

The event last weekend was the first community function organized by Napa’s Female Islamic Group, an informal group of a half-dozen Muslim women of all ages and diverse backgrounds.

Bibi Khadija Locks, who moved to Napa from Southern California four years ago, helped form FIG in part to draw out women from Napa’s Islamic community.

Other members include 20-year-old Maya Shweiky, a 2006 Vintage High School graduate. Her parents, who are from Syria, operate a catering business.

Napa Valley College students Shaheeda Yasin, 24, of Vallejo, a psychology major, and Shara Lodhi, 19, a 2007 Vintage High graduate, who wants to become a nurse, are also members of the group.

Joumana Shweiky, Maya’s mother, said she is grateful for FIG for giving her daughter guidance.

For Maya Shweiky, FIG’s group discussions are an opportunity to study Islam as well as other religions. While Salem said his religion has never been an issue, Shweiky said after Sept. 11 she and her siblings had to cope with “terrorist jokes” from  classmates.

Shweiky, who moved from St. Helena to Napa eight years ago, used to brush the comments aside with a “OK, sure, dude.”

In the west there are many misconceptions about Islam, Shweiky said. Most importantly, he said, Islam does not teach “killing people in the name of God.”

“Nothing in the Koran says that,” Shweiky said.

The number of Muslims continues to grow in Napa, as in the rest of the United States. Salem, a 2004 New Technology High School graduate who joined the Napa Police Department officer in January, recalled there were fewer than a dozen Islamic families in the area when he was growing up in Napa and American Canyon.

There are more than 60 families now, he said.

Khadija Locks hopes people will learn about more Islam.

“Napa has got to know Muslims are real people,” she said. “When they know, they’ll love us.”

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