Seven days after the MAX train attack, Harris Zafar pulled on a bright blue T-shirt. "I am a Muslim," it said in white letters. "Ask me anything."



Then he headed for Washington Square Mall.



At a time when some Muslims feel unsafe leaving the house, Zafar did what he and three others have done for the past five months of Saturdays. They stood in the mall's atrium, inviting anyone to meet them.



He didn't know what to expect this time. On May 26, an extremist had threatened two teenage girls, one in a hijab, on a train in Northeast Portland before police say he stabbed three men, two fatally, who intervened.



Sixty-two percent of Americans don't know a Muslim, according to The Pew Research Center. If people don't know Muslims, Zafar reasoned, how can they bridge the prejudices that divide us? Ignorance is fertile soil for hatred, he said.



"We're not Quran-thumping or street preaching," said Zafar, a Tigard resident who serves as the national spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, an international Islamic organization that rejects terrorism. "A few people at a time, we're trying to make people comfortable with the idea of talking to a Muslim. Can we address any of their questions so they figure out we're just normal human beings?"



Zafar, 38, has a youthful face, a gray-flecked beard and the kind of deep brown eyes people describe as soulful. His mind is an encyclopedia of Islam and sports facts. He can quote Quran verses as quickly as he can list the New York Mets' 1986 lineup.



He set up shop at the olfactory intersection of Yankee Candle and Auntie Anne's pretzel shop.



"I smelled Cinnabon on my way in," said Arman Butt, 30, an Intel worker of Pakistani descent. He sighed with temporary longing. It was Ramadan, the month of fasting.



Every Saturday, the men start with the great equalizer known as Starbucks. Their fasts are complete fasts, Zafar said. They don't even drink water during Ramadan days. But they figure people might be more likely to open up over food, so Zafar set up a table with decaf mochas and half a dozen pound cakes.



"We tell Starbucks to give us the packaged ones, so people know it's safe," Zafar said.



Previous meet-ups had gone well. No one had attacked them, though Zafar and his friends were like any Muslims, accustomed to hateful comments.



"When I get told to go back home, I'm like, 'Well, that's Tigard,'" Zafar said.



Zafar's Pakistani family moved to Washington County from the Bay Area when he was 7. His was one of four that built the Portland Rizwan Mosque, the city's first. People protested, Zafar said, when the families proposed the place of worship in 1987.



"Portlanders had never had to grapple with a building that looked like that before," he said. Nearby residents worried Muslims might blast the call to prayer in the neighborhood. They fretted about increased traffic.



Eventually, Zafar said, the families allayed their new neighbors' fears. The mosque went up and, save for the occasional gunshot that pierced the mosque's double-paned windows, they've had little trouble since. Half a dozen A handful of people called their mosque with threats after 9/11, Zafar said, but so many well-wishers called, the mosque had to buy a second answering machine.



When a gust of wind knocked down the mosque's marble sign this month, liberal Portlanders assumed vandalism. Some posted outraged comments on Facebook.



"That's the character of Portland," he said. "They're so upset at the idea that it was foul play. They don't even know us. If they did, they could have just asked us what happened. "



Liberals and conservatives are largely alike in one way, Zafar said. In America, most people don't have a meaningful relationship with a Muslim.



At the mall, people craned their necks as they passed Zafar's table. Some shook their heads. Others drifted by then returned. A bespoke Lenscrafters worker approached, timid at first, to say he admired their efforts. A Muslim family from Morocco asked what questions Zafar usually received.



"A lot of people ask about ISIS," Zafar said. "Others ask about women."



A Cleveland High School history teacher gave Zafar a thumbs-up. The Southeast Portland high school elected a Muslim teenager to serve as its Rose Festival princess this year.



"She's the neatest kid you'll ever meet," the teacher said. "She's beloved."



A Catholic priest lingered. A grinning teenager in a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt approached with her pink cell phone poised. Another woman said, "I love you" then grabbed Butt for a quick embrace.



