Isam al-Zaem interview, 04 April 2019

Abstract

Isam al-Zaem is a Syrian. He arrived in Cleveland in 1974 and worked for many years as a pharmacist. Now he is retired. He is married and has one daughter. He is now active in CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and the Islamic center in Parma. He is involved in interfaith dialogues to promote mutual understanding and build cultural and religious bridges between people. He urges fellow Americans to not rely only on media to learn about Islam, rather through close and direct connection to Muslims by visiting mosques and getting to know Muslims better. He believes that the story of the Arabs in the US in general and Cleveland in particular is a story of great success.

Interviewee

al-Zaem, Isam (interviewee)

Interviewer

Tayyara, Abedelraman (interviewer)

Project

Arab Community in Cleveland

Date

4-4-2019

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

47 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Isam al-Zaem interview, 04 April 2019" (2019). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 345014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1226

Related Resources

Arab Community @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:00:25] Hi, this is Abedelraman Tayyara. Today is April 4. We have today with us, and I will start asking you, tell me a few things about yourself, about your family.

Isam al-Zaem [00:00:41] Sure. As doctor Tabara said, my name is Isam al-Zaem. I’m a native of Syria. I’m a pharmacist from back home. And I came to the United States in 1970 to study medical technology. Started in Chicago for the first three, four years, and then I moved to Cleveland in 1974, and I’ve been in Cleveland ever since.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:01:16] Can you tell us about your childhood, about where you grow up?

Isam al-Zaem [00:01:23] Yeah, I think I grew up in Damascus. I have three other brothers, three siblings, all boys. I’m the oldest, and I grew up in a middle class family. My father was a teacher who was a very conscientious and hardworking. Of course, my mom was a. She stayed home, she took care of us. And my younger years, I grew up during, if I recall correctly, the period when Egypt and Syria had a united Arab republic. And they were very emotional and draining period in my life. I was really influenced by what happened during that period. And the president of Egypt, Cemal Abdel Nasser, who was our idols, and I lived through the 1967 war with Israel. And it was very dramatic for me. Of course, that left a very good impression on my future life. I felt the issues of the Israeli Palestinian issue as an integral part of my life as I grew up. And when I came to United States of America, there was no major media, as if it is now 1973, when the war broke between Syria, Egypt and Israel. There was no way to get the information as we get it now. So it was quite a struggle to get the details, and it was a very dramatic experience for us as people who lived in this country. But it’s always been difficult to deal with these issues that affected our personal life as well.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:03:43] So in your opinion, you’ve been living here for a long time. What are the main differences, culturally or socially speaking, between, like, living in Damascus and living in Cleveland?

Isam al-Zaem [00:03:57] Well, you know, this is like comparing days and nights. You know, it’s extremely difficult to compare the two because they are completely two different worlds, especially nowadays, where there is a lot of oppression in the Middle east, particularly from the country where I come from. My native Syria, where people of Syria, like the rest of the Arab world, thought that maybe it’s time for us to stand up for our rights and demand freedoms from our dictatorships throughout the whole Arab world. And they were optimistic by what it started in Tunis or Tunisia, and they said if the Tunisian and Egyptian can do it. Why not the Syrians? So unfortunately, it turned out to be a very winter rot on the spring, Arab spring was turned out to be a winter, spring, winter Arab problem, and it really had destroyed the hope and put the country where I come from back. Maybe I would say at least four or five decades. It’s going to take a lot of money to put the country back. Yet we’re still under dictatorship, sponsored mainly by Russia and Iran, and to some extent by the lack of action or supporting the wrong actors in the process of bringing democracy in the Middle east and in Syria by supporting the Kurds in the northern part of Syria. It’s very depressing, actually.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:05:57] If we go back to your academic life, like, why you decided to be a pharmacist.

