It started in 2002, just after 911, according to Tufail Ahmad, chairman of the board at the Montgomery County Muslim Foundation.
“After 911, we realized we were living here and not doing anything [for the community],” Ahmad said.
So, a group of local Muslims formed the Montgomery County Muslim Council to raise money and help community members is need.
The organization of about 500 people and the services they provided was remarkable and, County Executive Isiah Leggett, encouraged the group to form a foundation, Ahmad said.
The Montgomery County Muslim Foundation was founded in 2009. It’s a 501c3 organization and can accept financial donations to make its work of giving back to the community possible.
And there is a lot of giving back.
Saturday, at MCMF headquarters in Gaithersburg, local families in need arrived to pick up food boxes and five pounds of beef and lamb in the monthly food distribution program. Almost 70 boxes were given out.
And it happens every month, though the meat is not usually part of the program. That is something the foundation adds once a year.
“We work with the Capital Area Food Bank,” Ahmad said. “That is where we get the food.”
Various county organizations provide them with names of the people eligible for the food distribution program, he said.
MCMF also has a Refugee Aid program where they concentrate on providing cars to refugees who often have to travel far from their homes to work, and sometimes to more than one job.
“We have donated 28 cars/minivans to refugee families,” Ahmad said. “We collected the money from among [our members], bought the cars at auction, fixed them up and gave them away.”
All in two years, he said.
At Thanksgiving and Christmas, MCMF’s holiday gifts program distributes 120 to 150 food baskets. They have a clothing store at the Gaithersburg location where people in need can find good, used clothing and four times per year MCMF provides and serves a week of meals at a Women’s Shelter in Rockville.
The smiles and comments of MCMF volunteers working Saturday prove that the group made a good decision 12 years ago when they got involved helping their community. “I started realizing that I have enough income and food, and everyone does not have that,” said Iman Brim, one of several teenagers filling food boxes Saturday.
Mostafa Elamin, 13 said that helping the poor is one of the five pillars of his Muslim religion. The five, he explained, are Shahada, faith; Salah, prayer, five times a day; Zakat, charity; Sawm, fasting and Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.
“God has been very good to us, and we are returning,” Ahmad said.