People have often looked at Kristen Jawad’s Muslim head covering – or hijab – and asked her where she’s from.

Portland, Oreg., she tells them.

“They assume that I’m a foreigner because of maybe the way that I’m dressed,” Jawad told a crowd of 80 during a panel presentation at the IMAN (Ithna-asheri Muslim Association of the Northwest) Center in Kirkland Jan. 9. During the event, sponsored by the Kirkland-Redmond branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the public had the opportunity to meet their Muslim neighbors and learn about the role of women in Islam during a panel discussion.

Jawad, who now lives in Kirkland with her husband and two sons, shared her personal experience of becoming a Muslim during the event.

At a young age, Jawad started to notice things in the mixed neighborhood she lived in: how different races, classes and sexes interacted and that classism, racism and sexism existed. She also began to question God and how she was supposed to live.

On her own she visited churches, synagogues and sought out information. In college, she researched close-knit communities, including the Amish and Mennonites, as she was curious about how people that shared the same beliefs lived together in communities.

“I started to make connections between what Islam was and my beliefs were and it started to make sense to me,” Jawad recalled. “I started to gain a sense of peace because I found some clear guidelines that resonated with me.”

Those guidelines included that all mankind have mutual rights that should be respected; that men and women should honor each other; family relationships are sacred; and that people should serve each other through love and good actions.

Jawad became Muslim the day before Ramadan – the fasting month for Muslims. She experienced the challenge of trying to fast, go to school and work. Around that time, she married her husband, who later converted to Muslim as well.

Though Jawad didn’t immediately start wearing hijab, she decided later that she wanted to dress and behave in a modest way.

“I knew that I had gone through this personal transformation, but no one else knew that I had until I started to cover and it became obvious,” she said. “I was like the instant poster child of Islam.”

And she takes that as a big responsibility, trying to reflect her values to the community and her sons that she home schools.

She noted as a convert, she has a different experience than someone who was raised Muslim.

“I wasn’t raised with any type of prayer,” said Jawad. “I think of it as meditation and a time for reflection.”

She also thinks of parenting as “spiritual training,” adding “it’s an interesting experience trying to guide people as I’m guiding myself.”

Where religion and culture cross

Kirkland resident Sanaa Joy Carey said it’s important for her to do whatever she can to correct some of the misconceptions of Islam in this country.

“They’re very hurtful, not just to Muslims, but also for Americans because not knowing truth is not good for anyone,” said Carey, a counseling psychologist with a private practice in Bellevue.

She spoke about an experience in her life that helped her understand the differences between religion and culture.

“Many of us make the mistake of confusing being able to describe something with thinking we understand it,” she said. “If I cry water, water, water all day … If I can explain the depth or currents in an ocean … does that mean that I really understand water?”

She said it is not until people taste water that they have a full understanding of what it is, and the same is true of religion, she added.

Before she converted to Muslim, Carey found herself living in a small, impoverished community in Virginia.

“I knew nothing about Islam,” she recalled. “I had all the typical American stereotypes, especially about women, and this perception of what Islam was and what it taught its people.”

In the community, which had a high rate of abuse towards women and girls, she worked as a clinician. The community claimed to be Christian, “and this violence and abuse of girls was quite shocking,” she said. “And I learned in that juxtaposition of living with Muslims who are supposed to be so violent and anti-women and so forth and then working in a so-called Christian community, and seeing this institutionalized violence and disrespect, especially for women, it caused a dissonance in my brain and I started thinking more deeply.”

She realized that religion sometimes overlaps cultural patterns. If she were to judge Christianity based on that particular community’s behavior, she would have a different view of the religion.

“So I think it’s important to realize that we don’t have too many opportunities to view Muslims and how they treat each other and what beautiful people most of them are,” Carey added. “We get our images from CNN and other media sources, which are not known to be the most reliable.”

Questions on Islam answered

During the event, audience members had the opportunity to write questions down on index cards, while panel guests answered them. One person asked if the presenters had noticed any particular misconceptions about Muslims on the Eastside. Carey said she’s been “very impressed” with Kirkland, noting the sincere recognition the IMAN Center received when members were part of the Kirkland Fourth of July Celebration.

“There’s been an overwhelming response from the community to us individually, but we always run into some kind of bigotry. So we should be cognizant of that,” said Jawad Khaki, a volunteer at the center and a former corporate vice president at Microsoft Corp.

Another attendee asked, what is the biggest stereotype that you’ve run into about Muslim women?

Jawad said there are many misconceptions that Muslim women do not have access to education. “Some of those things are not stereotypes, some of those things are true, but I think the confusion is the difference between cultural practices and what the religion teaches,” said Jawad, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree.

Panelist members also shared their views on Muslims and non-Muslims dating. Khaki noted that Islam allows Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women, provided they are “people of the book,” or Christians and Jews. But the marriage of Muslim women to non-Muslim men is not permitted to ensure “there’s justice for women as men are considered to be guardians of women,” he said.

Another question: If women have support and respect in Islam, why do we hear on the news and read in books that women are required to be totally covered and punished accordingly?

Khaki stressed that people tend to confuse culture with religion. “You see women driving in Indonesia, in Pakistan, and Iran but why can’t they drive in Saudi Arabia? These are issues of social injustice.”

Panelists were also asked for advice on how people should respond to prejudice against Muslims. Carey suggested that people become sensitive to prejudice “no matter what religion, what ethnicity or physical handicap that a person has.”

Khaki invited the public to visit the IMAN Center and learn more about the Muslim community.

“The challenge we have is one of providing reliable information on Islam and about Muslims,” he said. “We need to work together and try to eliminate this misinformation.”

For information about the IMAN Center, visit www.iman-wa.org or 515 State St. in Kirkland. For information about AAUW, visit www.aauw.org or call 425-822-2794.