that mean me i mean thank you very much the title of this show is so interesting title it's called eat with muslims and myself and brother benjamin had a chance to meet these wonderful sisters here that do fantastic work in the community and this work is breaking ground with other faith communities and basically breaking bread with them because there's so much out in the atmosphere nowadays of muslims and you know to be fearful of muslims to hate most of them and most people don't even know muslims so these sisters here have taken it upon themselves to start this organization it with muslims and who would like to lead off kind of tell us about yourself briefly and then what made you start this organization so my name is c lazar i said here and i got together almost a year ago and decided right around you know trump getting elected in a growing sense of islam a phobia that we wanted to make sure we were being more proactive in the communities that we we serve in that we work in and reach out to our brothers and sisters or you know non muslims that have no idea about our faith and kind of you know put our foot forward to say hey we want to mean we want to break bread w introduce you know how we live our life storrow and what we believe in is very similar to christian and jews and other in for him like religions so we decided the best way to that of course is through eating everybody loves a good meal and we got people on board and throughout the past year all of twenty seventeen in two thousand and thirteen we've had a great amount of success in bringing people together from churches community centers different non profits and you know grateful that i met her in twenty sixteen right yeah we i moved from washington d c and she moved from minneapolis and we were both kind of new to the area again and being in the seattle area was important for us to as we were both we just both of us moved here i moved from minnesota minneapolis minnesota although i used to live here and she used to live here she went away for school i want to wear for work and we both came back around the same time and  o we were infighter to a meeting by her mom and so that's how we met and we ended up having so much in common but then you know once the election you know happened  started talking oh my god we need to do something we cannot let things be the way they used to be were muslims were just you know speaking boss if i'm just i'm not doing anything wrong it's none of my business i don't have to go out of my way to reach out to anyone so i got really really afraid i mean i'm a single mom with two little girls and i wear the hijab and for the first time in a long time i got very very scared because one day i was waiting for my brother in my car minding my own business and then this guy you know walked by me and he did he look at me straight and just went back back back that's just when i moved to seattle right now i was here only for about you know a couple of months and of course other things have happened to me since i started wearing the hijab and i could really it's a different world once you move from from not wearing the hijab to wearing the hijab and so which is one to reach out to to our neighbors neighbors and strangers alike because you know like my angelou said we're more alike than we are but we're not going to know that unless we get together share a meal and sit together like brothe benjamin were saying the other day how do you know people how would you know people you never know till you sit with them work with them you know have a conversation with them the minute you start doing that you know your humanity feels itself and your sameness you know comes forward and everything else becomes a noise and a kind of melts away so i think it's it's very very important for us muslims to be  muslims treating to their shells and i have my own friends i don't need to make new friends well it's very very important that we connect with people otherwise we could be in serious you know problem and even in a liberal place such a question washington we still meet people who are like i have no muslims you know in my area i don't know and all i can see is you know what is a muslim from what television and obviously that's not a good depiction of the earth you know so it's even important and sometimes people say you know do it around here we're kind of tolerant loving people but again it's not muslims aren't seen as americans they're always seen as the other so we're still important for us to reach out to people here meal with a muslim or with muslims and kind of create a beautiful you know space where people can connect intimately and sit together and talk about whatever they want so  is more about it's not only an interfaith it's more about relationship building friendship building you know because we're once you talk to people and you hear their stories it quickly becomes your story just like yourself and then when when you hear other people saying nasty things about them you know him and i send them it's easier for you to think about the people you met and talk with and had a meal with and say you know you don't know what you're talking about you know people are not all the same and believe me it has been just incredible it's been an incredible journey people reach out to us from everywhere not only from washington state everywhere in ca no show they agree and they will have their reward with their lord so so is this like it's like good people we're not enemies to each other because we carry a different label and so that's why i'm excited about what you're doing because  a lot of groups i can call myself belonging to you know that call themselves reaching out but then they have incorporated within their ideology you know this madness this going on and name islam one another not so you despise each other that's really i've always had that in me personally because i just love people i love humanity and i could you know i'm not just going to yes i could love someone because they're muslim but we're human