"You get all the hugs," Zafar said. "I'm going to tell your wife."



A white man in athletic gear sat down. He said he wanted to talk about the relative nature of truth.



"Christianity says you come into this world as a sinner," he said. "Does Islam?"



Zafar, prone to giving "very long answers to very short questions," spent 15 minutes replying.



"We are born sinless according to Islam, but it's how you live your life, that's how you're judged," he said. "We don't believe heaven is in the clouds and hell is in the pit of the earth. We believe God is within us. The same with what we call wickedness. There is something within each of us that compels us toward immoral and evil acts."



Zafar said he knew it was hard to reconcile how God can be good and the world so violent. Humans have free will, he said, but God does strive for balance in the afterlife.



"In Islam, we're taught the victims of those evils are rewarded by God," he said. "These two gentlemen who valiantly saved the lives of those two teens, it's tragic, yet at the same time, we believe they are being rewarded in the afterlife with immense blessings at the right hand of God."



The stabbings had been a frequent source of conversation at the Ramadan fast breaks this week, the men said.



"At our mosque, we're telling people to be more vigilant," Zafar said. "But don't live as a prisoner in your home."



The first time they did a meet-up, most of the men were nervous. It was a few months after the presidential election. President-elect Donald Trump had promised an Islamic ban. For some Muslims, they knew, existing was an act of bravery.



"We had a lady who stopped by and quietly said, 'I'm a Muslim, but I'm afraid to show it,'" Butt said.



A staunch Trump supporter sat down one Saturday. She was in her mid-40s and clutching a Cinnabon box, the men recalled.



"She was visibly very uncomfortable sitting with us," Zafar said. "She had this point of view that once Muslims attain 18 percent of the population in America that we would begin to exert our control over the country. I have never heard that before. I started by telling her, 'Well, we're 1 percent of the population right now, but here's what we believe.'"



"It must have been like on her bucket list," Butt said. "'Talk to a Muslim.' She had good questions, though."



Dozens of Muslim families strolled by while the men talked.



"Sometimes Muslims stop and say, 'It's so great that you're doing this,'" Zafar said. "I'll say, 'Why don't you join us?' And they'll start backing away."



Soon, Zafar's mosque will start similar events at Clackamas Town Center and the Vancouver Mall. Butt launched one outside Hillsboro City Hall last week.



Zafar said he tried holding one in the Lloyd Center near the ice rink, but mall administrators told him he couldn't. They said his chats were political, he said, and they didn't like that he was giving away cake. A mall is a commercial enterprise, he said. Its goal is making money, not swaying hearts.



At 4 p.m. after two hours, the men started packing up their cakes to leave. They had talked to a dozen people. A wild-haired Auntie Anne's employee approached, and the men braced themselves. The week before, a man confronted them for taking up a food court table too long. But the teenage mall worker just wanted to talk.



"Have you guys like traveled to Mecca and stuff?" he asked.



Among the four, only Tareq Malas, a Jordanian who once lived two hours from Islam's holiest city, had.



"Do you guys ever feel like oppressed?" the teenager asked.



"Here or there?" Malas asked. In Portland, he said, he felt safer than he had in the Middle East.



"Are there any rivalries against other types of Islam?" the teenager asked. "Like between Sunni and Shia?"



"Yeah, unfortunately there is sectarian divide in some parts of the world," Zafar said. "A Sunni will hate a Shia just because they're Shia. A Shia will hate a Sunni just because they're Shia. But there's also the reality living in America that people who don't like Muslims, they're not sophisticated enough to say what kind of Muslims. We're all lumped in together. It doesn't really make sense to bicker amongst each other."



The teenager thanked them and walked away. The day had passed without incident.



"It's nice to know we're so welcome," Zafar said. "The downside to it is, that means we're not answering questions. We're not finding those people yet who don't feel comfortable shaking our hand."



-- Casey Parks

503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks