Kristin E. Johnson is an immigration attorney living and working in Birmingham, Alabama. A primary focus of her law practice is representing churches, dioceses, mosques and religious workers of all faiths in their immigration needs.
For some Muslims, changing faith traditions endangers their lives.
Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks I befriended a twenty-year-old Egyptian woman. She had recently moved to Birmingham, Alabama to marry the owner of a Mediterranean restaurant I frequented, and I wanted her to know people in Alabama accepted and liked her regardless of some of the prejudices that surfaced after September 11. She wore a fedora over her conservative Islamic hijab (headscarf) to camouflage her religious identity.
Using halting English, we shared stories of each other’s lives. She was amazed to learn I had chosen the Catholic faith in adulthood, and she asked me many times for clarification. Her husband interpreted my words for her in Arabic: “My family does not belong…
Understanding Muslim reaction to the Mohammed cartoons
As television newscasters were reporting every night for weeks back in April 2002 on the story of Israeli troops surrounding Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity and the Franciscan Monks who had given asylum and shelter to some militant and some civilian Palestinians I barely glanced up from my microwaved Lean Cuisine dinner each evening.
The only reason I was aware of these events at all was because my good friend Madian Khouly would urgently tell me what was happening at the site of Jesus’ birth. It was important to him and he thought it should be important to me, since I am a Catholic. Madian is in his mid-thirties and owns the computer store where I get all my techno-gadgets. He comes from a Palestinian family…
Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks I befriended a twenty-year-old Egyptian woman. She had recently moved to Birmingham, Alabama to marry the owner of a Mediterranean restaurant I frequented, and I wanted her to know people in Alabama accepted and liked her regardless of some of the prejudices that surfaced after September 11. She wore a fedora over her conservative Islamic hijab (headscarf) to camouflage her religious identity.
