It’s a Saturday morning on Devon Avenue, Chicago’s South Asian corridor famous for its food and culture. Today, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief Refugee Resources and Food Pantry opens its doors to provide biweekly food distribution. Volunteers load boxes of fresh produce, sugar, flour, salt, cereal, tea, and meat, going beyond the staples of a regular food pantry. ICNA Relief serves 284 families, and 90 percent of their clients are refugees (Kazmi). They also provide Muslim Family Services on a case-by-case basis, evaluating each client for their needs and assisting with housing, language, and employment.
Shady El-tawil, case manager and food pantry coordinator at ICNA Relief, beams at a woman who comes in with her young child and guides her to a registration table. He speaks to her in Arabic, smiling with soft eyes. He hasn’t seen this woman before, and he hopes she will get what she needs food-wise and beyond with ICNA Relief’s other resources. El-tawil explains ICNA Relief is the only pantry he knows of that provides Halal food, literally meaning “allowed for consumption” by Muslims as outlined in the Quran. He compares the practice to Kosher for Jewish people but notes the details are different, involving how an animal is killed and prepared. During Ramadan, ICNA Relief also provide dates and other food and drink specific to the holiday. “It is our priority to assist the needy among the Muslim communities to be able to access Halal food, a task which is not taken care by other food pantries,” Tawil says. “Doing so is a kind of respect for those families and to emphasize on the freedom of choice of the suitable food based on their belief.”
As I talk with El-tawil, I think of the concept of “lived religion” in Islam as described by a professor of politics at Northwestern University, Elizabeth Shackman Hurd. She says lived religion “practiced by everyday individuals and groups as they interact with a variety of religious authorities, rituals, texts, and institutions” often contrasts with “governed religion” or “expert religion (Hurd, 8).” At ICNA Relief, giving and receiving Halal food is a daily religious practice based in charity and kindness, values mentioned more often in the Quran than the logistics of Halal.
There is something deeply personal about the “lived religion” I witness at ICNA. I feel as far away as possible from the American myth of Muslims as part of some plot against “Western values” that needs to be surveilled and policed (Aziza Hill). First and foremost, El-tawil works to end hunger in refugee communities. His actions are related to religion, but they are not religious in nature. He is not the “moderate Muslim;” his life and values are complex as a refugee, Muslim, father, doctor, human, and so much more. El-tawil knows these narratives, and he doesn’t need to defend himself against them. His work at ICNA Relief and within his own community gives him autonomy, and this agency is the center of ICNA Relief’s approach, honoring the complexity of an individual’s daily encounters with religion and a client’s decisions about what he wants to eat and how she wants to practice.
Outside of ICNA Relief, El-tawil works four days a week as a clinic manager in Chicago. He has a master’s degree in medical pathology from a university in Malaysia, but when he came to the United States, he found it difficult to get licensed. As he works with refugees at ICNA Relief, he knows the plethora of obstacles his clients face first-hand. A woman walks in with a stroller. With El-tawil translating, she tells me her baby is 4 months old, and she has another child at home about to start elementary school. El-tawil and I help her load a box full of rice, onions, lentils, and hummus into the bottom of her stroller; she nods at us and walks home.
“Hunger prevention and assisting low income families in finding their needs from the food and other services is a key factor in the stability and the security of the city of Chicago,” El-tawil says. “We do our part in assisting the different sectors of the city and the government in achieving the security and stability in the neighborhood, and I am all hope the contribution of ICNA Relief toward the community will result in further progress and development that everybody will benefit from.”
I smile at El-tawil, surprised by his brief mention of security. It’s impossible to imagine him and this young mother doing anything to disrupt the “safety and stability” of Chicago. El-tawil sacrifices most of his Saturdays to volunteer with ICNA Relief, and this young mother is preoccupied with feeding her two children. Yet as a Muslim man in America, as an immigrant, as a refugee, El-tawil knows the script. He can see himself through the eyes of white people on the street, through the voice of enraged pundits on cable news. He knows he is being watched, so he must promise what he is doing is for Chicago, for the United States. It is not enough to serve almost 300 vulnerable families and distribute over 500,000 pounds of groceries in a year (ICNA Relief Overview 2016). El-tawil still needs to promise his pantry will benefit the safety of non-Muslims.
But El-tawil doesn’t think his food pantry is doing enough for the refugee community in Chicago. A bi-weekly distribution leaves family hungry, they are always accepting more clients, and the pantry is still in a pinch for supplies. They receive food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, (GCFD) which provides mainly canned goods and some produce, but they rely on donations and drives for other staples, including Halal meat.
