06/02/2025
Some of you may be aware that today a Jewish group was attacked on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado. They were calling for continued awareness of the hostages in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are told that a man threw a lit bottle of alcohol among them, causing serious burns to some. Six people were sent to the hospital. Most have been released, but at least one is in serious condition. The man who attacked them was arrested. Sadly, for all of us, his name marks him as belonging to the Muslim world, whether he is Muslim or not, and he is said to have been yelling "Free Palestine!"
Some people want us to think it is significant that he has a name that "sounds Muslim" and that he may have yelled "Free Palestine!" They want to equate these things with a predetermined and divisive rhetoric that is nothing more than anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian propaganda, as if 'Muslim' and 'Palestinian' were equivalent somehow. Others will want us to think that it is significant that the people he attacked have been called on the news "a pro-Israel group" because they wanted the hostages remembered and freed. These words—both the former and the latter—are obviously not insignificant because there will be consequences for both. But we need not play the polarity game. I don't know who the victims were. I don't know what they wanted beyond the release of hostages, to which I am not opposed; and whether they were "pro-Israel" or not, I do not want them hurt, and moreover, deny the validity of attributing significance to that moniker if it is meant to justify them being hurt. But I am also saddened that the attacker's name, and his invocation of an already hurting Palestine, will only cause more anger and division, garnering still more support for anti-immigrant authoritarian policies.
What is a Sufi in a moment like this? "A Sufi is one who sees things from two perspectives—their own, and that of the other." That is to say, we refuse to play that particularly hateful game of attributing polarizing 'significances' to keep us divided. 'Union' (wisal) and 'Unison' (ittihad) are the goals of Sufis. There is nowhere God is not, and thus we seek wholeness through our actions, not division. "All of Sufism is adab," we are taught, and that adab is the way of love and union.
— Pir Netanel Mu'in ad-Din al-Inayati al-Maimuni
