By Emran El-Badawi
“When you bow in prayer, when your head touches the ground, you know someone is there to protect you.”
These are the words of the Imam delivering his Friday sermon at one of the Houston area’s largest Muslim congregations. Halfway across the world 50 children, women and men were gunned down at two Friday congregations in Christchurch, New Zealand.
In Houston, details are trickling in. Congregants react with feelings of sadness, anger and betrayal.
The first congregant I meet is a high school kid quietly hunched over his phone in a corner, earbuds on. I notice that he is watching video coverage of the mosque massacre, his eyes bloodshot and glazed. The New Zealand shooter had livestreamed the slaughter over social media to shock the world. I panic and cover up the boy’s phone. “This world is treacherous!” he blurts at me in Arabic, his voice trembling. He walks away.
I catch up with a group of older male congregants as they exit the mosque. They’re all of Arab origin. They wear straight faces, but look about uneasily. One of them, aphysician, tells me casually, “they will never accept us.” The other, a businessman, interjects: “It will always be this way.” A third remarks on the “vindictiveness” of the shooter, emptying rounds into already dead bodies like they are targets in a video game.
Their pessimism is matched only by their nerve, their defiance. They would not let fear keep them from worship.
That’s not to say those who attended mosque on that brisk and somber day did so without caution. It seemed that on Friday, God’s primary theological directive was security. With four armed security officers on site, the congregation understood the need to protect its places of worship, its schools and its families. On Friday, congregants were joined by representatives from the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s office, Interfaith Ministries and other local organizations. Their solidarity was warmly received. It kept hope alive.
In this country, that hope emboldens peaceful people, unites them, and sharpens their resolve against hate and terror.
It was another story in New Zealand, where my contacts expressed frustration at how unprepared the country is to give its Muslim citizens the protection they deserve. New Zealand has been considered one of the safest countries in the world. Not anymore. Friday evening, authorities called for all mosques to shut down and for Muslims to avoid congregating in public —a clear indication they have no clue how to secure their country. In response, Muslim grassroots organizations the world over have organized a public peace vigil.
The scale and horror of New Zealand’s worst act of terrorism in modern history stunned many . It should not stun Americans. From the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, to the mosque burned in Victoria in 2017, to the Charleston church shooting in 2015, we have seen this movie before. Even the local mosque I visited Friday was the target of a drive-by shooting in January. Thankfully, there were no causalities.
The profile of recent “mass shooters” against Muslims, Jews, blacks or other minorities in houses of worship is the same: angry white men protecting the “superior” race from the inferior ones. Since Donald Trump’s campaign in 2015 and his election to the U.S. presidency in 2016, hate crimes — especially against Muslims, Jews and African-Americans — have risen sharply. White nationalism is clearly a growing threat to national security, even if the president refuses to admit it. Internal figures reported recently by the Washington Post show that during the 2017 and 2018 budget years, authorities arrested more domestic terrorism suspects than those inspired by Islamic extremists.
Many countries have since marched ceaselessly toward a path of nationalism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.
The New Zealand shooter, who is Australian, meticulously premeditated his assault for years, fed off the cesspool of hatred we know as social media and prepared an 80-page manifesto. He was inspired by Trump and justified his massacre as deterring the “invasion” of Muslim immigrants. Hours later Trump equated immigrants with an invasion at a press conference partly intended for condemning the massacre.
As long as political leaders, right-wing cable and social media generate hate and fear of Muslims, immigrants and others, attacks on sacred places won’t soon become a thing of the past. While I suspect security will tighten its hold over religious communities, it will not loosen our resolve to live peacefully and worship freely.
El-Badawi is program director and associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University ofHouston. He’s on Twitter @EmranE