beings you're not just going to love someone because they're muslim and just dislike someone because they're they're not muslim you know that's not how we're designed we're designed to love anyone who is kind and nice and and c s s human beings so all this you know you said something that really moved me the other night when you come to you know muslims you said if we see each other as human beings before we think about anything there's something wrong with you know giving and the person can think about you know computer what you're talking about but another words always see the human being in front a few guard lists of what they might look like you know their color  ection religion it doesn't matter see the human being in front of you and if you treat others the way you want to be treated then everything else is just going to be going to be fine but i think what we really want to essentially our first dinner was january of two thousand and seventeen and so we're coming up to a little over a year and we want to do it with muslims day and have you know people all over the country you know bring in their neighbors and their friends and community members and you know i want to host a dinner and i want to talk to you and get to know you and you know bring bring communities together from all kinds of cities we want to do that april twenty and so we're working towards getting people together for that i think the hardest part we face throughout this time  you know getting other muslims on board with what we're doing because sometimes it seems like you know we get so busy and we we think oh what do you mean you want to get people together and eat why don't you give that money to you know a community and their people you know hungry and starving and you know what is this and so it's important for us to remind other people it's actually you know giving back and getting other people to understand who we are is just as important like you said you know it's it's literally the simplest thing is to open your doors and say hey i want to bring people in and talk to them yet because because because there are people out there who think every muslim is plotting something in the room you're doing a lot of hiding something and there's only a couple of you know what three million muslims in this country sees me something and so there's so many people who've never interacted with other muslims it's only three million imagine that so it's kind of a cool day for everybody to kind of hey i want to you know get our neighbors together and and our community members and everybody you know and so i think the bigger picture is to just have our own voices and our own narrative being told by us rather than for us exactly because when you see these different talk shows or whatever muslims and none muslims usually it's less muslims and we would get a beautiful space so we would always cater the food or have someone you know cook the food it's a muslim food the type of food that is eaten by muslims you know we eat a lot of rise and a lot of lamb and me the know and so it's kind of an elaborate fancy but really also delicious food you know we won and we what we wanted was the muslim hospitality to showcase the somehow know us in this country and where we're i guess seen as the others that don't get along with anybody which is which couldn't be farther from the truth and now we have so many churches reaching out to us so we can hardly keep up with the demands of the church so already have that you know build in congregation and you've seen it the other night i mean that there's so much love in the air you know and people appreciate it they just appreciate  some fringe group who are almost two billion people around the world celebrate you know practice islam you have for example so and so forth but who is going to tell our story if we don't tell our own story then we will always be this people who always have something to hide and so what we really would like to do is after and now that they know people are interested and i see in the beginning a lot of people didn't we're not sure if america if non muslims would be interested but now that they know that so many people are interested in this they were any part of it and our format for the dinner is usually you know we kind of introduce and you know talk about the space that we're in and then we will have a meal but we try to like split because we never have as many muslims obviously room but we do have you know different muslims with non muslim in your center the different tables and then you know conversation is usually casual and and flowing and it's almost like just it sounds silly but you almost have to remind people that i'm actually having trouble you know at work to do what do you know what is your boss i like like you know i like kids are doing this i'm you know i have soccer this weekend and it's the same things that you know other people are going through and then we you know our last dinner that you both often focuses on the hijab and that's the fixation that we have when in america is you know what what are the women you know oppressed and why do you wear the hijab and so there's much more to it and we're slowly getting out of it and if more of us do this if more muslims everywhere in the country do this then less and less you know more and more people will realize that well yeah i mean it's what thirty eight percent of muslim women that cannot be an excuse we can we can take charge of our own stories in our own narrative and you know we have especially those fashion america we have no excuse you know we have the social media we have oh there's the work but yeah but it's it's it's really you know out of that people here is really cool the woman is speaking there she's muslim and her husband is catholic and they've been married for twenty seven yeah that's see if he was moderating the gentleman who was standing there and you can because they were there were about i think less than twenty muslims you can you can barely see the crowd swallowed them