Faith Postcard

Audio transcript:

0:00:06:>>MANAF BASHIR: Welcome to MUSLIM VOICES. I'm Manaf Bashir.

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0:00:12:>>MANAF BASHIR: It's difficult to have a discussion about religion and not talk about faith. The trouble is faith can be colored by society, culture and community, as well as by religion. Knowing that, we wondered, what do people think when they hear that word, faith? To find out, we ask people in Bloomington, Ind., what faith is. As you will hear in this audio postcard, faith means different things to different people.

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0:00:46:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah, I'm Christian, so I believe in faith in God and Jesus and him helping me throughout my day.

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0:00:53:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I go to church not because I'm forced to, I like to go. It's comforting. I go every Sunday. I taught bible school in high school. I don't know. I also believe that you don't have to go to church to be a faithful person. I think that you can have a relationship with God without going to a church.

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0:01:11:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Faith to me is that - like, believing in God and believing in my religion. Like, I believe that there's, like, a higher power - something bigger than me that just helps.

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0:01:32:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Faith means to me having confidence in something without actually being able to see it, without being able to physically grasp it. Just knowing that it's there, but without seeing it.

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0:01:49:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: I was raised in an extremely reformed Jewish family. To me, faith is a very personal endeavor - one that I don't need an institution to necessarily direct me in.

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0:02:10:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Faith can be non-religious in that it's just your overall moral fiber - what you believe in. So whether it be, like I said, a higher power or whether it be just yourself - your personal ego as well is what they'd like to say - then that can be faith in itself as well.

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0:02:33:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: When I think of faith, I think of Islam's teachings and that helps to guide my moral values and my ethical decisions as well. So faith, for me, is, like, how I live my life on a daily basis - how I treat others.

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0:03:02:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: When you ask me, Mohammed, what faith means? I say, for me, it means the belief in God. This is the first meaning. Yeah.

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0:03:13:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: It meant, in our heart, it means God ask us to do that when we have to obey God. Prophets came with - to confirm on this with the books and do we know that we are facing a lot. Our heart is our guidance. We see with our heart. We feel with our heart. We believe with our heart.

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0:03:44:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: I don't fast and I don't pray. To me, it's more about being a nicer person. And my goal is to help at least one person a day and just try and be a better human being. That's about it.

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0:04:02:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #11: If you give everything up to God that he will - you know, he won't give you anything you can't handle and, you know, he'll make sure that you make it through.

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0:04:17:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #12: Yeah, I think faith's really important to us. I've always ended up, you know, being a big believer in God and in what he does do for us, you know, every day. I'm just amazed.

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0:04:28:>>UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #13: (Singing) Because I got to have faith. I got to have faith. Because I got to have faith. I got to have faith, faith, faith.

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0:04:46:>>MANAF BASHIR: This has been MUSLIM VOICES, a production of the Voices and Visions Project in partnership with WFIU Public Media from Indiana University. I am Manaf Bashir. Support for MUSLIM VOICES comes from the Social Science Research Council. You can subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or join the discussion on our website. Find us online at muslimvoices.org.