Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Faiths unite to help heal San Bernardino
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Almost a year after her father was killed in the San Bernardino terror attack last December, Kate Bowman wrote the word “love” in yellow chalk on the sidewalk outside a mosque.
It was just one of the messages of peace the 15year-old Lutheran and her mother have left in an effort to unify Muslims and Christians in the hardscrabble city east of Los Angeles against the violence that many community members feared might divide them.
“What angered me most after Dec. 2 was the amount of hate speech going on,” Bowman said, recalling the day her father, Harry Bowman, and 13 others were killed by husband-and-wife assailants at a lunch meeting for county health inspectors in San Bernardino.
“I just kind of didn’t understand how people could be that ignorant about another religion” and blame an entire community, Bowman said.
Bowman’s actions were among efforts in the city to counter what some feared would be a prolonged, hatefilled backlash. Victims’ families, such as Bowman’s, encouraged dialogue and tolerance. The Muslim community undertook its own campaign to educate neighbors about Islam. Clergy organized interfaith talks.
Nationwide, hate crimes against Muslims were up last year and Presidentelect Donald Trump frequently used heated rhetoric about Muslims on the campaign trail.
As San Bernardino prepares to mark the anniversary of the onslaught, police in Los Angeles met with Muslim leaders to condemn hateful letters sent to mosques in the city and elsewhere.
In San Bernardino, apart from some incidents, residents say their worst fears about a backlash in their own community never materialized.
“I think as a community it felt good not to be divided,” said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino who studies hate crimes.
Last December, San Bernardino County health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistan-born wife Tashfeen Malik opened fire on a meeting of Farook’s colleagues, and were killed in a shootout with police. Investigators said the assailants were inspired by Islamic State.
Afterward, residents of San Bernardino said they couldn’t believe such an attack could happen in a struggling community with a rundown downtown that is only a short drive from tourist destinations like Disneyland and Hollywood. Many feared it would only spur a rise in hate crimes in a city of 216,000 people already down on its luck.
In the days after the attack, some things changed. Muslim women wearing head scarves said they were stared at in public, and some even changed their attire out of fear. A Muslim university professor reported to police receiving threatening emails.
But the effects were short lived, experts believe, in part because community members took action. Muslim residents held vigils for the victims and developed an 11-point campaign rejecting terrorism that members of diverse faiths could agree on, starting with the local police chief.
Clergy formed an interfaith alliance. Christians invited Muslim community members to speak with them about their religion to promote greater understanding.
“There was an obvious worry. These are people who looked like us here in America committing these violent acts,” said Amjad Khan, a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in nearby Chino. “But it wasn’t as pronounced as I thought it might be.”
After a major event such as a terror attack, hate crimes tend to increase, Levin said. But while there were eight anti-Muslim crimes reported in the five days after the Dec. 2 shooting, none of them occurred in the city of San Bernardino, he said.