Faith Leaders Stand Together to Denounce Language of Hatred and Violence

 

Khalid Omar is a community organizer with Isaiah and Faith in Minnesota, which brought diverse clergy and community members together to respond to verbal and physical attacks especially about the Somali American community in Minnesota. “Somali Americans are our doctors, classroom teachers, police officers, and our children who attend public schools. … As Minnesotans, we are greater than fear. We will not allow a president or any person to invoke hate to attack or single out community in our state, in our country.”

Imam Yusuf Abdullahi said: “I stand here today as a Muslim leader, who loves this state and its people. Today, we gather because our communities across Minnesota are facing a moment of deep fear and rising hostility. … We refuse to let fear divide us, and we refuse to let hateful rhetoric become normalized. Minnesota is strongest when we stand together, shoulder to shoulder, across race, across faith, across neighborhood and background.”

A speaker noted that after Trump came to Minnesota in 2016 for a campaign stop, he targeted Somali Americans in the state in his talk. Soon after, a mosque in Bloomington was bombed by white supremacists. “So these words are extremely dangerous, and they are un-American. But we know why he’s doing this — he wants to distract us from the real issue that Americans are struggling, are not able to pay for their health care, with rising grocery prices. Instead of addressing that, he decides to attack and try to divide our community.”

Paul Graham, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, spoke. “We’ve all heard by now the recent dehumanizing, racist and hateful rhetoric coming from the current administration directed at the Somali community. In a word, it is evil. …

“This hateful rhetoric is a direct violation of the Christian faith. Christian teaching could not be more clear. My faith teaches that all people are created in the image of God. Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. This is the beating heart of our faith tradition. No human being is garbage.”

The Somali community in Minnesota are our neighbors, brothers and sisters, children of God. So I wanted to add my voice to the growing number of voices across Minnesota and the U.S. who are saying no to these racist lies being spread by the current administration. … I am angry because this hateful rhetoric leads to violence and injustice. It spreads fear and it spreads harm. Do we want people, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors, the ones Jesus tells us to love, abused and attacked and harassed by federal agents, kidnapped off our streets? Do we want families broken up? Do we want people living in fear? No, and it’s time for a gut check for everyone in Minnesota. … We must fight this wherever it’s happening. We need to stand together to say no, that this is not who we are and not who we are going to be. … This is about all of us.”

Rabbi Adam Stock Spilker explained: “My tradition teaches that God collected from the four corners the white earth, the black earth, the red earth, and the yellow Earth all together so that no person — whether in the schoolyard or in the shopping mall or in a workplace or in the halls of Congress — could say that my ancestor is better than yours. I’ve been a rabbi here in Minnesota for 28 years, serving the oldest synagogue in the Upper Midwest, founded in 1856, two years before Minnesota became a state. I’m also one of the founders of Minnesota Multifaith network, which includes Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Jain, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Native American, Quaker, and Unitarian people supporting a more just and loving world. We find ourselves challenged to achieve that vision in ways that we could not have imagined 10 years ago.”

Spilker said we are hospitable to refugees from across our world “because we care, because it is the decent thing to do. We know that when a few people commit crimes, it does not implicate an entire community, and to say so is racist, xenophobic and just wrong.”

A resident indicated he was at the immigration raid at the Bro Tex facility in Saint Paul “where federal agents took our neighbors. I saw people from across many different communities come out in solidarity against this raid and this blatant kidnapping. Our community was hit with chemical irritants at point blank range. People were choking on pepper ball gas, including elders, and people were thrown to the ground violently. I heard the cries of family members seeing their loved ones being taken. To be clear, this is terrorizing. It is cruel and hateful. In every possible way that we can, we are seeking humanity, justice, and safety for everyone.”

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