There is an Islamic tenet that teaches practitioners to care for not just the neighbors beside them, but for neighbors seven doors in every direction.

It was that idea — the obligation to help neighbors no matter what their walk of life — that inspired Bainbridge native Sharla Musabih to become a follower of Islam.

“If everybody does that, you’re going to have a very beautiful world,” she said.

Since moving to the United Arab Emirates 23 years ago with her husband Hassan, Musabih has helped neighbors far beyond her own front door. In one of the fastest developing nations on earth, Musabih has been a relentless street-level advocate for those who have slipped through the cracks, often spurring UAE’s government toward social reform.

She founded the country’s first humanitarian shelter in 2001, after protecting battered women in her own home in Dubai for a decade. Her investigation into the camel-racing industry in 2003 led to the repatriation of hundreds of imported child jockeys. Beginning in Ethiopia this spring, she is waging a campaign of awareness to counter the blight of human trafficking in the Persian Gulf region.

Musabih, now visting family on Bainbridge Island, will return to UAE armed with international recognition.

Last month she found out that City of Hope’s anti-trafficking program was selected for funding through the U.S. Department of State’s Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative, and she will be relaunching her programs in the coming months with an emphasis on raising awareness of human trafficking.

Musabih’s humanitarian work has earned her many enemies in a traditionally insular society.

There are countless abusive husbands incensed that she – an American-born woman – would interfere with their marriages. There are human traffickers disconcerted by her persecution of their trade and bureaucrats distrustful of her motives.

Her organization is still reeling from what she calls a defamation campaign against her. For weeks this spring, Gulf News, a major Middle Eastern newspaper, ran front page stories quoting sources who alleged Musabih was abusing women in her shelter, using them for money and selling their babies. Musabih says the accusations are baseless, but her shelter has lost donors and her reputation has been damaged.

While departing in June to visit relatives in Bainbridge and Poulsbo, Musabih and her family were detained at the Dubai airport by immigration officials and forced to cancel their flight. It turned out an angry husband had lodged a frivolous police report against her, another way Musabih’s opponents have found to harass her and her family publicly.

What keeps her pushing ahead, Musabih said, is the quiet support of her family, her faith and the belief that she is doing what is right for her adopted nation.

“I’m just a country girl from Bainbridge Island, doing things out of the goodness in my heart,” she said.

It was a small act of kindness by Musabih, when she was 18, that sent her life spinning toward the Middle East.

She had enjoyed a rural childhood on the south shore of Eagle Harbor in the 1970s, the daughter of George and Sharlene “Toppy” Oakley. After a car wreck near Lynwood Center forced her to miss her senior year at Bainbridge High School with serious injuries, Sharla Oakley entered a Seattle community college to complete her diploma.

While registering for classes, she noticed a young Arabic man struggling to navigate the enrollment process. Sharla introduced herself to Hassan Musabih, helping him find the right line and to sign up for classes.

They became inseparable afterward and were married two years later. When Hassan earned his degree in economics in 1985 and returned to his native UAE to find find work, Musabih went with him.

Now known as an oil-rich nation of exotic resorts, most Americans had only a vague concept of UAE two decades ago. Musabih peppered Hassan with questions about his culture, language and religion; soon she converted to Islam.

Hassan and his 10 siblings had grown up in an Emirate town where water was transported on donkeys, electricity was spotty and most goods were brought in by ship. Musabih was welcomed by Hassan’s family members, who were excited to have a blonde-haired woman in the household at a time when there were few westerners in the region.

Life in UAE was changing fast when Musabih arrived. Foreign investments in oil were buoying development and sweeping Emirates to new positions of power, while erasing much of their culture.

After several jobs, Hassan settled into a position as a manager at Palm Island, one of Dubai’s extravagant resorts. Musabih began networking with other American and European women married to Emirate men, and they formed a charity club that raised money for families in need, and projects in developing nations.

In 1991, Musabih was working in a kindergarten when a co-worker, an American-born woman married to a Yemenese man, told Musabih that her bruised face was the result of her husband beating her with a television cable.

“I just lost it,” Musabih said. “I said, ‘No, no, no, this isn’t happening, you are not going home, you are not going home tonight.’”

