DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. (RNS and NPR) — Organizers and volunteers put the final touches to the iftar feast, adding plates of desserts, including knafeh and enormous Macadamia cookies, to an already heaping spread of pad thai, crab rangoons and beef stir fry. The sun is low, and any moment now, four dozen youth and families will fill the HYPE Athletics Center in Dearborn Heights, eager to break their Ramadan fast together.
On Friday (March 14), the Muslim Foster Care Association, an organization that supports Muslim foster children and families, hosted their third annual Ramadan iftar in an effort to help Muslim foster children feel connected to a broader Muslim community and to the rituals of the holy month.
“It’s a really great way to celebrate Ramadan together, especially for some of these kids that don’t necessarily have the opportunity to break fast with other Muslims. So this is our way of joining in community, and giving them that experience,” said Shereen Abunada, MFCA director of operations, who has been working with the group for six years.
Many Muslim children in non-Muslim foster care homes say Ramadan — when Muslims fast from food and water while the sun is up — can be a lonely experience with many challenges.
Salifu Mahmoud moved to the U.S. from Ghana three years ago. Now 18, he has moved into independent housing but said that in previous years he had a hard time observing Ramadan in non-Muslim foster homes.
“I was living with this lady, like she doesn’t know nothing about Islam… She doesn’t know nothing about Ramadan. Even (when) I used to fast, (she would) be like, ‘Oh, you need to drink water. You need to stop fasting,’” he said. “No one is going to like remind you every time to pray.”
An attendee of an annual Ramadan iftar hosted by the Muslim Foster Care Association prepares a plate at the HYPE Athletics Center in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Friday, March 14, 2025. (Photo by Nargis Rahman)
Mahmoud had to practice his religious obligations on his own, without his family, halal food or access to a mosque for the nightly Taraweeh prayers.
This year Mahmoud was invited to live with a Muslim family during Ramadan, where he’s been able to share in the pre-sunrise suhoor, the meal before the fast, and to break fast with the family for the evening iftar meal.
“Since I moved to America, this is my best Ramadan,” said Mahmoud, whose family still lives in Ghana. “They treat me like their kids, showing me love.”
Mona Musaid, the MFCA domestic foster care program coordinator, said the lack of Muslim foster homes can lead to children not having a space to nurture their faith.
“Sometimes they’re taken away from their faith, from their community,” she said. “A lot of times when the kids come into this system, depending on their age, they’re not even identified as Muslim, and they kind of get lost in the system eventually,” she said.
A variety of staff, board members and volunteers of the Muslim Foster Care Association in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Friday, March 14, 2025. (Photo by Nargis Rahman)
Najla Almayaly, who like Mahmoud now lives in independent housing, has also previously lived with non-Muslim foster families and agreed it was hard to navigate her faith alone at a time of year when Muslims generally observe religious practices with a community.
“It made me feel out of place, out of ordinary. It also just made everything weird and icky, like I didn’t want to be there, but it kind of made me not want to fast, because I feel like nobody around me is doing it,” said Almayaly, 19, who is from Dearborn Heights. She entered foster care at the age of 13, when her parents divorced. While in foster care, she has lived in five non-Muslim foster homes and two Muslim households, which she says is a lot more comfortable.
Almayaly hopes to see non-Muslim foster parents make more of an effort to learn about the Islamic faith and facilitate the faith of the foster child.
“If you do have a foster kid that’s Muslim, make them feel loved and let them know that they could be their ordinary selves, they don’t gotta act as if they’re one of you or, like you,” she said.
Jessica Sweet, who recruits foster parents for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said the state doesn’t have a way to track the religious background of children entering the system, but the agency knows anecdotally that many Muslim kids end up in non-Muslim homes.
In Michigan, home to about 240,000 Muslims, there are only about 10 Muslim foster parents for 250 Muslim foster youth.
Sweet says the state requires training for foster parents, such as the Grow training, which includes a section on diversity and inclusion. MDHHS works with the Muslim Foster Care Association to train their staff to understand the needs of Muslim children.
“They’ve been willing to provide trainings and support mentorship to specific families if they do take a placement and maybe aren’t familiar with Muslim cultural practices,” Sweet said. “It is really important that we are making sure we’re providing services in the most culturally competent way possible if a family needs extra support.”
Started in 2016 by foster parents and friends Sameena Zahoor, a physician, and Ranya Shbeib, a lifelong educator, the Muslim Foster Care Association offers a number of services to help bridge the divide between non-Muslim foster parents and Muslim foster children, including mentorship and trainings, a halal meat program and, this year, 215 Ramadan gift baskets for kids in foster care that included dates, a Ramadan mug and spoon, halal candies and $100 Target gift cards for Eid.
Part of MFCA’s work involves strengthening collaborations locally by engaging with the statewide Foster, Adoption, and Kinship (FAK) Council and Faith Communities on Foster Care (FCC) to advocate for and support Muslim kids in foster care, while educating others about their needs — including educating Muslims about the need for more Muslim foster families.
“If a family took placement of a child who was Muslim and they’re not Muslim themselves, they really should be making connections with faith leaders in their community from the Muslim faith so that that child can have a mentor within that congregation or religious institution to make sure that we are providing that youth with the opportunity to practice their faith in a way that makes sense for them and their family,” Sweet said.
Muslim Foster Care Association founders Sameena Zahoor, left, and Ranya Shbeib. (Video screen grab)
In 2021, the Muslim Foster Care Association learned that 200 unaccompanied Afghan minors needed immediate placement. Shbeib said they assembled Dari and Pashto-speaking volunteers and religious leaders to meet the Afghan children’s cultural and spiritual needs.
“The Afghan crisis highlights the urgency and importance of our work,” Shbeib said.
Recently, Abunada says, there has been an influx of even more Muslim youth to the state’s foster care system.
Before President Donald Trump took office in January, groups who resettle refugees worked to bring refugees to the United States as soon as possible.
“They expedited a lot of travel of refugee Muslim foster youth from West African countries. So we’ve had an influx of about 50 to 70 youth that have just recently arrived in the past couple months,” she said.
Abunada says with the changing immigration policies under the Trump administration, unaccompanied refugees who are children feel especially vulnerable right now.
“It will be a ripple effect. And we hope it doesn’t effect the kids. We’re all doing the best we can to protect the kids. But at the end of the day, it’s, it’ll definitely be, an effect.”
She said it’s likely that many who may have been hoping for their families to join them here in the U.S. will end up returning to their home countries.
“If they were trying to reunify with their families, or bring their families over here, that has completely stopped. So for a lot of them, that was their goal, and they end up just going back to their home countries,” Abunada said.
But for now, the association wants to give youth a place to gather with a community away from home, and a space to break fast together.
At the end of the iftar, volunteers pass out to-go boxes for people to take home food from the iftar. A volunteer hands a foster youth a package of goodies in a new book bag, hoping to offer another touchstone of belonging for the remaining days of Ramadan.
Nargis Rahman is with NPR member station WDET.
This story was produced through a collaboration between NPR and RNS. Listen to the radio version of the story.
