Other Opinions: When a mass shooting hits a familiar place

It’s time to change the conversations that follow terrorist attacks, writes the Argus-Courier news editor.|

When a gunman opened fire at two houses of worship in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing at least 50 Muslims, he reminded us that mankind’s everlasting war with hate continues.

For many, the last week has been more than just the sadness or cynicism or calls for some facet of reform that often follows these types of tragedies. I’ve noticed a great deal of reflection from people trying to unearth the deeper meaning of this moment.

I’ve been one of those people reflecting, too. But this attack struck an intimate nerve, one developed deep in my foundation, and it’s been hard to move past it because the places that were terrorized are so familiar to me.

I was raised Muslim, but lost my faith somewhere between Sept. 11, 2001, and my college years. Through my own limited understanding as a child, I developed a fair bit of self-resentment knowing that it was people who look like me, with names like mine, who perpetrated the worst attack on my homeland since Pearl Harbor.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more spiritual, but never returned to the faith. To be honest, I can’t see myself ever adopting an organized religion again, although I appreciate its value, and its place in society.

But it’s the images out of Christchurch, and the details of how the massacre unfolded that have lingered with me because I know exactly what the congregants at the two mosques, Al Noor and the Linwood Islamic Centre, were doing before the gunman walked through their doors.

He opened fire on men, women and children that were at Friday prayers, called Jummah, which is the Islamic version of the Sunday Sabbath. The imam gives a Khutbah, or sermon, reading from the Quran as he lectures on various topics.

According to reports, the subject at Al Noor that day was cooperation, doing good and stopping evil.

I can picture it. Everyone is sitting on the carpeted floor silently. Young children are getting restless, struggling to keep still because it’s against their nature.

The main rooms at a typical mosque are usually a large, open space with few exits. It’s this passive scene the gunman first shot up, and also where he caused the most carnage, killing 42 people before leaving for Linwood.

At the second mosque, the Khutbah had ended and everyone had already begun praying. On Fridays, it’s done in unison, with the imam reciting the prayers out loud as he leads the congregation through each position.

At this point, everyone is in a state of profound focus that comes when you prostrate in front of god. In Islam, people believe they are conversing directly with their creator as they try to deepen that relationship and earn blessings for their loved ones.

They’re paying an intense level of attention to this act, and it’s this state of mind where terror made an appearance. No one at Linwood was able to complete their prayers. They did not turn to their right and left shoulders to greet their guardian angels when they were done. They did not shake the hands of their neighbors who prayed beside them.

It makes my stomach turn to imagine my parents there, or the majority of my extended family that goes to a mosque every Friday to pray alongside their brothers and sisters.

The gunman teased the attack on social media platforms, and published a manifesto online. He even live streamed it on Facebook, allowing free speech activists to store the content and continually upload it despite every moderator’s best attempts to keep it offline.

After all this, I find myself in awe that the prevailing conversations are the same black holes we keep falling into every time there’s a terrorist attack. We return to convoluted discussions on ideologies, gun reform, who condemned and who didn’t, political rhetoric, and how to manage extremism on the Internet.

I’d rather have a different debate, though. Let’s talk about human decency, about respect, love and the erosion of morality at the core of every issue facing our world.

All I see is anger and fury dictating actions and opinions these days. People who are against more and for less, like the age-old adage says.

This attack was another reminder of the ongoing referendum on progress that has inflamed resentment, preyed on fear and divided societies to the point we have become our own worst enemy in the pursuit of humanity’s potential.

But there was one anecdote from this massacre that gave me hope that there still is far more good than evil out there. It was the two words spoken to the gunman before he pulled the trigger at Al Noor.

A Muslim man close to the entrance, cheerfully welcoming a potential white newcomer before he fired nine shots, saying, “Hello, brother.”

Through all the debate, the grief and the horror, that’s what I’ll remember most about this tragedy.

(Yousef Baig is the Argus-Courier news editor.)

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