ASU students from different faiths remember men killed in Indiana

Students gathered on Hayden Lawn Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil in honor of three slain Muslims killed in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Feb. 24. 

Mohamedataha Omar, 23, Adam Mekki, 20, and Muhannad Tairab, 17, were found dead in a home in Fort Wayne from multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Associated Press. Two of the victims were Muslim and the other victim was Christian.

Sun Devils Are Better Together and ASU’s Muslim Students Association hosted the vigil and students from various walks of life were in attendance.

Religious studies senior John Martin, president and co-founder of Sun Devils Are Better Together, said he is deeply saddened by the incident and shared his perspective of being a white Muslim when situations like this occur.

“For me, even though I am Muslim, there is a fear that I don’t share because I’m white and I have white privilege," Martin said. "I can assume for me that I will never be targeted because of the way I look or the way identify. That’s what compelled me to action.”

Martin said Islamophobia and racism run rampant through the U.S. and he understands why his Muslim and black friends feel personally attacked by a crime that happened so far away from them.

“I could see why (my friends) felt like they were under attack,” Martin said. “Because either three people that looked like them or pray like they do were killed. The fear is real. They think, ‘I could be next.’”

Speech and hearing sciences sophomore Mona Said explained that she first heard about the killing after seeing the hashtag #OurThreeBrothers on Twitter, which prompted her to read more.

Once she saw what happened, she said she was angered and frustrated by not only the incident but also by the lack of media attention surrounding it.

“There wasn’t really a lot of people talking about it. That was the thing that kind of irked me,” Said said. “I feel like the fact that they were not only Muslim, but also black — that was the main reason why no one spoke about it really.”

During the vigil, students shared poems and speeches about the killings while others paid their respects or simply prayed out loud in their respected tradition  — Christian, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, Atheism and Paganism.

Nursing freshman Safiya Aden also first saw the news on Twitter and said she had been in complete shock. However, she said what really struck her was that the killings happened almost the exact day as the year prior, when three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were also found slain.

“I thought it was symbolic because this time last year, three other lives were taken and they happened to be Muslim,” Aden said. “And this year two of them happened to be Muslim and immediately I started coordinating it to Islamophobia.”

Aden said she felt sympathy for the families who are in mourning and felt the media did not do a reasonable job in giving the issue the attention it deserved.

“It just shows how much we lack in actually reporting news like this,” Aden said. “Personally, I felt like black people were treated like second class citizens because these men were immigrants. They came to America for the American dream and now they cannot follow that.”

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Reach the reporter at sgreene6@asu.edu or follow @thesydneygreene on Twitter.

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