Dr. Hassan Hathout dies at 84; Islamic leader fostered interfaith relations

Dr. Hassan Hathout, a physician, medical ethicist and leader of the Southern California Islamic community who was at the forefront of efforts to demystify American Muslims and build interfaith bonds, has died. He was 84.

Hathout died of natural causes Saturday at his Pasadena home, said a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, of which he was a prominent member.

He was also a leader of the Islamic Center of Southern California, where he coordinated outreach efforts for two decades. A well-regarded scholar, he wrote several books, including "Reading the Muslim Mind."

"He was one of our giants in the history of Islam in America," who urged Muslims to be "organically integrated in American society and not act as visitors" in it, Salam al Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said Sunday.

In 1998 Hathout delivered a sermon at the first White House celebration of Eid al-Fitr, the day marking the end of the Muslim holy month Ramadan. Along with Rabbi Leonard Beerman of Bel-Air's Leo Baeck Temple and the Rev. George Regas of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Hathout also helped organize the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race, one of the first major inter-religious efforts in Los Angeles.

"As a physician he was so committed to life, he wanted to stand against anything that was going to obliterate life. He did that as a deeply religious person," Regas said Sunday.

Hathout was born in Cairo on Dec. 23, 1924. The son of a schoolteacher, he was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he earned degrees from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He also had a doctorate of philosophy in reproductive genetics.

He taught obstetrics and gynecology in Kuwait, where he lived for 26 years before immigrating to the United States in the late 1980s.

He quickly became involved in interfaith work in Los Angeles. With Beerman and Regas, he organized weekly prayer services for Muslims, Christians and Jews during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. The first service at All Saints in Pasadena drew more than 1,500 worshipers.

"We've lived together for centuries with mutual reserve and hatred," he told the Daily News in 1991. "One of the positive things of the whole gulf crisis is that the three communities came together and discovered each other's faith and scriptures are so similar."

After 9/11, Hathout stepped up his efforts at bridge-building and called on Muslims to tone down anti-American rhetoric. He also spoke at Open Mosque Day, a program launched in 2002 in which more than two dozen mosques in Southern California invited non-Muslims to join in Islamic prayers, food and literature.

At one such event a few years ago, he told visitors that instead of classifying humanity by religion, he sought to view people in more basic terms: "those with a loving heart and those with a hating heart."

"He had a wonderful heart," said Dr. Omar Alfi, a physician and former chairman of the Islamic Center of Southern California, who knew Hathout for 60 years. "His main point was that religion is love . . . that humans are either loving or hating people irrespective of their religion.

"That was always a very important point for him."

Hathout is survived by his wife of 56 years, Salonas; a daughter, Eba; a brother, Maher; and two grandchildren.

Burial will take place at 3 p.m. today) at Rose Hills Memorial Park, 3888 Workman Mill Road, Whittier 90601. Visitation with the family is scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Islamic Center of Southern California, 434 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90020.

Elaine Woo
LA Times
elaine.woo@latimes.com

Inna lilah wa inna ilahi raji'un.
(From Allah we all come and to Him we return.)

Manzanar, Living in a Remebered Present

February 19th 1942, Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, began the forced relocation of thousands of West Coast Japanese Americans to ten concentration camps spread out across the the western continental states. Fueled by war time hysteria and fear following the cowardly attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, Americans of Japanese ancestry were subjected to humiliating treatment and racist attitudes that brought into question their loyalty to America. As early as following the decimation of the American Pacific naval fleet, the FBI moved swiftly to solve the "Japanese Problem" by seizing and arresting "enemy" aliens. The newly created War Relocation Authority (WRA) was charged to create the camps that would eventually become the home of around 120,000 Japanese Americans, 2/3 of which were American born citizens. Of these camps, Manzanar once the prison to hundreds of families, has now been transformed into a site of remembrance, and a endearing reminder of American complancy in the face of injustice.

Located in the desolate and arid Ownes Valley, Manzanar was an enclosed one square-mile area of military style barracks, mess halls, and open fields, that housed over 10,000 people, under the survielence of eight permiemter guard towers. The Japanese were brought to the camps under the pretext that they were going for their own protection, however came to find the guard towers and armed soilders enclosing them behind barbed wires. They had become prisioners, guilty for the crime of being Japanese. What followed for many was three years of an isolated exisitence, void of freedom, lost in confusion and dispair, what followed was three years of unjust imprisonment.

On April 25th, Japanese Americans, Muslims and many other people made an annual pilgirimage to commorate this blotch in American History and to ensure "never again". The experience of the Japanese Americans offers invaluable wisdom to Muslim Americans living in a post 9/11 America, that are faced, as the Japanese did, with a constant unjust scrutinty and harrasment by the Government and general public. Talking with former camp attendees, a constant phrase surfaced, "fighting injustice". These powerful two words, resonate on so many levels and they remind me of a commonly quoted saying of the prophet:

Whosoever sees an evil deed, let him change it with his hand; if he is unable to do so, then with his tounge; if he is unable to do so then with his heart, and that is the weakest of faith. (Muslim)

Having the opportunity to sit down and talk to former internees and learning their stories firsthand was remarkable in and byself. They discussed their own complancent nature at the time, and the post-camp experiences that finally led them to open up to younger generations. They talked about the humiliating expeirneces of encampent in retrospect and the degrading treatment. We also discussed the contemporary issues, Muslims find themselves in today, and idnetified parallel stories.

If we, as Muslims, as activists are to be the catalyst for social bettermant as mandated by the Qu'ran, it is critical that we learn and gain from the past expeirnces of others, and interanlize these struggles in our own, and to work in solidarity with other communities to find justice for the wrongs commited and being commited. In doing so we are taking a proactive approach and emboding the above mentioned hadith. Let us not be complacent with the injustices of today, let us ignore no more the parallel stories of the Japanese Americans and Muslim Americans and gain from what they can offer. Let us speak out against Abu Gharib, Guantanomo Bay, and the secret torture prisons around the world. Let us no longer see it acceptable to allow the FBI to infringe on our civil liberites in overt tactics.

Manzanar was an eye-opening experience that proves to be a reminder to continue to work against the injustices of our day, and find meaning in the past. There is so much to gain from going
.

Fort Minor- Kenji

Going to Manzanar this weekend. Reminded me of this song.