Isam al-Zaem [00:06:03] Well, I think, ironically, there are two different divisions when you get the high school diploma in Syria. One of them is scientific, and the other one is artistic or non scientific. So I chose to be in the scientific part simply because people who get into the science, they make more money. So my focus was really to be either a doctor or a dentist or a pharmacist. And I was probably, you know, we get admitted, actually, at the university based on our grades and how our grades are. So I was pretty close to making the. Being a doctor, but with a few points, I had to go to the next notch, which is pharmacy. I could have been a dentist, but I chose to be a pharmacist after I inquired about it. And probably if I would have stayed in Syria, I would have been financially well off, and I would have done very well, maybe better than when I was financially. Yes. I’m a graduate of the pharmacy College of Pharmacy from Damascus University. So, you know, after I finished my fourth year, on the fourth year, I was starting to think about coming to the United States of America to study higher schooling for becoming, you know, back home, analytical blood analysis. And these laboratories are usually run by pharmacists who got a PhD. So I intended to come to the United States to get a PhD so I can go back to Syria and run a laboratory. But of course, we planned and got plans, and God is the best planner. You know, we never know what happens to people one day. So I came to this country and came to Chicago. I studied there, and I got a degree in medical technology. And then by chance, I had to get a training for my medical technology intern in the country. And I probably sent 100 different application requests to attend one of the hospitals, but I got no response whatsoever. By chance, one of my uncle, my cousins who are very close to me. And I haven’t seen him for years because he left Syria a long time ago. He was here in Cleveland from Brazil, starting a branch for a company, an engineering company. So we were talking on the phone. He said, why don’t you come and visit with me so I can get to see you over the weekend. And I thought, since I’m coming to Cleveland, why not just. Also, I know that in Cleveland at that time, there were about six or seven different schools of medical technology that I can physically, personally apply to. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. After I spent the weekend with my cousin, I took the bus and moved from one school to another, knocking on doors and asking if I can get position at internship position there. Lo and behold, after, I think I went to Huron Hospital, which doesn’t exist now anymore. It was in 1974. Then I went to case Western Reserve University, and I interviewed in there, too. And the third interview was at the Cleveland Clinic, in which, after the interview, I knew that I was admitted simply because of the interaction that I had with the director. So in one week’s time, I had to go back in Chicago, pack my stuff, and come to Cleveland. And as they say, it’s history where I have been in Cleveland since then. Ironically, that’s where I happened to meet my future wife. And actually in a class, our class of medical technology. And the class was big, relatively big. Cleveland clinic was one of the biggest medical technology school at that time. And they had 16 positions. But a lot of times, some of these people dropped, drop off the program before it starts. So apparently the director admitted 17. Maybe I was the 17th. I don’t. Knowing that maybe somebody would drop off when she still have 16 or 15. Lo and behold, I came to school the first day and all these chairs, including myself, were taken. And there is a young lady who walks in there, and there is no place for her. And there was a library close to where I was sitting that I brought a chair for that lady to sit, and she sat next to me. And she’s been my wife for the last 43 years.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:11:41] But the main reason that you moved, you came to Cleveland because of your cousin.

Isam al-Zaem [00:11:46] That’s what brought me to Cleveland to see my cousin. In the process, I decided to go ahead and apply for internship. Since I’ve been here, I was here anyway, but never knew that I would end up spending the rest of my life in Cleveland.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:12:05] Yeah, but how long you spend time in Chicago?

Isam al-Zaem [00:12:09] Oh, I came to the United States. Actually, I came for the first four months to Louisiana. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That’s where I got my english language program. I studied there for about four months. Then I moved to Chicago simply because I had a friend in Chicago. Just really typical immigrants or students who they congregate and go to meet people who are of, they knew before because. Yeah. Or relatives because, you know, they feel more comfortable, at ease when they have somebody who would help them, guide them into the difficulty of the newest of a new country. So I had a friend from high school who had left us after the high school. So I had a friend in Chicago. So after I finished my school in Louisiana, I headed out to Chicago and I stayed in there. That’s where I studied medical technology in Chicago for four years until I moved to. To Cleveland. Roosevelt University. Yeah, it’s on, I think, Michigan Avenue. You can see Lake Michigan from there.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:13:23] So tell us about your own family. Like, you know, you are married.

Isam al-Zaem [00:13:28] Yes. So as I said, I met my wife. I met my wife in 1974, shortly after 19. By the time we graduated from the internship, we worked a little bit at the Cleveland clinic after graduation. We got married in 1976, and she’s from Washington, DC, so. But we decided to stay in here, although probably Washington, DC would have been a bigger market and more. But anyway, I don’t have any regrets for being in Cleveland. Cleveland is a beautiful place, middle sized, sort of middle sized city in which has all the amenities of a big city without having to worry about the traffic or heavy pollution. And the prices of the cost of living is very reasonable. So we’ve been married now for 43 years. She is also, as you said, medical technologist. We both now are retired, but we tried to have children in the beginning. Of course, we didn’t try, but after a few years, when we started trying to have children was difficult. We just didn’t work for us. By the time the doctors figured it out, she had what’s called endometriosis, which doesn’t allow the ova, or the eggs to stick on uterus. So that was the IVF, or in vitro fertilization with a new process. This is what we call tube baby, where they took the ova from the female and fertilize it outside the womb, and then they put it back into the womb. So the Cleveland clinic was offering these programs, and we took advantage of it. And we were successful from first one, and that was 31 years ago. At the present time, I have and I never worked again. We tried to have more children, but we were not successful, unfortunately. But we’re pleased that God Almighty had bestow his mercy on us and offered me a beautiful daughter whose name is Nadia, and she’s now a practicing immigration lawyer downtown Cleveland.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:16:08] So maybe we can. So you are retired and then you work now or volunteering to work with care. If you can tell us a little bit about care and the nature of this work, what you’re doing.

