Marwan Marouf’s friends say that he’s the kind of Texan to show up at your door when hardship strikes with a bag of groceries, a smile and a helping hand.
To Noor Wadi, that meant the Muslim Dallas community leader has helped her feel at home in the North Texas city, stuffing her with cheese pies and checking on her after she moved from her home state of Missouri in 2011. To Imam Omar Suleiman, that meant Marouf was the first person to pick him up and show him around Dallas when he landed there that same year. To countless others in the community, that’s meant being a constant presence, visiting community members in the hospital, organizing blood drives, creating one of the largest Muslim Boy Scouts troops in the Texas region, and offering advice to visitors to his office at the Muslim American Society community center he helps run in Dallas.
“To say that Marwan is the heart of the community is not an exaggeration,” Suleiman, an Islamic scholar and civil rights activist who has been friends with Marouf for more than 30 years, said in an interview…