Leaders from the Islamic community in the Bay Area will visit Tracy on Saturday to stimulate discussion about women in Islam.

Muslim women are often viewed as suppressed, said Bhawana Kamil, a community leader in Santa Clara. “Our goal is to address those misconceptions.”

Kamil, who was raised as an adherent to Hinduism and converted to Islam in 2000, will speak alongside two other women about the basics of Islam as told through the Quran.

“Often, the misconceptions about Islam come from cultural and political reasons more than religion,” Kamil said.

She hopes to encourage Tracy and Bay Area communities to convene more panels that provide information about all religions.

“If we want others to learn about us, we should be willing to learn about other religions,” Kamil said.

The panel of three includes Christine Chase, a computer administrator at NASA Ames Research Center from Santa Clara, Kamil and Dina El-Nikhal of Sacramento.

They will each speak, and a question panel will follow.

Tracy’s Riaz Hasan, the event organizer, said he plans to bring more religion-awareness programs to the area.

“When you’re strangers, people make all kinds of assumptions,” he said. “I live here and I want people to know and understand us (Muslims) so that we can live with each other and love each other as neighbors.”