Muslim community deserves support
The gathering of Muslims and people wanting to learn more about this great faith at the Kitchener mosque Friday was an inspiring exercise in community building.
The hateful anti-Muslim protest outside a Toronto mosque on the same night was definitely not.
In Kitchener, members of the mosque on Victoria Street laid out the welcome mat, inviting everyone to come in, meet them and learn about Islam.
For its part, the public responded enthusiastically. By early evening, you couldn’t find a space in the Kitchener Masjid’s parking lot.
It was standing room only inside, too, as more than 300 people shared food and conversation, then listened intently to guest speakers. Muslims explained how their faith and lives intertwine.
Members of other religious groups spoke of warm friendships with mosque members.
One person held up a sign being distributed by local churches throughout Waterloo Region that reads, in English, French and Arabic: “No matter where you are from, we’re glad you’re our neighbour.”
In a welcome but understated way, the presence of Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic acknowledged the importance of the open house to the entire city.
What a nasty contrast was on display around the same time in Toronto. As worshippers entered a mosque for their Friday prayers, more than a dozen people protested outside, waving placards with anti-Muslim slogans, such as “Ban Islam.”
Canada’s Charter of Rights likely upholds the protesters’ freedom to express such hurtful, obnoxious opinions. What they did, however, was disgusting and disheartening.
Just last month, a gunman opened fire on Muslims peacefully praying in their mosque in Quebec City, killing six innocent men, seriously injuring five others and traumatizing Canada’s one-million-strong Muslim community.
The aftermath of that atrocity should be a time for people of goodwill — regardless of their faith and even if they have no faith at all — to come together in solidarity.
All of us, the people in the Kitchener mosque, the people inside and outside the Toronto mosque, too, live in a rapidly changing world where mass migrations on an unprecedented scale are bringing different cultures, ideas and faiths together as never before.
It’s true the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States brought home to North Americans the destructive potential of Islamist extremists. Yet reasoning minds must acknowledge that the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims want nothing to do with the terrorists — indeed many of them are the terrorists’ most unfortunate victims.
And compassionate, as well as reasoning minds, must realize each of us has the opportunity to make friends of others who, in the way they speak, dress or pray, are different. Or we can alienate them, and possibly turn them into enemies. So what will it be — trust or fear, love or hate? Non-Muslims can wave signs outside mosques like the small number of idiotic Toronto protesters did.
Or people can enter the mosque with hands extended in friendship as so many more did in Kitchener.