{"id":48,"date":"2014-01-20T22:56:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T22:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/?p=48"},"modified":"2014-01-20T23:41:59","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T23:41:59","slug":"episode-39-wafiq-fannoun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/episode-39-wafiq-fannoun\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 39 – Wafiq Fannoun"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Brooklyn Park, MN<\/p>\n

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

Director of the Islamic University of Minnesota<\/p>\n

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

“My first session, I remember, in summer 1989, going to the highest maximum\u00a0security in state of Minnesota prison, didn\u2019t know what to expect. I went there and I\u00a0found about probably 10, 12 Muslims waiting for me, and I have to say this, these\u00a0men, I learned from them over the years more than they learned from me. And this\u00a0is actually something I\u2019ve been doing since then, going to different, now what we call\u00a0the DOC, the Minnesota correction facility. I\u2019m part of the group who do that. There\u00a0are about 15 to 20 volunteers doing that, and we kind of try to reach out to the\u00a0Muslims, to the new Muslims and also, really, to the guards. Many times we do\u00a0presentations to the guards about Islam and Muslims, how to handle the Muslims.\u00a0For working the prison actually I received an award from McKnight Foundation.\u00a0That came as a surprise, and again, we don\u2019t do that for that, but things come, we\u00a0thank God for everything. God says really appreciate anybody who say thank you,\u00a0and in Islam, actually, to thank people is an Islamic principle and a principle among\u00a0all good people.<\/p>\n

What I do I hope I contribute to the well-being of every human being, no matter who\u00a0he or she is. Later on we worked with another organization, Neighborhood\u00a0Development Center, which is now Neighborhood Development Center, one of the\u00a0major organization in St. Paul helping small businesses, and I been on their board\u00a0for probably 10, 12 years or more now.<\/p>\n

I appreciate really the people of Minnesota. I\u2019m not saying this really for any\u00a0political statement or so, I\u2019m truly coming from my heart. The people of Minnesota\u00a0really are very welcoming to Muslims, and we appreciate that and we thank them.\u00a0People sometimes think that Muslims have double identity. No, we don\u2019t have a\u00a0double identity. I wanna conclude with this: a good Muslim is a good citizen,\u00a0wherever he is, or she is. They will contribute well, and the best to the wellbeing to\u00a0wherever they are. If they are not good citizen, that means they are not good\u00a0Muslims.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Podcast Preview:<\/strong><\/p>\n\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: Brooklyn Park, MN Occupation: Director of the Islamic University of Minnesota Excerpt: “My first session, I remember, in summer 1989, going to the highest maximum\u00a0security in state of Minnesota prison, didn\u2019t know what to expect. I went there and I\u00a0found about probably 10, 12 Muslims waiting for me, and I have to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","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\/48","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=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}