Syed Vakas Bukhari
We’re boxed in to fit a concise, neat label with no evidence given of the complexities or histories that have actually shaped us and continue to do so. And when the degree of humanization is dependent on geographic location or ethnicity, it’s not surprising that we are quickly forgotten as victims if not always demonized as the perpetrators. Yet also made out to become targets nonetheless; for someone, somewhere. If not here on a crisp winter morning standing at the bus stop then for those far, far away who pray for cloudy skies, so the drones don’t rain death upon them for a day. Living in constant fear. Is that what it now means to be Muslim? And that’s me speaking as a bearded brown man of relative privilege. I cannot think what it means for our sisters in hijab. Or those across the Muslim world, the unnamed and practically non-existent until violence renders them present; who have their existence then summed up as statistics and terms like collateral damage. How different really are the reactions to violence; when it’s a car bomb that goes off in Baghdad or a cruise missile targeting a funeral procession. Muslims die there as they did in Christchurch, and yet we are repeatedly told that all human life is equal. It’s absolutely heart wrenching to fathom.
Yet now that the events in Christchurch have transpired, how do you even process this and what it means? It wasn’t close to home for many of us and yet it has hit so near; to what invokes our very spirit and feeling of community. We can often make sense of the senseless by rationalizing away all sorts of things to soothe the distress and the confusion. But here, we know what happened and we know exactly why it did. And yet it feels almost unimaginable and the thought that it will forever hang over us as a possibility, and every time we step into our most sacred of sanctuaries is terrifying. I could feel the tension in the air at Jummah on Friday, if not see it on the faces of all those we sat side by side on the carpeted floor with. It seemed like no one was really listening to the imam speak about the resolve of our ancestors after he’d told us he didn’t want to even be there today; either people had their heads down or others were looking tensely towards the exits.
Yes, we can have faith and trust, but how do we undo a very real, actual, and now sadly a very rational fear like this? That this could happen to any of us, to any of our loved ones, at any moment all because what we feared has been made real; or maybe it always was. That people as twisted with such motives are there, plotting and scheming if not romanticizing such abhorrent cowardice.
That in our houses of worship, be they synagogues, churches or mosques, where we go to find peace, to make sense of all the senselessness and find some calm in lives on the outside that puzzle us enough already. That in this space, where for many of us we look forward to visiting at least once a week, to maybe gain a trinket of tranquility, where the befuddlement of the outside can do us no harm, where we break from the world on the other side of the walls, where everything other than our belief is left at the doorstep; when this space where we go to find that peace has now become compromised with this terror, what happens? The peace that we carry back with us and depend on – how do we now find it in our hearts, our minds, and our homes if we cannot find it there
We can be strong in our hope for the best and His protection but even the soundest of minds and strongest in their faith will find this hard to swallow. This wasn’t just an attack of the most despicable of nature, of such grotesque and vile monstrosity – it was an invasion. An invasion into not only our sacred spaces but into our hearts and into our minds. They didn’t just attack two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, they attacked us all – from Toronto to Stockholm. This was the intention; to strike fear, to not just have the world watch and leave us shaken, hurting and mourning- but to make us fearful. By entering into our psyche and implanting this trauma. To rob us of our humanity and our dignity by crippling our faith.
We, however, cannot afford to just be passive in this pain, to let it make us indifferent and detached. It is essential that we grieve and remember those who were the victims of this injustice; to keep them alive through us. Yet more than ever before we have to be bold and unapologetic as Muslims. To be intimidated means that we have given in to the intention behind this attack. Someone asked me the other day, “are you really sure that you want to go to Jummah?” Yes. Because we must reaffirm ourselves and reclaim our humanity and our dignity from those who try to strip us of it. Moreover, it’s also crucial that we conceptualize and understand how and why incidents like this take place. We can’t let it break us.
(The author is a freelancer . Views are his own [email protected])
