Vigil in Scottsdale honors those killed in New Zealand
“Salaam, shalom and hello.” That’s how Islamic Center of the North East Valley spokeswoman Sadia Zubairi began the interfaith vigil Sunday night in honor of the 50 people killed in a shooting at a New Zealand mosque Friday.
Several hundred people attended the vigil.
Zubairi led a moment of silence before introducing the center’s imam, who recited Quranic verses in both Arabic and English.
The verses selected largely focused on the similarities among humans and stressed the need for people to take care of one another and to show love instead of hate.
Each of the nearly two dozen speakers who made their way to the podium echoed those sentiments in one form or another. The line-up included religious leaders, law enforcement officials and politicians, including Rep. Greg Stanton and Phoenix Mayor-elect Kate Gallego. She addressed the crowd in her first public appearance since being elected last week.
Several speakers, including Gallego and Stanton, explicitly condemned white supremacy and identified it as a major threat to peace and safety both in the United States and around the world.
“Like so many speakers already and after, you’re going to hear us, how critically important it is to reiterate over and over and over again our commitment in the fight against islamophobia, against white supremacy, against racism, antisemitism that has reared its ugly head so often,” Stanton said.
The frank discussions of hatred, Islamophobia and religious extremism drew much applause from the crowd, which grew in numbers throughout the evening. A large number of people toward the back of the room were left standing when all of the available seating was taken up.
‘Humanity is the first religion’
Seemee Siddiqi, a Muslim, said the turnout of people of all faiths showed that people are more alike than different and that tragedies like the New Zealand shooting affect everyone similarly.
“Humanity is the first religion,” she said. “The turnout here with all the different sects — you have Sikhs here, Hindus here, Christians here, Jews here — it’s humanity first and then everything else. This outpouring of love and support is very kind.”
Siddiqi was joined by Syma Hamidi, who said extremists are only a small percentage of any religious population and that more attention needs to be placed on the larger number of moderate religious people.
“It takes just a handful of people to ruin the name for the whole community,” she said. “I would not blame the whole Christian community for what he (the New Zealand shooter) did. I think there are more good people than bad people in each religion and each community.”
Both Siddiqi and Hamidi said that the voices of the moderate majority tend to be drowned out by the louder voices of the extremist minority. They said moderate Muslims, Christians and Jews should be more active within their communities to dispel the notion that those religions encourage hate and bigotry.
There were several veiled references to anti-Muslim rhetoric spread by political figures in the United States and many calls for people to stand up against such sentiments.
‘Let’s export unity’
Jannah Scott, a Christian woman representing the African American Christian Clergy Coalition at Sunday’s vigil, said extremism and hatred has leaked from the United States into other parts of the world but people can work to spread positivity instead.
“We’ve dealt with hate and racism and division and all the things you want to call it and we’re exporting it around the world and I wanted to do something different (by showing up to the vigil),” she said. “I wanted to say, ‘Let’s export unity, let’s export solidarity, let’s export understanding, let’s export loving one another.’ ”