Hawzah News Agency-Laila Alsharie stood in the Sunday afternoon sun near a table covered with a veritable rainbow of hijabs, calling for everyone to try on the head scarves that Muslim women often wear.
For Alsharie and other volunteers of the first-ever New England Muslim Festival, the hijab station on Malden City Hall Plaza represented an ideal introduction to Muslim culture.
“We organized things that make the environment friendly, so that it’s fun, and to break down the barriers between Muslims and non-Muslims,” Alsharie said. “So that they can see who we are: just regular people.”
Organizers sought to bring together the whole community in an effort to make other Muslims feel at home, to celebrate their diverse cultures, and to make sure other people knew what their religion is truly about.
Thousands flocked to the event, including Malden Mayor Gary Christenson; Nadeem Mazen, Cambridge’s first Muslim city councilor; US Representative Katherine Clark; and US Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
It began early in the afternoon with a call for prayer echoing over a stage in front of City Hall. Mazen helped man a table encouraging potential voters to register, and another table featured Muslim physicians discussing health screenings.
There was also a table with gummy watermelon candies that were made with beef gelatin instead of pork gelatin because pork is forbidden in the Muslim religion; a booth selling dozens of Korans, the main religious text of Islam; and a table peddling Islam-themed T-shirts.
The Malden city had its own bout with anti-Muslim sentiments after the Boston Marathon bombings, when a Palestinian woman who had immigrated to Malden from Syria was assaulted and harassed near Malden Center.
Mohammad Shadid, a director of the festival who also works with Malden’s only mosque, said he has grown tired of the anti-Muslim sentiments he often sees in the national media.
“There’s a lot of negative images of Islam and misrepresentations of Islam,” he said. “We wanted to bring attention to our culture.”
Nichole Mossalam, another organizer, converted to Islam about 11 years ago and says people in her own family sometimes share Facebook memes that group Muslims as terrorists or dangerous people.
She confronts them, she said, because such fear stems from ignorance. Events like the festival can go a long way in changing people’s minds about Muslims, she said.