Muslims Seek Common Ground with Fellow-Americans in Ramadan

You can also read the article here in the San Jose Mercury News

Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting from dawn to dusk (mid-May to mid-June this year), arrives at a difficult time for Muslim-Americans. Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center that tracks hate-crimes in America reports that faith and race-based attacks against Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants have risen significantly since the election of Donald Trump. The Supreme Court’s decision to hold hearings on the president’s Muslim travel ban has given the anti-Muslim animus a boost, forcing many of us to rethink what it means to be an American these days. And with president Trump moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem that has already resulted in the death of at least 58 Palestinians, the move ‘blessed’ by a pastor who said in the past that “religions like ‘Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism’ lead people “to an eternity of separation from God in Hell," the future looks grim indeed.

Despite these dark developments, Muslims will welcome Ramadan with hope, humility and optimism. This is what the month is about: Confidence that the clouds will disappear, and the sun will shine again as we strive to affirm God’s living presence among us and unite to serve the common good of the country, no matter how daunting the challenge.

What is it about fasting that inspires this confidence? The Quran explains: “Fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may learn self-restraint.”

Self-restraint has two parts: What it forbids and what it encourages. The former includes abstaining not only from food and drink (often the easier part, even if for fifteen hours or more) but more importantly, from such vices as anger, arrogance, backbiting, lying, schadenfreude, solipsism, religious chauvinism and money mania. The latter includes a combination of gratitude, magnanimity, empathy, humility and moderation but above all, patience. Patience is the key virtue, which is why sabr, the Arabic word for patience, occurs over 100 times in the Quran.

Living up to the moral and spiritual demands of fasting is a struggle, especially when we recognize that God has no use for our hunger and thirst if we don’t curb our wayward thoughts, bad habits and dark desires. For me, patience is the elusive goal. Even when alone, I sense the need for patience, as when I am tempted to speed through a yellow light about to turn red. This may seem a minor trespass (although a $500 fine for running a red light in San Jose is hardly minor!) but I find that being attentive to small things makes loftier goals more attainable. Patience gives me a keener sense of the value of time. Tolstoy was on to something when he said the two most powerful warriors were patience and time. Honoring time has helped me fast from the small screen and social media while gaining a deeper insight into ‘Memento Mori’: Remember, you will die.

If we claim that practicing self-restraint in Ramadan makes us better human beings, it must reflect in the way we interact with our families, communities and the larger society. Given the current political climate, meaningful engagement with our fellow-Americans from all walks of life and spanning all faiths is critical.

A day before Thanksgiving in 2016, our Evergreen Islamic Center received a hate mail warning about the “new sheriff in town – President Donald Trump” who will do to us “what Hitler did to the Jews. You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge.”

When word leaked out, we were overwhelmed by the support we received from our neighbors, activists, reporters, politicians and law-enforcement officials. Their support continued into the 2017 Ramadan months later when larger than usual number of them joined us for community Iftar (breaking the fast) at sundown on Sundays.

This year we expect to host even more Americans during the Sunday Iftars. We particularly hope those who have misgivings about us and want to ask the hard questions will join us. We don’t have all the answers. All we know is that discussing concerns honestly and openly in mutual respect can remove fear and prejudice.

If nothing else, we hope they will come just for the food, for one of the most heartening lessons of Ramadan has been that few things in life forge friendship more fiercely than food, spicy or not.

The million-dollar question, of course, is: How long do Ramadan’s virtuous practices last?

I wish I could say they last from one Ramadan to the next for me, but they don’t. My resolve to become a better human being begins to fray by the fourth or the fifth month. I hurry past an octogenarian on a wheelchair without pausing to greet or offering to help. I become judgmental. I use unkind words. Instead of smiling at people in the elevator, I stare at my shoe. I splurge on clothes even though I have plenty. At the traffic light, I begin to live at the edge of yellow bleeding into red.

Yet I know that without the reflection and the renewal I experience in Ramadan, I would lose my center, my purpose. Without purposeful fasting steadying my sail, my boat would be adrift on the sea of life.

