A Commentary on Today

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I often wonder if people see with the same eyes that see, and hear with the same ears that hear. Do we all just choose to say nothing, as we run this race to nowhere, chasing things that have no thoughts?

There are many people whose job it is to tell us—Joe and Josephine Public—that racism is no more. That our only worry is people who hate us for who we are. I could never have imagined that in 2016, being Muslim-American, we would have a presidential candidate suggesting that people like me would not be welcome in this great country because of our beliefs. This goes against everything that makes this country great. Nowhere else is one’s freedom of religion protected and cherished as it is here.

It makes me sad beyond belief to see so many of my fellow Americans buy into this bigotry and fear-mongering when someone who claims to be Muslim murdered 49 people and wounded 53 in Orlando. I, like other Muslims, cried real tears that day. Just like on 9/11. I thought of people who call themselves Republicans. ISIS, Boko Haram, the KKK and all those people they mislead. Hateful rhetoric, with Fox News as their lead mouthpiece. I thought about a good friend of mine at work, who is gay, and how he might look at me differently. I didn’t know how to feel when a close friend of mine said, “No need to worry, ‘cause we’re living in the last days.”

But I was happy to hear, most in the Gay community weren’t going to fall in line with the likes of Donald Trump and company to turn on Muslim Americans like so many turned on them. Being Gay doesn’t mean you don’t have the common sense to see that being able to buy guns meant only to kill a lot of people is mass murder waiting to happen.

The whole ordeal made me think about a verse in the Holy Quran: “another party … surely they took the devils for friends instead of Allah, and they think that they are rightly guided. Guided by fear, hate-mongering, racism and bigotry.

I only hope that we as a country will wake up and see all the blood on the NRA’s hands – and their supporters’. Thousands and thousands of Americans murdered each year by gun violence. And still, we do nothing. We sit by and listen to them call our president everything but a child of God. And still we run the race for the things they say we need to be happy. We have come so far in this country, and it is written, the Lord of us all will one day be the judge of those things in which we differ.

Some would have you believe that the worst part of what America has been is dead and gone, such as Republican candidate Donald Trump. Sandy Hook, Fort. Hood, Mother Emmanuel, 49 Americans with so much to live for, God and the list goes on and on. I just try not to think about the end, and thank the most high for his mercy and grace.

Lord bless the people who still offer those who show them hate nothing but love.

Robert Warren is a writer and Street Sense vendor.

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