Isam al-Zaem [00:16:24] Yeah. See, I never was really engaged with my faith or social justice in the early stages of my life. I just was like everybody else, eat, drink, watch tv and enjoy the football game. And, you know, I had to learn American football game to understand, and I learned to enjoy it, the same thing as baseball. So for many years, until maybe the late seventies or early eighties, I was sort of on my own with disconnected with the community or disconnected with everything else. But living in United States of America have taught me a lot of things, things that I probably would have never been exposed to back home, including protecting environments, fighting for justice, equal opportunities for people, treating people this equally, the same, not to hate practice. And this is basically what my faith calls for. I’m a Muslim. I wasn’t practicing in the early stages of my life, but I found out that this really reflective of how a person can be best that he can by practicing his faith, particularly in my case in Islam. So by chance, I happened to have a doctor in my office who had brother in law that’s starting a chapter in care chapters in Columbus. Care, by the way, stands for Council on American Islamic Relations. It’s the largest muslim civil rights organizations in the country. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary, and it really the vision of care is enhanced understanding of islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, and empower American Muslims and build coalition that promote justice and mutual understanding. So we are not religious organizations. We are civil rights organizations. We fight for the rights of people who happen to be Muslims or look like Muslims or presumed to be Muslims. We have defended christian Arabs who have Arabic names and were mistaken for being Muslims, and they were discriminated against. And at the present time, we have people of all walks of life that works for care. We have the executive director of Philadelphia of jewish descent. He’s jewish himself. We have people of christian faith that work with us side by side in these organizations, in this organization, and then as well as we have also a lot of supporters from all walks of life, regardless of their faith. Simply what brings us together is really the desire to have social justice in our country, especially nowadays, where there is a lot of hate being spewed out by white supremacists and alike. So in 1998, actually, I was invited to go to Columbus to be representing Cleveland as a part of Keir in Ohio. That’s what the start of Cairo hire by 2003. And that’s after the 911 disaster. We did realize that we needed to start a chapter right here in Cleveland. So with the help of our community throughout the greater Cleveland area, northeast Ohio, we were able to raise funds to start a chapter right here in Cleveland. Care Ohio Cleveland chapter. And we have office now that we’ve been in it for the last 15, almost going on 16 years. We started in 2003. And as we always say, we hit the ground running. You know, most of my fellow Americans are not aware of the discrimination that their brothers and sisters from the muslim faith face every day and doesn’t really get to be exposed in the media, as it should. But being on the forefront, I see how many people, particularly the muslim women who wear head cover or a scarf called hijab, get discriminated against in too many different ways. We also hear stories about people being harassed, cursed, told to be, go back to where they came from. A woman’s hijab is being pulled out from behind a case in. In New York where a man started with his lighter to burn hijab of a woman. A woman in Columbus was shot at driving back home repeatedly. Another woman in Toledo that was removing some of the drinks in a picnic area from her trunk. A guy backed off with his car, repeatedly, broke her legs. And the story has gone on and on. There is not probably a week where a masjid or a mosque that is not being desecrated or have a graffiti or attacked. So, you know, it’s unfortunate, and I really don’t think that my fellow Americans are intentionally hateful. The vast majority of my fellow Americans are kind, generous, and welcoming. And I think sometimes, unfortunately, one bad apple can create this impression and fear in the heart of people, that fear is sometimes not. Sometimes, most of the time, is rational. It doesn’t really explain things. And I think I have read and experienced so many things to explain it in this way. See, the muslim community’s population is about, maybe, I would say, one to 2% of the population. So we are somewhere between three to 6 million Muslims, American Muslims, which also, another statistic shows that more than 70, maybe 75% of American, our fellow Americans, do not know a Muslim. They have never met somebody physically, in flesh and blood, that can communicate with them and get to know who they are. So we are dehumanized. We are human dehumanized. We are. We look, you know, for people who have never met us, where do we get their information from? There is a professor called Jack Shaheen who is of a Lebanese christian heritage, American, who was born and he just passed away last year, that he wrote a documentary. And it’s actually, you can even google it. It has a YouTube 1 hour documentary. You can also look it up. The title is real Bad Arabs. And it’s not re, it’s re e l bad Arabs. And it really describes how Hollywood have vilified Arabs and Muslims throughout history. So most of my fellow Americans grow up throughout the years having the wrong impression, stereotypical ideas about who we are as people. Therefore it, you know, in like the statistics that he came up with is only 1% positive. Movies that portray Arabs and Muslims in good position. And then you got about three or 4% in the middle where neutral. But the rest, 94% of these movies betray Arabs and Muslims in a very negative way. So it is, you know, when you get exposed to this all your life, it becomes natural for people. If they don’t encounter a human being, next door neighbor, a co worker, they don’t encounter human, real human body, then all these stereotypes will stick in their mind. So, you know, I have really dedicated the rest of my life to bringing people together, to bring an understanding about who we are as Muslims, what we think of, what are our thoughts, how we really have so much in common with the rest of the people and rest of humanity that what’s being spewed out there really does not reflect the true pictures of who we are as people. And it doesn’t take much for people to find out who we are. We have our mosque, especially the islamic center of Cleveland here in Parma, welcoming place for anybody to walk in. You can call the mosque and ask for a tour. I’ve given tens of tours the last two years. Must have welcomed over 1500 people and they come in groups. I can give you a tour, show you around, answer your question. You can observe a prayer and you just get to know us closely rather than to make decisions on us without knowing who we are. The other program that I was privileged to share with is something called Tea time for peace. And you can look us up on Facebook. It’s called the Facebook called Tea Time. That’s no spaces. Tea time number four, peace. And you will find our events we’ve had in the last two years. What happened is that a lady from the unitary church, close friend of mine, approached us after, during the 2016 election and she was concerned about the Rhoderich being spewed by the politicians about Islam and Muslims. She said, this is not acceptable. America should not be pushed in that direction. And we need to bring people together. And we had the events in February 2016. Since then, we’ve had 22 different events. And basically what we do is just bring people from all walks of life. Christian, Muslim, Jews, non believers, Sikhs, you name it, they come sit down in a place like a church or a synagogue or library or. And we sit down and we ask each other personal questions about our experiences, our beliefs, what is most important in our life. And we go deep quickly, and we get to know each other. And that is breaking the stereotypes that’s bringing people together. And, you know, the first event, we expecting 60 people. We got 120. And people wanted to have these events in their houses and their places of worship. There’s one coming up on September 7 at the Vermont Presbyterian Church. So there is these events that brings people together that can destroy stereotypes and make our country a better place to live in.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:28:37] So I want to ask you about the Arab culture. To what extent the Arab culture plays a role in your life.