Instead of attempting quantum leaps, I will seek incremental improvements in patience, compassion, charity and respect for a textured truth. I will strive to answer the question the Quran asks, “So, where are you going?” by separating the signal from the noise and nurturing the values that give my life meaning. And I will try to summon enough spiritual stamina to sustain the effect of Ramadan for a month or two more than in the past, before forgetfulness enters the heart and I risk becoming a captive to my cravings. If I sincerely work at being good, tempered by humor and humility, perhaps I will even glimpse the ineffable and the transcendent.

Do We Know Our Children?

(You can also read the article here.)

Five days after the bodies of Golam Rabbi, 59, and Shamima Rabbi, 57, were discovered at their home in San Jose, California, about three hundred friends and relatives gathered at the Five Pillars cemetery in Livermore on a Friday to bury the couple. With the sun on our back and a brisk breeze blowing, we prayed for their forgiveness and salvation as the bodies were lowered into the grave next to one another while the Imam recited verses from the Quran.

Shamima Rabbi and Golam Rabbi

Police have charged the couple’s two sons, Hasib Golamrabbi, 22, and Omar Golamrabbi, 17, with homicide. “I want everyone to know what happened,” said Hasib in a jailhouse interview. Both brothers pleaded not guilty to the murders at their arraignment.

I knew the Rabbis for over two decades as Bangladeshi immigrants who worshiped at the same mosques. We were members of the Evergreen Islamic Center where Golam, an engineer, and Shamima, an accountant, volunteered their services. Soft-spoken, humble and generous, they radiated peace. Friends sought Golam’s advice on how to grow the perfect apple or the peach, drawing on his extensive knowledge of gardening. He often brought his two sons to the mosque to pray next to him. Although I found them rather reserved, nothing seemed amiss or foreboding.

Ever since 9/11, Muslim-Americans have been stereotyped as jihadists and extremists and found themselves in the cross-hairs of politicians and presidential candidates like Donald Trump who would stand to gain from such labeling. We had been under siege for home-grown terrorists like those responsible for the 2009 Ford Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings and the San Bernardino attacks in 2015.

But this macabre murder is a darker development in which young people have allegedly turned on their own family. Every parent’s nightmare is that their children will kill themselves due to depression, anxiety, stress, or emotional rage, or get killed in gang fights, or wind up in jail, or most frighteningly, run away to join ISIS, as did a teenager from Virginia last year.

Added to these fears now is the fear of violence being turned on the family itself, causing despair among us bordering on fatalism.

A week after the killings, a few Bangladeshi-American families in the Evergreen area met to try to make some sense of what had happened. After a lot of anguished back and forth, we concluded that we only had a superficial relationship with our children, other than constantly worrying about them. We led our lives and they led theirs, with the occasional intersection that didn’t mean much. We didn’t know what animated them, whether they felt alienated from us, or what they wanted to do with their lives. In the end, we resolved to be more involved in the lives of our children, not as parents but as friends. And not just with our kids, but with the kids of our community. What we realized is that it takes a community to raise a youth in these tough times.

It is impossible to fathom what Hasib and Omar had been thinking prior to their alleged roles in the killings. A recent Instagram posting by Omar offers a clue: “I always hated myself. Not sure what I am doing here.” No clue could, of course, be clearer or more chilling than what the brothers had scrawled on the wall and the floor of their home (police have matched the writings to the brothers): “Sorry my first kill was clumsy,” and “I can’t be like you telling a lie … I can’t love someone without telling them.”

While the Quran does not directly address the issue of patricide and matricide, it talks extensively about mercy and forgiveness. “My mercy encompasses all,” says a verse, complemented by a saying of the Prophet Muhammad: “My (that is, God’s) mercy takes precedence over My anger.” Another verse states: “If one is patient in adversity and forgives, this indeed is something to set one’s heart on.”

