When Moina Shaiq sat down in a Fremont coffee shop in 2016 with a small handwritten sign reading “Come Meet a Muslim,” she brought her laptop along — just in case nobody showed up. Over 100 people came. That first, almost accidental event became Meet A Muslim, a grassroots effort that has since taken Moina across the country, earned her national media coverage, and led to her nomination for a Lifetime Achievement award.
Moina joined the #MuslimPhilanthropy Podcast to talk about the years of quiet, persistent community-building that led to that coffee shop moment — and the conviction that’s kept her showing up ever since.
A Community Rooted in Fremont Since 1982
Moina and her family moved to Fremont, California in 1982, where she raised her four children. After 9/11, she watched Islamophobia reshape how the world saw Muslim Americans, and she began paying attention to research showing that a striking majority of Americans — by some estimates as high as 80 to 90 percent — had never personally met a Muslim. She threw herself into interfaith work, but noticed a familiar problem: the same faces kept showing up to interfaith events, while the people who most needed a different picture of Islam never walked through the door.
Turning Grief Into a Proactive Plan
Moina’s path to Meet A Muslim wasn’t sudden — it was built through years of showing up after tragedy and asking a harder question each time. After the 2012 shooting that killed six Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin, she helped organize a vigil in Fremont’s Central Park that drew a couple thousand people. Still, she found herself asking: what can we do before something happens, not just after?
That question became urgent again after the 2016 San Bernardino shooting. Moina decided she couldn’t wait for someone else to act. She wrote a handful of the questions she knew were on people’s minds — the difference between Shia and Sunni, whether Muslim women are oppressed, what Sharia law actually is, why radicalization happens — and posted a small sign in a coffee shop inviting anyone to come ask her directly.
From One Coffee Shop to Coast to Coast
That first Fremont event was standing-room-only. Word spread quickly, helped along by coverage in the Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle, and Moina began traveling across the country — invited by colleges, churches, schools, and community groups like Rotary Clubs — to hold Meet A Muslim conversations in person.
Not every encounter has been easy. Moina recalls one man who showed up to an event holding a newspaper clipping about her work, only to be shut out of the conversation by another attendee who dominated the floor. He left angry — but Moina followed him outside and sat with him one-on-one for half an hour. He told her he’d only come because of the article; his father believed all Muslims were terrorists, and he’d nearly skipped the event entirely. By the end of their conversation, he shook her hand and told her he was leaving “a different person,” ready to go tell his father that Muslims are not terrorists.
Refusing to Let a Small Percentage Speak for Everyone
Moina has heard plenty of skepticism over the years, including people who’ve told her to her face that she’s lying, that she’s only showing a “rosy picture” of Islam. Her response is consistent: she asks people whether they’d give the microphone to the KKK to speak for all Christians. The answer is always no. Then she asks why they’d let ISIS speak for all Muslims instead of listening to the vast majority of ordinary Muslims — people, she says, who think the way she does.
Her Advice to the Muslim Community: Know Your Neighbor
When asked what she hopes the Muslim community can work toward, Moina’s answer is disarmingly simple: get to know your neighbor. She points to the Islamic principle that one shouldn’t sit down to eat while a neighbor goes hungry — a value that starts with actually knowing who lives next door. Her advice to anyone who’s lived somewhere for years without meeting a neighbor: knock on the door, bring something, introduce yourself. In her experience, people don’t slam the door — they welcome the gesture. And once someone actually knows you, she says, stereotypes and misconceptions tend to fall away on their own.
Recognition Built on Years of Service
Moina’s community leadership has earned her recognition from the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame, a Woman of the Year honor from state senators, and multiple awards from the interfaith community — recognition that reflects not a single moment, but nearly two decades of consistent, face-to-face work rebuilding trust one conversation at a time.
To learn more about supporting community-building and interfaith work in the American Muslim community through AMCF, visit amuslimcf.org or open a donor-advised fund with us at amuslimcf.org/dafs.
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