In a world that is increasingly getting divided on religious identities, there are some who make the international scenario a less hostile one
LAST week, when I went into the furniture store, Laverne Poole was just another salesperson, polite but distant. She sat smug behind her computer, letting customers roam free among sofas and chairs, deciding on beds and dinettes. When asked about any specials, she blandly offered to take 30 per cent off from the merchandize I’d buy. Delighted that I’d wrested a deal out of her, I returned two days later.
She was missing. “Her son was shot dead yesterday. She’s devastated,” Neil, her portly colleague announced briefly when I inquired about her whereabouts.
“What happened?”
“He had converted to Islam and someone shot him as he came out of the mosque in Newark.” Neil didn’t know beyond this point.
Today, I saw the face of the mother, whose 27-year-old son got two bullets pumped straight into his heart. There she was — a portrait of poise. “Next year on Sept 7, he was to wed and on his finger was his engagement ring with Allah written on it,” Laverne told me.
Kenneth Dandridge began working for King’s restaurant in New Jersey some two years ago. The owners were Muslims. Overcome by their kindness and spirit of brotherhood, Kenneth converted to Islam and became Isa.
“My son would pray with them,” Laverne says, “they were godsend for my son ... they treated him as one of their own.”
But Isa inflamed some in his community who felt betrayed by his conversion to the same religion whose followers had in the name of Allah killed over 3,000 Americans on 9/11.
Laverne believes that Isa’s faith was very strong. “People change their lives for reasons they know best,” she says but knows that her son’s decision to become a Muslim had a deeper meaning and that he has now returned to his “Allah”, who “must love him to call His soldier to heaven.”
The funeral was done according to Islamic rites. “It was beautiful and his two older brothers (who are Christians) performed his last rites and put him in the ground at a Muslim cemetery.”
The mother knows who murdered her son and so does the local police. She is confident that justice will be done for this hate crime.
“There are days when I cry for hours, my wound is so raw, yet I must accept that there is a reason why God took Isa from me ... I cannot question Him, but I know that my son has brought the whole family together as never before and we will always love him, even if he’s left us.”
As we talk, tears well up in her eyes. She fights them gently and puts her chin up. With amazing grace, the saleswoman, talks of humanity, diversity, globalization and different diaspora that we all dwell in. She is full of praise for the support and kindness that Isa’s employers have extended. “They were wonderful to my son and have been so good to me. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”
Instead of being bitter and holding them responsible for her son’s death, Laverne is an ordinary woman with nerves of steel, a heart of a sage and a head of a seer. “I don’t blame Islam, Isa was not killed by a Muslim? Why pigeonhole people and put labels — not all Blacks are bad; not all Christians are aggressors; not all Jews are Zionists and not all Muslims are fanatics.”
Neil Zimmerman, her colleague is Jewish. He’s not a Zionist. “I don’t understand why people kill each other for religion. I went to Israel and was transfixed on the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem where Muslims and Jews prayed. We must not kill each other.”
He’s certain, Israel and Palestine can live in harmony. And he knows how. But who listens to him? He’s just a salesman who sells furniture.
If only the world could learn a lesson from these ordinary humans — one a Christian and the other a Jew and the third a Muslim who lost his life for changing his faith.
But hearts are divided as never before.
Americans are polarized in their views on Iraq and collectively target Muslims as their prime enemy. Recently, I wrote about Florida and how much it resembled Iraq after being battered by three hurricanes. The article was posted on Free Republic, a website, and almost all the 400 or so responses that it got were aimed directly at my religion and me. “Islamofascist” was the label pinned.
And oh! Anyone with Islam as a last name raises red flags the minute he lands in America. Ex-pop star, Cat Stevens, who converted to Islam, was hauled up as he arrived in the US and was later promptly deported back to Britain. Yusuf Islam, as he calls himself, is on the ‘no fly watch’ list because he’s accused of funding terrorist organizations like the Hamas. In 2000, he was refused entry to Israel, despite the 57-year-old insisting that he only supported humanitarian charities that helped children affected by war in Bosnia and Iraq as well as victims of the 9/11 attacks against America.
“Everybody knows who I am. I am no secret figure,” Islam told reporters on arrival at Heathrow, London. “Everybody knows my campaigning for charity, for peace. There’s got to be a whole lot of explanation ... I’m totally shocked, half of me wants to smile, half of me wants to growl.”
The United States is “shutting down its house, building walls around itself,” says the Muslim Association of Britain.
And President Bush continues to fan the fire and feed the frenzy of hate. Signalling he’ll continue to deal with the world on his own terms, he brushed aside international criticism against America in attacking Iraq. Preaching to an unenthusiastic audience at the UN last week, Bush aimed his message directly at American voters hinting he was their best bet against Islamic terrorists and for democracy.
But Sir Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Italy, reversing Bush’s role, called him “the best recruiting sergeant” for Al Qaeda in his off the cuff remarks that got flashed by the Italian media.
“Bush’s own actions have sometimes undercut his rhetoric. He has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as Putin has slowly strangled democratic institutions. He also remains a strong supporter of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a coup. After giving his speech, Bush met in the afternoon with Musharraf at the United Nations — just days after Musharraf signalled he would break his promise to retire as army chief of staff,” was the Washington Post’s report.
The New York Times, two days running splashed Musharraf’s three-column photo in its news pages laced with some of the same criticism as its rival the Washington Post.
Musharraf and democracy aside, the Fox News conservative talk show host Sean Hannity is an arrogant, loudmouth, anti-liberal, anti-Muslim (his ignorance about Islam and the Holy Prophet is pathetic) and anti-debate, is doing a lot of damage by giving the Fox viewers wrong information and distorted facts on Muslims.
Attacking Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam for supporting a fatwa against Salman Rushdie (Fox’s beloved) for blasphemy, Sean Hannity raved and ranted that people like the ex-pop singer must never be allowed entry into the US because they support death for those who criticize their prophets.
Shame on Sean! Go take a lesson from Laverne Poole or Neil Zimmerman or Isa — people the world will never come to know. They make a lot of sense, yet have no voice.
In a world that is increasingly getting divided on religious identities, there are some who make the international scenario a less hostile one