The co-worker became the first of many women Musabih would shelter in her own home. Soon, the worker’s husband became the first of many men to threaten Musabih for interfering with their marriages. The husband and his Yemenese friends in the UAE police forced the woman to return home with her husband despite a court order allowing her to stay with Musabih.

Musabih said she appealed to police officials, who were appalled by the abuse and told the man he would be deported if the abuse continued.

It was a pattern Musabih saw repeated as she began to shelter more abused women over the next decade.

UAE was experiencing a massive influx of immigrants needed to fill positions in the growing economy and government. While high-level officials seemed responsive to cases of domestic violence, the actions of abusive husbands were often overlooked because of their connections with lower-level officials of their own nationality. The result was that women often had no refuge from domestic violence.

Musabih believes domestic violence is no more prevalent in Arab culture than Western cultures. But unlike the U.S. and other developed nations, she said, UAE has not had the time to develop the social structure to handle the ills of its growing population.

Musabih initiated much of that effort with the founding of City of Hope in 2001. Musabih’s social group had secured a villa in Dubai with the intent of creating low-income housing for women in need. Musabih, then sheltering three women in her own home, persuaded them to use the house as an asylum for battered women.

The need was overwhelming, Musabih said. Her phone became a hotline for women desperate to escape abuse, and since its opening more than 1,000 have taken refuge in City of Hope.

Soon after Musabih’s attention was drawn to the plight of another group.

She and a friend were horrified when they saw children as young as 4 being used as jockeys in the wildly popular sport of camel racing. They spent the next year researching the use of children in the industry and learned that many were brought in from impoverished regions in Pakistan. The children were separated from their families and forced to live on camel farms where they were abused by laborers.

“That’s how it started, that’s how a huge chain of trafficking began, trafficking in children,” Musabih said.

While it was illegal in Dubai for children younger than 15 to work on camel farms, Musabih discovered many of the child jockeys had been brought to the country with Pakistani passports listing them as teenagers.

Musabih began taking the children from farms herself and compensating their families for lost income. Sometimes she was threatened and chased off the farms by laborers.

“It was very risky,” she said, shrugging. “We were doing the right thing.”

At one point, City of Hope was sheltering more than 20 former jockeys. Musabih asked some officials to investigate the farms, but most had no interest becoming involved in a problem so large. Eventually, UAE ministers —with input from Musabih — passed legislation raising the required age for jockeys to 18. They also began aggressive repatriation of children employed in the industry. Later, whip-wielding robots replaced human jockeys in UAE.

With a heightened visibility among UAE’s upper echelon, Musabih was invited in 2007 to help plan a new “Foundation for Women and Children”, the government’s own social services center, spending months helping organize the new program. But after women from City of Hope were bussed to the new facility, she felt its managers were belittling the women’s problems, rather than understanding them.

So she walked away, back to her own empty shelter.

“I went back to that villa,” she said. “ I stood there and said, ‘That’s OK, because this is the City of Hope.’”

Over the last year Musabih has rejuvenated her organization with an emphasis on preventing human trafficking.

About half the women she has sheltered in recent months are Ethiopians who were recruited to work as house servants. She said the women, who have little knowledge of the language and modern housekeeping skills, often run away after having problems with their employers. In an unfamiliar country they are vulnerable to exploitation, and many work as prostitutes to survive.

In March, City of Hope opened a repatriation program in Ethiopia in an effort to reunite women with their families. It’s also working with the government on a campaign to educate villagers about the dangers of trafficking, and to reform laws governing labor recruiters.

With recognition and funds from the U.S. government, Musabih will begin education programs at universities, police stations and government offices within UAE.

Despite her friction with some of its officials, Musabih credits UAE for creating the Foundation, and for its recent pledge to the United Nations to fight trafficking. She believes UAE will one day be a center of freedom, one that can reach out to its neighbors in every direction.

Enjoying the sun on the Winslow waterfront with her family last week, Musabih said she held no bitterness for her trials so far, only excitement for the future.

“I believe that all the defamation and things that have happened to me are by the will of God,” she said, “They are there to peel off something ugly and bring out something beautiful.”