Isam al-Zaem [00:28:49] Well, you know, of course I’m proud of being an Arab. I speak Arabic. I was born in an Arabic country, but I do not identify as an Arab per se, because I think that nationalism sometimes could be poisonous, personally. Like, am I an Arab? Am I an American? Am I a Muslim? Am I human? I am what? So I. First of all and foremost, I identify as a person who is a Muslim. That doesn’t make me a better person than anybody else. It’s just that for me, I find Islam. I find peace with Islam. I find that I can be a better person by treating my fellow Americans, by treating my neighborhood, working for my country to make it a better place, is the right place to do. But as I said, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had in the past, have in his final message to humanity. And it wasn’t that his last sermons during the pulmonary or the hajj. In the very last message, he said, literally what it means. The following is that he said, there is no betterment or differences, or there’s no white better than the white, black and black is not better than white. An Arab is not better than an Arabs or non Arabs is not better than Arabs, except in the way that they. Their piety in terms of how they treat each other, how they spend their time on this earth, making it a better place. This is what makes us different. Otherwise, being a Siberian or Russian, or an Alaskan or New Zealand or Americans or an Arab or a Syrian. These are artificial boundaries that were made. If you go into space and look at the earth, there will be no boundaries. And there is no sign that says, this is Syria and this is America and this is Russia and this is Britain. So in a way, people need to find things that unite them instead of dividing them. Well, you know, of course I carry an American passport. I’m proud of being an American, but that does not make me a better person than somebody who doesn’t have that password. So. But I do identify with my faith as a way to live and die. Hopefully that. May God almighty have mercy on me, because this is the bottom line, you see, we live, we work, we eat, we work, we eat. We do a lot of things in our life, and eventually we all will die. We all have to meet our makers. And the question is, if you believe in the day of judgment, what I do believe in, it is that we will be asked for every little or big action we’ve done in our life. So what are we going to do when we standing before our maker and we cannot hide? He knows everything. He’s all knowing or seeing. He has all the details of what I’ve done. He knows more what’s in my heart than I do of myself. So the bottom line is, I hope that may God have mercy on myself and everybody else and be rewarded if I’m worthy of the reward of the hereafter.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:32:23] So my question, I mean, like, you know about, let’s say, food, when you eat, do you eat more like Arab food? About. How about the music, for example?

Isam al-Zaem [00:32:34] Oh, okay. Well, then, from the cultural point of view, I’m sort of a hybrid, if you may say. Or, you know, of course, I grew up with music that is still, until now, mesmerizing. I grew up with during Abdel Hanim Hafiz, and until now, I google them on YouTube and I listen to them occasionally. So my wife is being an American born and she’s not even a Muslim. She does not enjoy this kind of music, of course. But, you know, that’s the way it is. I enjoy some english American music, which I listen to as well, as far as food is concerned. For years, my mother and father used to come and visit with me before they passed away. And they would stay here for quite a few months at the time. So my mother learned how to speak English and she communicated with my wife so fantastically. So they worked together in the kitchen. And my wife enjoys cooking, and my mom taught her how to cook all these Arabic food. So, you know, our food tends to be a little bit fattening. I mean, you eat, you end up getting fat. My wife likes to cook lights. So we have that issue of, you know, being selective in diet. So. But occasionally, every time, if I feel like it, you know, my wife being a very good cook and she enjoys it, all I need to do is I’m missing this, and the next day I find it on the table. You know, I have a fantastic wife. She is very, very helpful, and she loves me so much that she’s willing to feed me anything that I ask for. So, you know, I eat everything. And we have combination. You know, we are blessed in Asia, America, because the American cuisine is made of every. All these cuisines all over the world. We can have Indian, we have Chinese, we can have Arabic food, Mexican food, you name it, you know, so we never get bored of food. We can have all kind of variety. And we’re lucky in that way. You know, we are very lucky to be able to have that. I can’t imagine even kibbeh every day in Syria. That could be very boring, too, right?

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:35:12] Correct. Yeah.

Isam al-Zaem [00:35:13] Yeah. But, you know, it’s just. Life can be very exciting when you have variety.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:35:22] Yeah. But do you speak with your daughter in Arabic?

Isam al-Zaem [00:35:26] Yeah. So in regards to that, the Arabic language and speaking it, be honest with you, it has become easier for me to communicate in English, and I dream in English, which they tell you that’s when you should do that. And you have mastered the language. I sometimes need to make, for example, announcement at the mosque after the noon prayer on Friday and then have difficulty translating what I said in English into Arabic. I can do it, but without. It’s not as fluid. I have to have effort, and I sometimes use, you know, weird words or whatever. So, of course, I will never forget Arabic. I know how to speak it and I know how to communicate with it. And I have a lot of friends who are Arabic speakers that we communicate in that way. My daughter, we speak English at home, but my daughter and I tried to help her by learning Arabic because it is, to me, it’s really important. She learned Spanish at school. She’s very good at it. And she learned some Arabic from me as well as she went to school. Arabic school, weekend school in Cleveland, as well as she has studied in Syria. She went to study Arabic languages in Syria, and she took some courses here in Cleveland when she went to case Western Reserve University. University. And at the present time, despite the fact that she is, she’s 31 years old, she’s studying Arabic and religious studies at the mosque. At Cleveland Islamic center of Cleveland until now. So she continues to learn. Learning is an endless process, as we all know. And Arabic is a very big and difficult language to learn if you don’t practice it on a daily basis. But she understands me very well. Like most of second generations, they understand the language. They can understand what you asking them, but they easily take the easy way out by responding in English. So it is the compromise that there’s not much you can do about it. And I think I’m not special. In that case, I probably better off and a lot of other people who have the same situation where they don’t even have their kids learning Arabic like my daughter is. Did I answer your question?

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:38:17] Yes. Okay, so we’re coming closer to the end. The last topic that I would like to ask you is about the Arab community in Cleveland. Cleveland is a very diverse place with many cultures. Now, my question. First question. What’s the place that the Arab community occupy within this diversity, cultural diversity, in Cleveland, in your opinion?

Isam al-Zaem [00:38:46] I really think that Cleveland is one of the best places that someone like me could live in. It’s very diversified. It’s very welcoming. And I can answer you from not only perspective of Arabic community, because my community that I deal with on a daily basis is, of course, Arabic and non Arabic, but mostly Muslim. So I deal with a lot of people from Middle east. I’m more involved with the muslim community being an active in our mosques. I’m involved with care, defending civil rights of Muslims, and welcoming people to our mosque to let them know who we are. Due to the, you know, all miscommunication, misinformation being spewed about my faith. So my most of my time is really spent by those who are active within the muslim community who happen to be either muslim or who happen to be either Arabs or non Arabs. So for the people who are listening to us now, there is a difference between an Arab and a Muslim. Islam is a religion. Arab is a nationality. It’s like being an American or being a Christian. So. And there are Arabs who are Christians and Jews as well. And Arabs constitute the minority within the muslim community, including the United States of America. Arabs, probably about 15% of the world’s wild population, muslim population. So a lot of people get them mixed up. They think that Arabs are the same as Muslims, but that’s not true. And as I said, there are Christian Arabs and Christian and Jews who also. Arabs. Basically, being Arab is really speaking the language of Arabic. And once I heard that anybody can be in Arabic, once he speaks Arabic. If somebody was American born, American Christian, but he learned to speak Arabic and becomes, like all the Arabs, the way they speak. And there are a lot of people who I know who speak Arabic simply because if they happen to be Muslims and they wanted to read the Quran, the Quran is in Arabic. So need to. They need to, you know, experience the language itself. So it all of a sudden, you know, if you speak Arabic, you’re an Arab. It has. You don’t have to be born in Arabic country to be considered an Arab. And Arabic is a beautiful language. It is very musical. If you heard poems, you would be sometimes, even without knowing what is being said, you would enjoy it. I think, actually, if anybody would google recitation of the Quran, which is in Arabic, and listen to it, some people get mesmerized by the sound of the Arabic or the verses being recited in Arabic. So that’s it.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:41:55] So do you think the story. I mean, Arabs been in Cleveland since the beginning of the century, the last century. So do you think, in general, if you think it’s a story of success.

