Aiding Afghan women, by way of Duxbury

For others, the event will be an opportunity to share a tradition and enjoy food prepared by the event’s sponsoring group, the Muslim Families of Duxbury. One of the group’s members, Razia Jan, will return from Afghanistan to prepare savory and sweet dishes from her homeland.

But for Jan the event is not only an opportunity to share a traditional Muslim practice with non-Muslim neighbors, but also to raise money for the girls’ school she founded in a village outside of Kabul.

“Last year they raised $5,000’’ for the school, said Eva Makkas, who now owns the tailoring and dry cleaning shop that Jan opened in Duxbury more than 20 years ago and which distributes the free tickets for the event.

“Everybody makes food. Razia cooks,’’ Makkas said.

Now in its seventh year, the Ramadan dinner began as a way to help lift the veil of suspicion cast over Muslims following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to educate neighbors about the Muslim faith. Buoyed by a strong response from the Duxbury community and joint sponsorship by the town’s interfaith council, the event took on a life of its own and became a local tradition, the founders said.

“We made a commitment to stay as active as we can in the community, and particularly to sponsor this Ramadan dinner,’’ said Aboud Al-Zaim, an engineer and a former member of the town’s Planning Board, who spoke at last year’s celebration.

Ramadan occurs in the ninth month of a lunar calendar that shifts through the seasons from year to year, a period when Muslims refrain from eating and drinking during daylight hours and from any actions deemed not good in themselves or in danger of being performed excessively. One of the five pillars of Islam, the Ramadan fast is intended to help believers practice self-discipline, gain strength over everyday temptations, and experience spiritual uplift. It’s also a time to reemphasize the obligation for charitable giving that Islam places on believers.

For Jan, whose community-building activities in Afghanistan were featured in a recent Washington Times story on three women who “are taking a lead in tackling some of Afghanistan’s biggest long-range problems,’’ the Duxbury dinner is important enough to bring her back from her native country.

While the war in Afghanistan has taken a more prominent place of late on this nation’s public stage - with stories on elections, an American troop build-up, and casualty counts both military and civilian making the front pages - Jan continues to expand her development work on the ground.

Four years ago, while living in Marshfield and running her Duxbury shop, she began raising money for the Zabuli Girls School. The Duxbury Rotary Club pitched in. Best-selling author Khaled Hosseini (“The Kite Runner’’) came to Duxbury for a fund-raiser. Today, the two-story elementary school has eight teachers serving 200 girls, ages 4 to 13.

Now based in Kabul, Jan serves as a project director for a nongovernmental organization call Arzu (“hope’’ in Dari, one of Afghanistan’s languages), which funds projects carefully targeted to help women.

“She’s uniquely positioned as a go-between,’’ said her son, Lars Jan, who grew up in Marshfield. “She’s fluent in American culture and at the same time close to her family and Afghan by birth.’’

Jan’s projects for Arzu include coordinating with a local consortium to sell rugs abroad made by Afghan women, seeing that the profits go to them and ensuring their children a way to go to school.

In the mountainous town of Bamyan, she has begun developing a garden project to create a safe place for women to grow vegetables, and a women’s center to provide a place where local women can wash clothes and dishes indoors - a lifesaver during winter.

These are “bare-bones development projects to improve the lives of women,’’ Lars Jan said.

Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox2@gmail.com.