There is a most stirring example of the power and grace of forgiveness in recent times. In June of 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof, embraced with open arms at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire during a prayer meeting, killing nine people. Within a few days, however, relatives of the nine victims declared that they had forgiven Roof. “We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive,” said the sister of one. “I pray God on your soul.”

But while mercy and forgiveness are pertinent for the wider public, it should be remorse and repentance for the alleged perpetrators. The Quran says: “Those who committed evil deeds and then repented afterwards, surely your Lord is forgiving and merciful.”

Are the sons feeling any remorse? Are they repenting? Do thoughts of atonement even cross their minds?

We have no way of knowing, unless they themselves disclose what is in their hearts.

No matter how noble the instincts of mercy, forgiveness and repentance may be, however, they will not override the imperatives of justice. San Jose’s deputy district attorney Matt Braker has said that “there are some unanswered questions to this case. Police are working tirelessly to answer those questions and to ensure that both of these victims receive justice."

So what can we do as we await the trial that is likely to be as sensational and gripping as any in recent memory? Perhaps it is contained in one of the verses that the Imam recited after we had buried the Rabbis: “Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear.”

Nelson Mandela and the Power of Forgiveness

On 12 June 1964, Nelson Mandela, age 46, was sentenced to life for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid government. On February 11, 1990, prisoner number 46664, who would not let despair dictate his soul, walked out from the Victor Verster Prison into the bright sunshine of freedom.

Mandela was first imprisoned in Pretoria and later taken to Robben Island, an infamous penitentiary near Cape Town that had previously been a leper colony. He stayed there for a few weeks, then taken back to Pretoria where he was charged in the Rivonia trial, from which he was sent to Robben Island for life. He spent a total of 27 years behind bars.

The world has paused to remember this iconic figure who breathed his last at age 95 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Mandela’s timeline is etched in the memory of multitudes but even those not aware of the milestones of his life saw in him a revolutionary and a visionary the likes of whom we are unlikely to see again.

His ‘I am Prepared to Die’ speech, delivered from the dock during the Rivonia Trial, Pretoria Supreme Court, on 20 April, 1964, will always serve as an inspiration to freedom fighters everywhere.

Of all the traits that defined Mandela, perhaps the two most remarkable were his humility and his willingness to forgive.

“I am not a saint,” Mandela often told his admirers, “unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”

Here was a man who had attained the moral high ground through superhuman courage and patience in the face of evil, yet who could resist the seductive pull of arrogance. He was aware of his flaws and frailties, some of which his countrymen were to witness during the five years (1994-1999) he was the President of South Africa, such as charges of cronyism and selling out the liberation struggle to white interests.

But Mandela’s rare gift was that he never lost sight of his goal: democracy, equality and the rule of law for blacks, whites, Afrikaners and every other race in his tormented country. He could do it because he had the humility to know that it was not about him but about South Africa and its people. The source of his humility sprang from a combination of high purpose, generosity of spirit, strength of character, grace and daring, a combination tragically absent in any of today’s leaders anywhere.

Mandela’s inclination for reconciliation over revenge marked him even more as the definitive moral leader of our time. Half-a-century of inhuman apartheid had stoked the flames of revenge among his dispossessed, nameless, faceless, vote-less people. A blood-bath between blacks and whites in South Africa seemed inevitable. But Mandela would have none of it. "Great anger and violence can never build a nation,” he declared. “We are striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.”  And, "Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” And again, (from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, 1995), "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner."

This, from a man who was forced to toil day after day in a limestone quarry without sunglasses under a merciless sun that destroyed his tear ducts and, for years, robbed him even of his ability to cry!

Freed after 27 years, only a Mandela could say with conviction that he bore no ill will toward his white Afrikaner jailers.

Ever the humble man, Mandela pointed out during an interview that “I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do anything else except to try and save your people.”

