Hope for peace

Last weekend, this Muslim American celebrated one of the biggest holidays in the Muslim calendar, called the Eid. However, it was not possible to be fully joyous. The reason is that as a nation, we are reeling from the horrific tragedies of El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

This year alone in the U.S., about 250 more mass shootings have taken place. My holy book. the Quran. emphasizes the sanctity of life by stating that killing even one person is akin to killing all mankind. It certainly feels that way for the families of the victims.

What is equally concerning is that many of the shootings are increasingly rooted in a domestic form of terrorism that thrives on supremacist ideology. Sometimes it seeks to obliterate immigrants and at other times racial or religious minorities.

Just as the shooters’ semi-automatics are often on their victims at point-blank range, the threat of violence stares us as a country right in the face, every week, at our shopping malls, at our schools, and in our very backyards. Through arson or bombing, it destroys the peace even at our places of worship. By the time this letter is published, the sad statistic is that there will have been more shootings. So, this Eid, I put in a special prayer for peace in my beloved nation and an end to the domestic terrorand mass shootings. SOHAIL Z. HUSAIN, M.D.

Indiana Township

The writer is a pediatrician and a member of the Muslim Writers Guild of America.