The Niagara community has been supportive of his organization, as evidenced by Saturday’s gathering. Jewish Federation member Ellen Goldstein offered similar sentiments.
Source/Credit: Niagara Gazette
By Philip Gambini | December 12, 2015
Local religious groups gather in Niagara Falls for message of peace and tolerance
At its Colvin Boulevard mosque in LaSalle, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community hosted a vigil for the victims of the San Bernardino massacre that left 14 dead and 21 injured in November.
The event was an extension of the mosque’s more typical “interfaith conferences,” which bring local Islamists together with the diverse religious officials in the Niagara community.
On Saturday, representatives of the Catholic Diocese, Jewish Federation, Hindu Society and Buffalo Zen Community and Sikh Association stood in solidarity with those of Ahmadiyya in a message of peace, acceptance and unity among the various sects.
“True Islam is serving God through service to humanity,” Malik said before a diverse crowd collected in the mosque.
Still, those gathered had more in common than the precepts of their respective faiths.
In light of growing “Islamaphobia,” the Ahmadiyya’s Buffalo Chapter president Nasir Khan said the experience of persecution is neither new nor uniquely American. Saying his people are “no stranger” to religious persecution, he cited examples of “Islamaphobia” perpetrated by Muslims and against Muslims in his native Pakistan.
But Khan said the Niagara community has been supportive of his organization, as evidenced by Saturday’s gathering. Jewish Federation member Ellen Goldstein offered similar sentiments.
“The Jewish community understands what it is like to be singled out for being other, or being evil,” Goldstein said.
“This is our community coming together to be a community,” she added.
With national and international bloodshed at the hands of radicalized terror groups, as seen in the San Bernardino murders and the October attack in Paris by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Khan said the Ahmadiyya community “sheds its own blood” in an effort to save other lives through its monthly blood drives.
This year, according to Malik, the Ahmadiyya community has donated 5,500 bags of blood to the Red Cross. The first drive of 2016 will take place Jan. 23.
Francis “Butch” Mazur, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Western New York, offered a tale of both mercy and violence in his portion of the program. He spoke of two young hispanic girls who, after being dressed by the women of his childhood parish for their communion rites, were attacked on the way to the ceremony.
Mazur said, upon seeing the young women’s soiled and torn communion gowns, he was at a loss for words. He did not know what to call the act they had suffered and, at one time, neither did the perpetrators of the violence.
“Bigots are not born,” he said.
Rather, Malik said, bigots and extremists attempt to hijack the unifying narratives of religious traditions to create fear, division and justify their brutal actions.
“I hope that this beauty we are showing here tonight reaches ISIS, reaches to all other extremists, and they see how completely they have failed because they could not divide us,” Malik said.
--- -- philip.gambini@niagara-gazette.com
http://www.niagara-gazette.com/news/local_news/peace-tolerance-preached-at-falls-terror-vigil/article_791a82a2-aaa4-5f24-949b-ffd204418fdf.html
Read original post here: Peace, tolerance preached at Falls terror vigil
This content-post is archived for backup and to keep archived records of any news Islam Ahmadiyya. The views expressed by the author and source of this news archive do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Ahmadiyya Times. Ahmadiyya Times is not an organ of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, nor in any way associated with any of the community's official websites.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comments. Any comments irrelevant to the post's subject matter, containing abuses, and/or vulgar language will not be approved.