For many, Nelson Mandela became a revered and iconic figure only after his story of sacrifice and magnanimity became widely known. For decades during the cold war, however, American presidents backed apartheid as a vital front in the war against communism. In 1981, President Reagan went so far as to call South Africa’s diabolical regime “essential to the free world.” Both Reagan and Margaret Thatcher labeled Mandela’s African National Congress Party a terrorist group. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that Mandela be released from jail. When, in 2004, Mandela criticized George Bush for launching the Iraq War, (just as Martin Luther King had criticized Lyndon Johnson for the Vietnam War in 1965), he was denounced by some in the mainstream media for his “vicious anti-Americanism” and for his “longstanding support for terrorists.”

But when President Clinton visited South Africa in March of 1998, he told Mandela in a joint session of parliament in Cape Town that "For millions of Americans, South Africa's story is embodied by your heroic sacrifice and breathtaking walk out of the darkness and into the glorious light."

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (Madiba) went for the stars. Not for him petty fights and small dreams. “There is no passion to be found playing small,” he said, “in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” His definition of a life of purpose: “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” As viewers saw in the 2009 movie “Invictus,” he had the courage to surprise his adversaries with restraint and generosity.

This fierce yet gentle freedom fighter has now made his final walk to eternal freedom. And we are the poorer for it.

To Write, First Forgive

“There are no accidents in life, only opportunities. I really believe that.”

Holly Payne, author and writing coach, was addressing budding writers at the Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California, as part of the institution's November 2009 authors’ series.

Her latest book, Kingdom of Simplicity, was named a Bay Area Best Seller by the San Francisco Chronicle. Payne was recalling the origin of Kingdom, and how the events associated with it shaped her life.

She was 22. An avid hiker, she was exploring the trails in Colorado’s Crested Butte at 9000 ft. in the summer of 1994 when she saw two bikers in the dark. Out of concern, she held out her flashlight for them. Next thing she knew, a drunken driver had hit all three of them.

As she lay on the ground, not sure if she was dead or alive, she looked up at the mountains and an inexplicable thought came to her. “It was surreal. As the seconds stretched into eternity, I told myself, if I survive this, I will be a writer. I’m going to write.”

Payne had just graduated from college and dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. She had grown up in the sheltering Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and longed to see the world, to tell stories of people in faraway places.

But now, not only were most of her bones broken, her dream seemed shattered too. She had a choice. She could stay angry at the driver or she could work her way through what fate had dealt her.

She chose the latter. Or thought so. She began writing, finding it to be cathartic, “a little bit of science and a lot of craft.”

But had she let go of her anger? Six months after the accident, a letter reached her from the driver who had hit her, imploring for forgiveness. She would have none of it. She put the letter away in a pile of medical and insurance papers and forgot about it.

Twelve year later, in October of 2006, a horrified Payne read about a schoolhouse shooting in the Amish country of her childhood. A lone gunman had killed five girls execution-style before turning the gun on himself. She returned and discovered that the parents of the slain girls, and the larger Amish community, had already forgiven the killer. In fact, they had opened a fund for his family.

Suddenly, the idea of forgiveness became real for her. The Amish did not believe in holding onto events, however wrenching they might be. They found freedom in forgiveness. In private they were angry and sad but by consciously choosing to forgive the killer, they were able to move to the present and maintain the continuity of their community, their “beautifully complex culture.”

For Payne this was a revelation. She realized that by rejecting the drunken man’s plea for forgiveness, she was living in the past and was, in the scheme of things, perhaps more to blame than he was. Her exterior may have healed but inside, she was still limping.

In forgiveness, Payne discovered her kingdom of simplicity. “If you cannot forgive, you cannot love. And without love, how can you write?” She wrote Kingdom as a response to the letter she refused to read twelve years earlier and dedicated the book to its writer. She was finally free.

In her travels in Europe, Asia and America, Payne has found that all of us have a unique story to tell. Her advice to aspiring writers is to have the courage and the confidence to become story-tellers. “Through stories, we get to know ourselves. If a hotshot editor or agent from New York tells you that your story has 'already been done,' tell him that it hasn’t been done like this.” Learn how to be vulnerable,” she said, “and as you involve yourself with the world, let go of what is holding you back and sit down to write.”