Joey Dye

“My confusion about the separation between the servant class and the upper middle class revealed a quintessentially American point of view. Status is much more fluid in America, at least within the wide range of the population that can loosely be characterized as middle-class. I wait tables at a restaurant, and after my shift is over, I go out to a lounge and someone waits on me. Even if I get a graduate degree and earn a six-figure salary, I don’t treat waiters like a permanently lower class. After all, I was one and know what it feels like. And who knows when someone serving me in this restaurant will get their own graduate degree and be my boss. Better to be friendly. My “American-ness” was starting to stare me in the face in India: not the America of big-screen televisions and Hummers, but the America that, despite its constant failings, managed to inculcate in its citizens a set of humanizing values—the dignity of labor, the fundamental equality of human beings, mobility based on drive and talent, the opportunity to create and contribute.”
― Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

“(Imagine a world where all religious groups can simply freeze their beliefs and not have to interact with the culture.)”
― Marci A. Hamilton, God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty

“Everybody has rights in this country,” Shehnaz said flatly. “That’s what makes it great. If we let the rights of one group erode, we endanger the very existence of those rights for everybody.”
― Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

“Even when we feel like we have found theological common ground—like Abraham as the patriarch of Jews, Christians, and Muslims—we quickly discover that even those paradigms have their limits. There are a million Hindus in this country, and over three million Buddhists, and neither of those communities would be called Abrahamic. But they live in America, too, and we have to have a paradigm that includes them.”
― Eboo Patel, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation