Los Angeles, USA - 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, according to 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," 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-Fir, the day marking the end of the Muslim holy month Ramadan. Along with Rabbi Leonard Beerman of Los Angeles' Leo Baeck Temple and Rev. George Regas of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Hathout also helped organize the Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race.
"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, Egypt, 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, 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 U.S. 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 drew more 1,500 worshipers.
"We've lived together for centuries with mutual reserve and hatred," he told the Los Angeles 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 Sept. 11, 2001, 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.
"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.