Isam al-Zaem [00:42:07] When we think about the Arab community, absolutely. I think Arabs are very innovative and hardworking. They make something out of nothing. I’ve seen how our people from Arabic countries have been able to create a lot of businesses, create a lot of, manufacture a lot of things, and discover a lot of things that usually now we take them for granted. The community itself has been able to be proud of these accomplishments that was done by those people. And unfortunately, we don’t get to publicize our successes. But all you need to do is actually think of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a Syrian father, an American mother, and his father comes from Homs, one of the middle towns in Syria. And I usually say that Steve Jobs, who created the iPhone, without the iPhone, our current president would not be able to tweet ten times a day. So you should be grateful for these immigrants who came from Syria that created the iPhone in which that he can now tweet.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:43:42] The last question I want to ask you, if you. I will give you the last word. If you want to say things about, you know, advice, you know, pieces of advices or advice, or just to say general things.

Isam al-Zaem [00:43:56] Yeah, well, you know, you make me sound like I’m a wise man, which I am not. I just am a humble individual who loves, love people, love my faith, and I love to live life to the fullest. I advise my fellow Americans, who have doubt about my faith, about my culture, to really look into it deeper. Do not be irrationally fearful of the things that you hear on the media. You know, ironically, ISIS that created that killing in killing feed in the Middle east, probably have killed more Muslims than non Muslims, for God’s sake. And just remember, ISIS to Islam is what KKK to Christianity. That simple as that. We have the number one question that I get asked about repeatedly is why Muslims don’t condemn terrorism. Well, first of all, you know, all you need to do is Google Muslim condemned terrorism, American Muslim condemn terrorism, Islam condemned terrorism, or anything like that. You will find hundreds of thousands of hits that come out. So the issue is that if you don’t hear it, it doesn’t mean that’s not happening. But nevertheless, why should I be apologizing for a crime being committed for someone who hijacked my faith? I think what’s important is that you realize that it’s not my job to apologize for a very small minority of people who claim to be for political reason. Now, this is not really religious for political reason, to behave in such manner. I don’t ask my brothers and sisters from the christian faith to apologize for crimes committed by those criminals, christian criminals who claim to be Christians, who attacked, for example, the African American church in the south because he was a white supremacist and he killed those people in the church. We don’t ask other people to apologize for crimes committed their faith. So why would they expect us to do the same? I think we should be more cognizant. We should be more educated, learn more, ask questions, visit our mosque, and try to remember that on the final analysis, we are all human beings. All we care about at the present time is a lot of us survive from one day to another. We just want to be peaceful. We don’t want to be hurt. We don’t want to hurt anybody else. And, you know, we worry about the garbage pickup like everybody else. We worry about the school of our kids, like everybody else, just like we are like everybody else. We are not that different. We have the good and bad, the ugly. So, you know, if you think in a logical manner, you’ll find that all this hype that we hear in the media, unfortunately, is not true. And we have to find a way for all of us to live on this earth harmoniously, in a peaceful way, where we can have our space and give others as well, the space and we share this beautiful earth that God has given us.

Abedelraman Tayyara [00:47:28] I would like to thank you, Isam, for this wonderful interview, and I wish you all the best.

Isam al-Zaem [00:47:37] Thank you very much for the opportunity.

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