March 15, 2019
Dear Friends,
The members and friends of Cordoba House join the worldwide community, Muslim and non-Muslim, in sorrow over the horrific and senseless murders at the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. We pray most especially for the survivors of the trauma and the families of the 49 deceased, and for the slain themselves, who left this world on the holiest day of the Islamic week, while congregating for their prayers on Friday, the Day of Congregation.
The Quran commands that we restrain each other to protect “monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques in which God’s Name is oft-remembered” (Quran 22:40). Ignorance and hatred motivating acts of violence against any house of worship where people gather to praise the Creator run deeply counter to the religious spirit of any faith.
Murderous violence is the natural outcome of hate speech, which devalues human life and should carry severe penalties under the laws of any country and of any faith. The murderer gave as an encouragement for his hateful speech and resentment towards Muslims the Swedish YouTube celebrity Felix Kjellberg, who has courted controversy for performing anti-Semitic gestures in his videos. Kjellberg calls it satirical, and has a following of 89 million subscribers. That a person’s hate speech in Sweden, thousands of miles away from New Zealand, could have influence over a person in New Zealand, highlights the globalized world and culture we now live in.
“You shall reap what you sow,” said Jesus Christ, whom Muslims revere and whom the Quran often calls Jesus son of Mary. Both are revered especially by Christians as the prime embodiments and exemplars of compassion and mercy.
How can we ensure that our laws, our schools, and the whole of our now globalized culture teach reverence for human life?
If we really want to identify and destroy religious extremism at its roots we have an enormous task ahead. The challenge is of the magnitude of the space program, or the Manhattan Project, or the West’s war with communism. Good-hearted individuals and NGOs publicly denouncing terrorism will accomplish very little. They will be preaching to the choir. Piecemeal efforts will not avail. What is needed now is a global partnership of world and regional powers along the lines of NATO and the Warsaw Pact to provide an ‘international security’ of what was previously merely national security. Let a new international partnership of states on that scale combat the scourge of extremism. Let this new partnership of states ally as vigorously and consequentially now with a more faithful interpretation of Islam, whose root meaning is Peace. This is not a peace that passes all understanding, but one that can be concretely enacted between persons, nations, and regions. It is the peace that our Creator by any and all names commands and models in the ever-repeated divine epithet: the Compassionate, the Merciful.
Affirming the communities that have suffered religious extremism is another way to rebuke the extremists. But, in that effort, let us muster all the weapons we have. Let us not affect an inauthentic pacifism or too readily bestowed forgiveness. To beat extremism we must fight its forces in all the spaces they now freely engage – on the Internet, in their messaging; in law enforcement and intelligence; on the ground where they are; at the sources of their income that pay for their weapons of destruction and killing. Individual pronouncements of whatever kind are not enough.
The struggle is not between the West and Islam, or between one faith community and another. It is between extremists of all faith traditions on the one side and, on the other, those moderates faithfully committed to daily acts of love and goodness, of whatever religion or moral framework. This is where the battle line is. Reason has its fervor too, and Jews, Christians, and Muslims – to say nothing of Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists – can all unite around it against our common foe of extremism.
Above all, the call to action must go out to the highest levels of government. Western nations must partner with Muslim-majority countries in combatting extremist ideology and behavior, and rally around New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has called this “an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence” making it “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.” Their resolve must manifest at the level of policy and law. Anti-extremist thought must resound worldwide with the force of ideology. Righteous indignation is not enough. The coalition of partners must act strategically, powerfully, consequentially. That is the only way to win this battle. There is no tomorrow. The time to act is Now!
Warmly,
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf
