{"id":153,"date":"2014-01-21T02:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T02:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/?p=153"},"modified":"2014-01-21T02:03:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T02:03:07","slug":"episode-18-asma-saroya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/episode-18-asma-saroya\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 18 – Asma Saroya"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Blaine, MN<\/p>\n

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

Civil Rights Worker<\/p>\n

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

“I think my interest in civil rights came from my childhood, just growing up in Iowa.\u00a0There was\u2014we had a lot of great, friendly neighbors, but there was also, you know,\u00a0people in the community who did not understand us, who didn\u2019t know who we\u00a0were. And we would get, I remember, you know, when I was six, somebody called\u00a0our house, just really upset with us and I didn\u2019t really know why, they were\u00a0swearing at us, they told us to get out of town; you know, just horrible things like\u00a0that. And as a six-year-old, you don\u2019t really understand, you know, like what\u2019s going\u00a0on. And I remember my parents just quickly deleted the message, they didn\u2019t wanna\u00a0hear it, they didn\u2019t want us to hear it, but I just felt like, you know, like, nobody\u00a0should have to live like that. There\u2019s people that have it worse, like, much worse\u00a0than our family did in that time because we had a lot of friends, you know, we had\u00a0been there for a long time so there were a lot of people that would stand up for us\u00a0and advocate for us. But I just thought, well, what about the people that are just by\u00a0themselves that don\u2019t really know what their rights are, that are just being\u00a0mistreated on a daily basis and they just put up with it? And I think, just early on, I\u00a0think that just stuck with me, just having experiencing just a little bit of it myself and\u00a0thinking, even back to the civil rights movement and connecting it to now, you\u00a0know, just, what if the Muslims in America, what if they were dealing these issues\u00a0also? And I think that\u2019s really what sparked my interest.<\/p>\n

Most of the people that come to us, they\u2019re not asking for anything huge, they just\u00a0want to be able to work, have an income for their family, and just be able to be\u00a0respected at work, just be able to pray, just be able to practice their faith at work; I\u00a0think that\u2019s really what they\u2019re asking for. And I think it\u2019s amazing that we can help\u00a0achieve that, \u2018cause what we find is it\u2019s really not a lot of, like, anti-Muslim hatred or\u00a0anti-Muslim bigotry that\u2019s stemming a lot of the cases that we get; it\u2019s mostly, you\u00a0know, just not understanding, like, they don\u2019t understand, just a lot of ignorance.\u00a0And so we can help, just get rid of some of that ignorance, and I think that\u2019s great.”<\/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: Blaine, MN Occupation: Civil Rights Worker Excerpt: “I think my interest in civil rights came from my childhood, just growing up in Iowa.\u00a0There was\u2014we had a lot of great, friendly neighbors, but there was also, you know,\u00a0people in the community who did not understand us, who didn\u2019t know who we\u00a0were. And we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","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\/153","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=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}