Head to the U.S./Mexico border where a shelter founded by Sonia Tinoco García and the Latina Muslim Foundation serves thousands of asylum seekers each year; connect with Sakina Bakharia, president of the Barbados Association of Muslim Ladies, the first and only organization in Barbados that responds to the needs of Muslim women and girls; or visit Hazel Gómez, a Puerto Rican and Mexican Muslim community organizer with Dream of Detroit, a nonprofit that combines strategic housing and land development to empower marginalized neighborhoods.

Each is an example of Muslim women making an impact in their communities, based on their unique skillsets and experiences.

According to researchers at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s Muslim Philanthropy Initiative, philanthropy plays a vital role in the daily life of Muslim women.

As part of a growing Muslim philanthropic landscape that gives an estimated 4.3 billion dollars in zakat (obligatory charity that requires Muslims to give 2.5% of their wealth), women contribute beyond monetary giving as well, donating their time, talent and community ties to the greater good.

Nausheena Hussain, who helped shape the report and is author of a new book on Muslim’s women’s finance and giving titled, Prosperity with Purpose: A Muslim Woman’s Guide to Generosity and Abundance, said such research is vital to better understand Muslim women’s engagement, impact and still untapped philanthropic potential.

“First, Muslims in general have been underrepresented in philanthropic research,” she said, “and Muslim women are often misrepresented.”

Earlier reports had shown that Muslim men gave more money than women. But Hussain knew that philanthropy encompassed more than monetary contributions. She approached MPI’s Director, Shariq Siddiqui, about conducting research into women’s giving, volunteering and motivations for civic activism.

The results not only showed that Muslim women were involved, but that they were engaged at scale, with their generosity behaviors amplifying each other. In MPI’s 2023 report, seven out of ten women said they actively participate in one or more organizations — and because of this participation, were more likely to give zakat. In other words, if they were giving their time, they were giving more money.

They also found that if the same women were registered voters, they were even more likely to donate, volunteer, and participate in the community. Their data showed 87% of total zakat given by Muslim women was by those who were also registered voters — and those that are registered to vote were also 15 times more likely to volunteer.

This kind of research, Hussain said, not only departed from existing literature that focused on negative stereotypes of Muslim women or social stigmas and discrimination but also showed a side to American generosity that was not white, Christian or male-centric.

“When Muslim women cannot see ourselves in the broader story of Muslim or American giving, it becomes difficult to imagine ourselves as philanthropists,” she said. “Part of my goal is to be able to tell those stories, so that Muslim women can see themselves in these roles.”

Ashraf “Ash” Ayyash, owner and operator of The Fryer House foodtruck in Temple Terrace, Fla. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

“You’ve got to try The Fryer House,” Aaysha Kapila told me via the Tampa Halal Food Facebook group. “It’s new on the scene, but it’s amazing.” The “scene” in question? Tampa’s market for halal food. And The Fryer House, a food truck that opened in December 2023, is one of the newest on it, offering a fusion of Arab, Asian and American Southern fried chicken — from hot chicken sandwiches to fiery golden tenders to chicken and waffles.

Blending Palestinian spices with Japanese styles and Latin American peppers, the food truck’s owner, Ashraf “Ash” Ayyash, says his brand of “halal hot chicken” has proved a hit. While his customers come from a cross-section of Tampa society, many are Arabs and South Asian Muslims looking for a spicy, sumptuous, halal option for lunch or dinner. During Ramadan, Ayyash said, he cooked thousands of pounds of chicken. At a series of major local events during the month of fasting — Ramadan Suhoor Nights — he averaged 300 pounds per night.

Sitting underneath Ayyash’s menu with its hot, very hot and “pepper x” levels of spiciness, a slim, 30-something Palestinian American named Zyad is snacking on some of Ayyash’s specially seasoned french fries. This, he says, is one of his favorite options in Temple Terrace, a city on the northeast side of Tampa Bay and epicenter of its robust halal food scene. “There’s a Yemeni place down the road, several shawarma options, an Arab grocery store, a Turkish grocery store, bakeries, clothing stores, restaurants, food trucks. The list goes on,” he told New Lines.

“Tampa,” Zyad said, “is like the new Dearborn,” referring to Dearborn, Michigan, the first Arab-majority city in the U.S. and home to the largest mosque in North America.

Though there are no official statistics, estimates of Tampa’s Muslim community range between 5,000 or 6,000 in the Temple Terrace-New Tampa area alone, to upward of 36,000 or as high as 100,000 in the greater Tampa Bay area, which includes St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

Community statistics show an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Florida and over 150 mosques and Islamic centers across the state, from the Keys in the south to Pensacola on the panhandle. And they cut the cross section of Muslim-American society: Almost one-third were born in the U.S., with the remaining 69% coming from places like Pakistan and India, Egypt and Palestine, Guyana and Puerto Rico. The Tampa Bay area is home to tens of thousands of Muslims from over 80 different countries.

Especially around Busch Boulevard and 56th Street, not far from the Busch Gardens amusement park and the main campus of the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa’s Islamic infrastructure is dense, a testament to its rarely recognized, but consistently growing, Muslim community. Not only are numerous mosques and several of the nation’s premier Islamic schools in and around Temple Terrace, but there are also law offices with signs in Arabic and Urdu, numerous halal restaurants, Middle Eastern barber shops, Ramadan decor hanging in shop windows and a large halal slaughterhouse named Musa’s.

Abdullah Jaber at CAIR’s offices in Temple Terrace, Fla. (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood)

“I would estimate around 70% of the businesses in the Temple Terrace area are Muslim-owned,” said Imam Abdullah Jaber, executive director of CAIR Florida, the Sunshine State’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil liberties organization whose offices are also in Temple Terrace. “There are Muslims heading the Chamber of Commerce, professors at local universities, dentists, physicians, you name it.”

They are also shaping local, state and national elections with the growing political power that comes with such a presence. But that influence is far from monolithic: The Muslim community’s shifting political crosscurrents and fault lines mean it doesn’t align neatly with either camp in the country’s increasingly polarized landscape. “I think you can be socially conservative and yet be an advocate for social and racial justice,” Jaber told New Lines.

“Maybe that’s impossible with America’s current politics, but I think Tampa is leading the way here. It’s a model for American Muslim life.”

While the city’s Islamic infrastructure is dynamic, the community’s mix of progressive values and social conservatism makes it an outlier in a polarized ideological landscape.

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