Samah Tawhid

Samah Tawhid is a graduate university student and teacher in Cairo who is writing a thesis on John Okada's No-No Boy and came upon our production on the Internet and wrote to me via the email contact on our web page.  We had an interesting exchange and I mentioned the fact that some of the earliest and most passionate voices after 9/11 were Japanese Americans urging our leaders to speak out against racial profiling and violence against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.  She wrote back that she had gone to the American University in Cairo and watched Yuri Kochiyama's interview in which she spoke out against this kind of fear-based, vengeance based racial discrimination.  She sent this passage from the Quran:


الْحُجُرَاتِ: 13 [


“O mankind! Lo! We have created you a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another (not that ye may despise each other). Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware".

(al-Hujuraat,13)
From
The Meaning of the Glorious Quran
Interpreted by
Muhammed Marmaduke Pickthall