A spokesperson for GCFD Jim Conwell said they have one warehouse in Chicago, and all their distribution happens through other programs. They give out 2,000 pounds of food a day, 37 percent of which is fresh produce, Conwell said. However, he noted they do not have any specific items for religious restrictions like Kosher or Halal. Beyond meeting the food needs that exist today, Conwell added that GCFD also advocates for anti-hunger policy to reduce need overall. He stressed the importance of a strong Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, (SNAP) commonly known as food stamps.
Conwell said more than two-thirds of GCFD’s partners are faith-based organizations, acknowledging the “unique role” these organizations serve. ICNA Relief is on the cutting edge of hunger prevention, Conwell said. With 1 in 5 kids and 1 in 7 adults experiencing food insecurity, many organizations have started to emphasize agency in a client-choice model where people choose what they know they will eat (ICNA Relief). By adding recognition of dietary restrictions and religious needs, ICNA Relief intentionally serves its clients, and they can get people in the door to find other programs to assist with housing, education, and employment.
“Food can be the catalyst or the driver for a family or individual to get connected to other services,” Conwell said. “The food might be what brings someone to a food pantry like ICNA, but while they’re there they can get connected with a variety of other services that might help them get a job…or other essential services like assistance with utilities or education. Food can really open the door to a lot of other services that long-term can help an individual or a family achieve food security.”
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A week later, Atya Kazmi, Muslim Family Services coordinator at ICNA Relief, invites me to talk on a Tuesday. It’s much quieter compared to the Saturday before, no volunteers or clients and their families. She unlocks the building and leads me to her windowless office.
Kazmi describes some of the challenges refugee families face as they get settled in apartments, schools, and communities in a new country. Refugees often qualify for a range of government services from SNAP to section 8 housing, but they must apply and follow certain guidelines. As part of Muslim Family Services, Kazmi sits down with families to make a plan, determining what they receive from the government and what holes ICNA Relief and other organizations need to fill. From there, clients can qualify for English classes, apartment kits with furniture, legal assistance, mentoring, car donation, counselling, financial assistance, and more.
Kazmi emphasizes that all of these services usually start with the food pantry. When clients hear about ICNA Relief, often through Mosques or other religious organizations in the neighborhood, they come rushing to ICNA for food. Refugees have a lot to adjust to, and American cuisine is no exception. Her clients eat basmati rice not brown rice, lentils not beans, tea not coffee.
Kazmi describes the Muslim community in Chicago as cohesive and strong, something she sees first hand because ICNA Relief relies heavily on charitable donations from Muslims themselves. On average, the Muslim population in the United States looks very different than the clients Kazmi serves. As Nadia Marzouki describes in Islam: An American Religion, Muslims are a relatively young, educated, and economically comfortable population; they are altogether “utterly normal (Marzouki, 40).” Mazouki emphasizes Muslims are humans like anyone else with a faith equivalent to Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism. Muslim volunteers and donors at ICNA Relief often see the pantry and other services as a way to welcome refugees into their community and invest back in clients’ future success and self-sufficiency, Kazmi says. The volunteers at ICNA Relief reminds me of the people who ran the food pantry at my own church, how “utterly normal” it was for middle-class, Christian white people to spend time sorting and distributing food for the housing and food insecure. I imagine ICNA Relief volunteers in the same light, coming from the same values.
“Our basic idea is to provide holistic services,” Kazmi said. “Whatever it takes for us so that the family becomes stronger, we will do. As long as it’s working for the good of the family.”
ICNA Relief’s holistic approach is about hunger prevention as well, addressing the larger causes of food insecurity. If rent takes up 90 percent of a minimum wage paycheck for a refugee, if someone is injured and cannot provide for his family, if she is struggling with PTSD without access to counselling services or community support, food insecurity will soon follow. Kazmi says they fill in a web of care, hoping to reduce need overall, as families become self-sufficient.
The bell rings at the front of the store, and Kazmi unlocks the door for a man dressed in tan slacks and a corduroy jacket. He speaks to her in Arabic and sits quietly outside her office. Kazmi tells me the man has five kids at home and a broken wrist from his job stripping drywall. She says his spouse cannot work either while she takes care of their children and works on her English. Now they’re behind in rent. The man has been working for minimum wage since he came to the United States three months ago, but now he has no revenue to support his family as they adjust to a new country.
“When you talk to these families they say, ‘We never thought that it would be so tough here.’” Kazmi looks at me. “What would you do?”