{"id":138,"date":"2014-01-21T01:45:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T01:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/?p=138"},"modified":"2014-01-21T01:45:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T01:45:30","slug":"episode-21-hatem-al-haj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/episode-21-hatem-al-haj\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 21 – Hatem Al-Haj"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Albert Lea, MN<\/p>\n

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

Pediatrician & Assoc Prof of Islamic Law<\/p>\n

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

“Well, the word \u2018shariah\u2019 itself in the language, linguistically, means a path and it\u00a0more so means a path to a water body, or it means the water body itself. And the\u00a0resemblance here between the path to a water body and the law in Islam which is\u00a0not only limited to penalties or penances, it is basically the creed, the practice is\u00a0basically a relationship with God. It\u2019s your prayers, it\u2019s your fasting, it is your belief,\u00a0it\u2019s your certainty in His presence, in His greatness, in His perfection. All of this is\u00a0the way, the way that was prescribed for Muslims to take. And they are not taking it\u00a0to a physical water body that is important for their physical sustenance, but they are\u00a0taking it towards spiritual sustenance. And that\u2019s the resemblance between the\u00a0word shariah and the word, the technical use of the word shariah and the linguistic\u00a0use.<\/p>\n

Certainly there are differences between America and Egypt, and there are\u00a0differences between the culture in the United States and the culture in Egypt.\u00a0However, there are core values that human beings, by their general inclination,\u00a0agree on, whether they are Christians or Muslims or non-Christians, non-Muslims,\u00a0something else. They, by the general inclination that God inculcated in us, we agree\u00a0on many core values such as kindness to the parents being a good thing, cruelty to\u00a0animals being a bad thing. I think any human being, no matter what their religious\u00a0or cultural background is, they would agree on those principles. So, there were\u00a0principles that or there were values that you don\u2019t find different. There were\u00a0certainly perspectives and perceptions that are different. But many of the core\u00a0values that human beings agree on you can find them wherever you go.<\/p>\n

So, now this is a community that is, the identity of this community is being formed\u00a0and the direction of this community is also being formed. So, it\u2019s a good time, it\u2019s an\u00a0exciting time to participate in shaping that direction and that identity of our\u00a0community here in Minnesota. Minnesota is known to be tolerant and accepting as a\u00a0people. You know the common \u2018Minnesota nice\u2019 phrase. So, I think that there will be\u00a0less difficulty for Muslims integrating within the Minnesota community.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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

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

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City of Residence: Albert Lea, MN Occupation: Pediatrician & Assoc Prof of Islamic Law Excerpt: “Well, the word \u2018shariah\u2019 itself in the language, linguistically, means a path and it\u00a0more so means a path to a water body, or it means the water body itself. And the\u00a0resemblance here between the path to a water body and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","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\/138","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=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}