{"id":106,"date":"2014-01-21T00:30:25","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T00:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/?p=106"},"modified":"2014-01-21T00:30:54","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T00:30:54","slug":"episode-28-ziad-amra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/episode-28-ziad-amra\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 28 – Ziad Amra"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Residence:<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Minneapolis, MN<\/p>\n

Occupation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vice President of Special Assets Group of US Bank<\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“My grandparents on both sides actually are American… have American citizenships.\u00a0They had come to this country, you know many, many years ago. My grandfather on\u00a0my father’s side was an orphan and came here when he was a teenager. Sort of a\u00a0typical boat ride, you know, to Ellis Island, kind of story. As the story goes, he was an\u00a0orphan, he had a brother, they were both orphans. Then his brother died very\u00a0young, as a teenager. So he, my grandfather, sold… he was kind of a watchman at an\u00a0olive grove, and he had a donkey. He sold the donkey and bought passage on a ship\u00a0and came to the United States as a teenager. [He] basically became a traveling\u00a0salesman. He would travel around the country, basically… you know, what at the\u00a0time would probably be called a “carpet bagger,” and sell things and trinkets, and\u00a0assorted things to people door to door. My grandfather on my mother’s side also\u00a0came to the United States and worked at the Wonderbread bread factory in the\u00a0Chicago area for many years. My mother and father met in Palestine. My father was\u00a0in the US Navy during Vietnam as a medical officer operating on wounded soldiers\u00a0from Vietnam. My father was a surgeon at Saint Francis in Shakopee and became the\u00a0chief of surgery there. Which is interesting because you have a Muslim chief of\u00a0surgery at a Catholic hospital where the nurses are nuns.<\/p>\n

The fact that growing up in Chaska, at that time was a town of about 7,000 people,\u00a0so there were no other minorities there. There was nobody else with an ethnic\u00a0name, or had relations that are in some other foreign country or anything like that.\u00a0People got to know us, me, my brothers and sisters, and we made more and more\u00a0friends. Such that I was eventually elected Winterfest King in my senior year, which\u00a0is essentially a popularity contest; which I think is funny when I look back on where\u00a0I was in elementary school and middle school, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

I feel that a lot of my being plugged in to the Muslim community has changed\u00a0actually and it’s more in terms of the challenges faced by the Muslim community\u00a0here, and in some ways that started in 2001. In many ways that is how I feel plugged\u00a0in with the Muslim community, because it seems a community that’s under assault\u00a0by the larger forces in society. It needs people to stand up for it. It needs people to\u00a0work for its benefit within the context of our government here and our political\u00a0process, and being involved, and being involved with your neighbors, and your PTA,\u00a0and your school, and everything.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Podcast Preview:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Play\"<\/a><\/object>\n<\/div>\n

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Podcast (full length):<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Play\"<\/a><\/object>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Residence: South Minneapolis, MN Occupation: Vice President of Special Assets Group of US Bank Excerpt: “My grandparents on both sides actually are American… have American citizenships.\u00a0They had come to this country, you know many, many years ago. My grandfather on\u00a0my father’s side was an orphan and came here when he was a teenager. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}