New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Faith and the genie of hate
A man targets a tire shop in Salt Lake City on Nov. 27 with certainty about his intentions: “I’m here to kill a Mexican,” he said, according to police reports, and then proceeded to beat the shop owner and his son brutally.
This incident underscores the sobering fact that hate continues to be the genie of one of the scourges of our time — that is, prejudice-motivated theft, robbery, assault, murder and other criminal acts committed against a person, property, or society because of the offender’s bias against the victims’ social group such as race and religion. The incident occurred only two weeks after a report released by the FBI on reported hate crime incidents in the United States.
Unfortunately, the hate genie continues to grow. In the report, the number of hate crime incidents reported in the United States is on the rise. More than
7,000 hate crime incidents were reported in 2017, compared to about 6,100 in 2016 — a 17 percent increase. Most of these crimes are fueled by hatred against immigrants, African Americans and Jews. About 60 percent of the crimes were committed because of race, ethnicity and ancestry bias and over 20 percent because of religious bias.
Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 2012 to 2016 shows that more more than 20 percent of suspected hate crimes victimized Latinos. Historical FBI data show that African-Americans generally constitute about 35 percent of hate crime victims. A breakdown of hate crimes involving religious bias by the Jewish Virtual Library shows that 60 percent of religious hate crimes were anti-Jewish, 17 percent were anti-Islamic and 5 percent were antiCatholic.
Anti-semitic hate crimes increased 37 percent according to the Virtual Library’s breakdown. Omar Rachid of the Victoria Islamic Center in Texas said that “Muslims in America have been subjected to more insults, attacks and hate crimes in the last two or three years than ever before, specifically more than after 9-11.”
Current news reports affirm the continuing growth of the hate genie. Incidents of anti-semitism at a Connecticut high school was been reported in the news at about the same time as a shooting at a church in Monroe, La., a few weeks ago. Just last week, New York City police reported a hate crime incident at a Brooklyn church in which someone urinated on two statues before smashing them. Two men made obscene gestures at a family who were driving on I-85 in Georgia and swerved into the lane in which they were driving because the mother was wearing a hijab — the Muslim head scarf. They were forced to brake abruptly, and it was only by divine providence that there was neither a crash nor loss of life. These incidents occurred on the heels of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27 in which eleven lives were lost.
Unfortunately, there would be more incidents and loss of lives if the hate genie continues to grow unabated. It is imperative that, regardless of tradition, people of faith stand together with the determination to end the hatred that affects all of us. We need to continue taking collaborative social action to proactively counter hate with love at all levels of society and inhibit the growth of the genie. The importance of demonstrating all the manifestation of love (compassion, mercy, charity and peace) in relationship with others is fundamental to the ethos of the Abrahamic faiths.
In one of his teachings, a descendant of Abraham, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “The example of the person abiding by God’s order and restrictions in comparison to those who violate them is like the example of those persons who drew lots for their seats in a galley (wooden ship). Some of them got seats in the upper deck, and the others in the lower deck. When the people in the lower deck needed fresh water to drink, they had to go up to bring water (and that troubled the upper deck passengers), so the people in the lower deck said, ‘Let us make a hole in the bilge
(the lowest part of the ship within the hull) and get water so that we do not trouble the upper deck passengers.’ If the people in the upper deck left the lower deck passengers to do what they had suggested; then all the people on the ship would be destroyed, but if they prevent them, then both parties would be safe.”
The Rev. (Dr.) Martin Luther King Jr. captured the essence of this prophetic teaching when he said that: “The world is not divided between black and white or Christian and Muslim, but between those who would live together as brothers (and sisters) and those who would perish as fools.”