It was less than a week before the start of Ramadan, and Samina Chaudhry, a Saratoga resident who owns a gas station on the West Side of Santa Cruz, was carrying boxes of American dates through the tranquility of the one-story building that’s home to the West Valley Muslim Association, on Farley Road in Los Gatos.
She used to be a board member with the organization, but now simply serves as one of many volunteers who have been helping the prominent Muslim institution get ready for one of the most sacred months of their year.
“I already did set my intention,” she says, when asked about what it’s like to prepare for a time when people of her religion are supposed to abstain from food, sex and drinking during the day, and abide by several other strict conditions. “Always, as Ramadan is approaching, Oh, I have to fast. Oh, I have to struggle. But this year, I start praying like two weeks back.”
There are more than 60,000 families in Santa Clara County that are connected to Islam, representing about 27% of the 250,000 in the Bay Area, according to researchers.
(Drew Penner / Los Gatan)
West Valley Muslim Association, based out of a nondescript former Kingdom Hall for Jehovah’s Witnesses building, is situated just off Los Gatos Boulevard in a wealthy suburban neighborhood, is a Sunni mosque, though there are Shia folks who worship there, too.
The local leadership is preparing for an influx of around 400-500 people on a nightly basis, as believers come to break their fast and pray, with as many as 800 anticipated at the apex—this year on Feb. 27.
(Drew Penner / Los Gatan)
But some neighbors have tired of the high numbers that roll into the area on school nights—and have been inserting themselves into ongoing discussions between the religious group and the Town of Los Gatos, as the municipality pushes the Islamic organization to update its Conditional Use Permit to better reflect the reality of the site’s activities.
During the public comment period during the Feb. 3 Council meeting, Kim Ratcliff said she felt “let down” by how the Town hasn’t taken decisive action against WVMA.
“For the first couple years we got along beautifully,” she said. “We welcome diversity.”
But, she went on, the traffic concerns have gotten to be too much to handle.
“There’s 300 cars parked on six different streets,” she said. “It’s like living in Levi’s Stadium.”
She says she doesn’t want the Town to allow for extended hours of operation with a new CUP.
Her husband Jim also spoke at the meeting, suggesting the traffic is more than just an annoyance.
“It’s unsafe,” he said. “Someone shouldn’t get hurt during this time.”
In an interview with the Los Gatan, Razi Mohiuddin, 64, who founded the West Valley Muslim Association in 2007, just over a decade before it moved to Los Gatos, says their Ramadan events don’t include music, adding they’ve taken great pains to manage traffic and keep the noise down.
“We are a religious facility, and we are using the religious facility as it was designed in 1990,” he said. “Now, there’s no doubt that every faith has some number of holy days….and we’re no different in that sense.”
He says a Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Officer even remarked to him, last year, on how quiet they manage to keep things.
“We go to great extent to coach and communicate to our community how to be respectful to our neighbors,” he said. “I met with them recently, as well.”
There have been undercurrents of negativity in the community, perhaps none more visible than the vandalism at Los Gatos cafe Kenz Coffee, a few months back, when a Palestinian flag was destroyed, and the words “WE / SUPPORT / TERRORISTS” were affixed to what was left of it.
These sorts of sentiments are nothing new for Mohiuddin. After all, he was president of the Muslim Community Association of San Francisco Bay Area from 2003-7, “—right after 9/11.”
“It was an exceptionally difficult time for us,” he said. “Prior to 9/11, most Muslims were kind of to themselves…That was no longer an option.”
Mohiuddin made it a priority to try to communicate the true nature of Islam, in order to counter incorrect narratives being spun for political purposes.
“We grew as a community in a significant way,” he said.
But while key figures of the George W. Bush administration have now died, many American Muslims still feel ill-at-ease, Mohiuddin reflects.
“We have always been on the defensive as a community; a day doesn’t go by where we’re not afraid of something happening,” he said, referring to—among other things—the hostile stance Donald Trump has taken towards Somalis in Minnesota.
Plus, he adds, the burden of sorrow felt by Los Gatos-area residents whose loved ones have been killed in recent months in Gaza is very real.
“Many of our community members may have family members there,” he said, thinking of two in particular who’ve suffered unimaginable horrors. “Each one of them lost 50-70 family members in Gaza over the last two years.”
He says, in recent weeks, the local imam, Basil Farooq, has been focused on teaching positive messages that will help keep local youth from falling prey to dark forces that spread negative messages via technology platforms spawned in Silicon Valley.
“Most of the algorithms that exist on social media really are designed to get more engagement,” Mohiuddin said. “We are developing, essentially, in our own cocoons.”
That’s why Farooq has been instructing mosque attendees to focus on building solid family bonds and get “back to the basics,” said Mohiuddin.
During one Friday gathering, the imam even spoke about “how we need to stop that and focus on making conversation happen, every evening, at the dinner table—at a minimum,” he added.
Chaudhry, who wore a loose DIY head-covering and sported a bubbly attitude, grew up in Pakistan, but moved to the United States after she got married in 1979.
“Can you imagine, I never wear hijab when I was young?” she said, adding it was a personal choice she made after moving to Silicon Valley, where she worked as a chemist at biotech company Syntex Corp. “I just went to Pakistan recently. I love it. But this is my home.”
She couldn’t wait for Ramadan to begin.
“This year I said, Allah, make it easy,” she shared. “I’m excited. I really am excited.”
