cheesyme95:

يَا حَيُّ يَا قَيُّوْمُ بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيْث

Ya Hayyu, ya Qayyumu, bi-rahmatika astaghith

O the Living, O the Eternal, I seek help in Your grace.

(via wordsofsolace)

saiwrites:

Friends, the few that I have, for the time being please don’t speak to me of identity politics, political developments or current affairs. Speak to me of God. Speak to me of virtue. Speak to me of internal fortitude. Speak to me of gratitude & tenderness. Speak to me of mortality, of a night sky, of a child’s laughter, of patience. Speak to me softly. Forgive me. Tell me of your chase to beautiful, of your pursuit of luminaries. Tell me, without complaint, of your discontents. Otherwise I may have very little to say.

rimabernsmcgown:

The cousin of a friend of mine was attacked at a Tim Horton’s last week. She was waiting at the drive-in when a car rammed hers from behind. When she got out to see what had happened, three girls physically assaulted her, pushed her to the ground, and screamed insults at her.

She had done nothing except wait in line for her morning coffee.

Oh, and she was wearing a face veil.

The girls screamed at her for being a terrorist and they tore off her niqab.

The police told her that they have no evidence to press charges; Tim Horton’s said its surveillance cameras were broken so it didn’t film anything.

This is “tolerant,” multicultural Toronto (okay, technically, the greater Toronto area)?

The attitude behind the assault on this woman is precisely the same attitude that Stephen Harper holds as prime minister: that we know enough  already, that a rush to judgement is acceptable and understandable, and that wearing the niqab is unCanadian. 

Just about the closest thing to a clue we have about why the Tsarnaev brothers planted pressure cookers full of nails near the end of the Boston Marathon is that the elder of the two, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, told a photographer once that he didn’t understand Americans and didn’t have any American friends. We also know that he arrived in the US at 15, which is a brutal age to come to a new country and to try to re-establish yourself. If you don’t get it right, high school is a nasty place to be. I’m quite sure Rehteah Parsons would have backed me up on that.

We still don’t know what the brothers’ motive was or, if the elder brother’s disaffection lay behind it, why the comparatively well-adjusted Dzhokhar went along with him. Dzhokhar arrived in the US at 8. Not surprisingly, he had a much easier time making friends and fitting in, which is pretty much what all newcomer children want to do. 

We do know that Tamerlan went “back home” for 6 months in 2012 but we don’t know what he did when he was there. Importantly, we don’t know what kind of trauma he experienced as a child in Chechnya or when the family moved to neighbouring Dagestan. We don’t know what kind of mental health issues Tamerlan may have had. We don’t know how family tensions, difficulties with integration, trauma, mental health and personality combined to create the angry, disaffected person that was Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

And this is key.

We don’t know enough about why most people who are in situations like Tamerlan’s do fine, or fine enough; why some go “back home” to start hospitals or radio stations; or why a handful are radicalized or otherwise move to angry action. In Tamerlan’s case, we don’t know enough about what happened when he was a kid, or what happened when he came to the US and didn’t feel at home, or how either of those things intersected with what he read on the internet. We don’t know enough about how he got his better-adjusted brother to join him or even whether he was the leader.

Critically, and despite media reports that connect dots that may or may not exist, we don’t know whether he was trying to make a political or social point or whether he was more akin to Columbine’s Dylan Klebold or Virginia Tech’s Cho Seung-Hui – anguished young people who felt excluded and didn’t fit in and chose horrific ways to express that anger.

What we do know is that inclusive societies are safer societies. We do know that societies that identify and demolish barriers to participation are safer societies.   We already have studies and evidence that show as much. 

I’ve interviewed dozens of young people who have traced similar paths from conflict to a new life in Canada, or who were born in Canada to parents who have come from conflict, and one thing is absolutely clear: the inclusion they feel (or don’t) in their adopted country is the single most important factor in determining how they adjust and how they manage different forms of post-traumatic stress.

Whether they are Tamil, Somali, or Afghan, it is their experience of inclusion that determines how connected they are to Canada and that helps them to create meaningful lives for themselves and to create positive contributions, both here and “back home.” 

We also know that it is when they do not experience inclusion – when they experience racism and barriers to participation – that doors open to frustration, anger, and potential radicalization.

We know that much but it is not nearly enough. Of course we need to know more.

Most critically, we need to understand that a rush to judgement makes no one safer and serves merely to perpetuate the stigmatization and demonization of communities that — yes — leads to a withdrawal of connection with Canada.

Why would we want that?