Sunday 31 July 2011

9/11 Hate-Crime Victim Tries To Save His Attacker

NPR reports on the story of Rais Bhuiyan, the Bangladeshi Muslim working in a Texas gas station who was shot in the face soon after 9/11:

"Just 10 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a gas station in Dallas when he was shot in the face by a man named Mark Stroman.

Stroman was on a shooting spree, targeting people who appeared to be Muslim or of Middle Eastern descent. Stroman is due to be executed July 20; Bhuiyan, the only survivor of the attacks, is fighting to save his life.


When Stroman entered the gas station, Bhuiyan initially thought it was a routine robbery.

"I opened the cash register, offered him the cash, and requested him not to shoot me," Bhuiyan tells weekends on All Things Considered host Laura Sullivan. "In reply he asked me, 'Where are you from?' And the question seemed strange to ask during a robbery. And I said, 'Excuse me?' And as soon as I spoke, I felt the sensation of a million bees stinging my face, and then heard an explosion.

Bhuiyan required medical attention for years after the attack. The bullet hit him on the right side of the face, leaving severe injuries, particularly to his right eye.

"I had to go through several surgeries and finally the doctor could save the eye, but the vision is gone, and I'm still carrying more than 35 pellets on the right side of my face," he says. "Once I touch my face, my skull, I can feel it's all bumpy. It took several years to go through all these painful surgeries one after another one."

 
Despite the difficulties, Bhuiyan looked to his faith in order to find forgiveness.
"According to my faith in Islam, there is no hate, no killing. It doesn't allow anything like that," says Bhuiyan. "Yes, Mark Stroman did a horrible thing, and he brought a lot of pain and disaster, sufferings in my life. But in return I never hated him."

 Bhuiyan has created a website called World Without Hate to educate others about hate crimes as a means of preventing them. He's also working with Amnesty International and Stroman's defense attorney, who has filed several appeals on Stroman's death sentence.

 "I strongly believe executing him is not a solution. We will just simply lose a human life without dealing with the root cause, which is hate crime," Bhuiyan says. "In Islam it says that saving one human life is the same as saving the entire mankind. Since I forgave him, all those principles encouraged me to go even further, and stop his execution and save another human life."

You can read the full article here. Rais Bhuiyan's website World Without Hate is here.
Thank you to Sister Samana Siddiqui at Positive Muslim News for the link.

Stroman has since beeen executed despite Bhuiyan's efforts to help him, but the Huffington Post writes about the affect of Bhuiyan's actions on him:

"After a lifetime of bitter prejudice that drove him to kill innocent strangers, Mark Stroman died with a message of peace.

Before his trial in 2002, Stroman, an avowed white supremacist, dubbed himself the "Arab slayer" and called the shootings "patriotic" retribution for the terror attacks.

 But by the time prison authorities at the Texas death chamber in Huntsville strapped Stroman to a gurney and prepared to execute him, he had undergone a remarkable shift in perspective.
 "Hate is going on in this world and it has to stop," Stroman said in his final moments. "Hate causes a lifetime of pain."

 A key inspiration for Stroman's radically altered point of view was the extraordinary effort made to spare his life by one of his victims: Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh who was shot in the face by Stroman while working as a cashier at a Dallas convenience store. Bhuiyan survived the attack, but was blinded in one eye.

 Late last year, after undertaking a pilgrimage to Mecca, Bhuiyan realized that his devout Muslim faith called on him to not only forgive Stroman for the attack, but to attempt to spare him from execution."

The full Huffington Post article is here.

Jameel Award Announces Finalists

The Jameel Prize is an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition. Its aim is to explore the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today. The Independent writes about the award:

"Ten artists, chosen from over 100 nominations, will be exhibiting their work at London's Victoria and Albert Museum this month.

Shortlisted by specialists with a knowledge of contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic tradition, the artists are competing for the chance to win the Jameel Prize, worth £25,000 which is only awarded every two years.

The Jameel Prize is an initiative of Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel with the aim of exploring the relationship between Islamic traditions of art, craft and design and contemporary work as part of a wider debate about Islamic culture and its role today."

The original article can be found here.  Further details about the Jameel Prize can be found at the V&A Museum website here.