Islamic Dialogues: 4 The Arab View of Manual Labor, Reality, and Respect

In this dialogue an Arab immigrant to America–a computer programmer–interacts with a psychologist also of Arabic ethnicity. The dialogue opens the cultural Arab antipathy to manual labor and the view that it is insulting to ask a person to do it. The notion of shame and somce differences between American and Western values and Arab values and norms are dramatically contrasted.

Islamic Dialogues: 1–College in America

A dramatic dialog of an American Moslem father and his son with two imams in Detroit. The boy has been at the Univeristy of Michigan and the father had visited for the first time and was somewhat shocked. He asked his old friend and imam to talk with them as he was not sure that he was being a good father exposing his son to the diverse and non-Islamic culture of a large modern university. The imams view the situation very differently and present a microcosm the range of viewpoints on secular modernism within Islam.