On April 21, about 50 students attended a candlelight vigil hosted by various Muslim student and activist groups to honor of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Last semester, The State Press ran a letter from a reader calling Islam a not-so-peaceful religion. Events like the vigil this Sunday demonstrate just how wrong that letter truly was.
It’s easy to forget that the extreme actions of a few do not represent the whole.
Yes, the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were Muslim, and to many shallow-minded individuals, that is an affirmation of their beliefs that American Muslims are violent and hateful.
Yet, those two suspects don’t speak for the 50 or so Muslim students at the vigil who mourned the needless loss of life, nor do they represent the millions of other patriotic red-blooded American Muslims who mourn the tragedy as much as any non-Muslim American.
Those who spoke at the vigil delivered messages of hope and understanding. They called on other Muslims to help the less fortunate in the memory of the victims in Boston.
It’s clear that American Muslims are poorly understood by the rest of America.
Rather than angrily responding to those who will inevitably demonstrate bigotry toward the Muslim community, those who spoke at the vigil promoted messages of cultivated understanding and affirmed that tragedies against innocent people transcend religion. They stressed that we are all American and that diversity is a wonderful quality for our nation.
The letter, which has remained in the back of my mind since it was first published, says, “Liberals keep telling us that Islam is the religion of peace. Over and over we hear this line, possibly caused by having never read the Quran, watched the news, listened to the sermons given by imams or simply self-delusion.”
Nowhere at the vigil did I see any of the hate or violence that the author of that letter claimed to be an inherent part of Islam.
One individual stood out in particular. One of the organizers of the event, Huthaifa Shqeirat, the son of a local imam, told me that he was present at the vigil to show sympathy towards the Boston victims.
When I asked him if he was personally worried that people will persecute Muslims in the wake of the discovery of the identity of the bombers, he told me that he wasn’t. He told me that he believes people underestimate the IQ of the American people.
He was extremely kind to me, as were all the organizers of the event. It’s unfortunate more non-Muslims didn’t attend the vigil. They would have seen that American Muslims are far more peaceful and patriotic than the credit that is often given to them.
Reach the columnist at Jacob.Evans@asu.edu or follow him at @jacobevansSP
