Episode 18 – Asma Saroya

18_asaroya

City of Residence:

Blaine, MN

Occupation:

Civil Rights Worker

Excerpt:

“I think my interest in civil rights came from my childhood, just growing up in Iowa. There was—we had a lot of great, friendly neighbors, but there was also, you know, people in the community who did not understand us, who didn’t know who we were. And we would get, I remember, you know, when I was six, somebody called our house, just really upset with us and I didn’t really know why, they were swearing at us, they told us to get out of town; you know, just horrible things like that. And as a six-year-old, you don’t really understand, you know, like what’s going on. And I remember my parents just quickly deleted the message, they didn’t wanna hear it, they didn’t want us to hear it, but I just felt like, you know, like, nobody should have to live like that. There’s people that have it worse, like, much worse than our family did in that time because we had a lot of friends, you know, we had been there for a long time so there were a lot of people that would stand up for us and advocate for us. But I just thought, well, what about the people that are just by themselves that don’t really know what their rights are, that are just being mistreated on a daily basis and they just put up with it? And I think, just early on, I think that just stuck with me, just having experiencing just a little bit of it myself and thinking, even back to the civil rights movement and connecting it to now, you know, just, what if the Muslims in America, what if they were dealing these issues also? And I think that’s really what sparked my interest.

Most of the people that come to us, they’re not asking for anything huge, they just want to be able to work, have an income for their family, and just be able to be respected at work, just be able to pray, just be able to practice their faith at work; I think that’s really what they’re asking for. And I think it’s amazing that we can help achieve that, ‘cause what we find is it’s really not a lot of, like, anti-Muslim hatred or anti-Muslim bigotry that’s stemming a lot of the cases that we get; it’s mostly, you know, just not understanding, like, they don’t understand, just a lot of ignorance. And so we can help, just get rid of some of that ignorance, and I think that’s great.”

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