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Mostly Cloudy Area Muslims condemn attacks
Several Muslim residents from the region gathered in Mineola for a news conference on Dec. 9 to denounce recent acts of violence committed in the name of Islam, and to defend their faith as they practice it.
Business owner Ali Mirza, of Elmont, organized the conference, where he was joined by four other people in front of the State Supreme Court building. Mirza condemned the mass shooting at a holiday office party in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2 in which 14 people were killed and 21 wounded. The shooters were Syed Farook, an employee who had been at the party, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, who were both killed in a gun battle with police.
“Whenever such incidents take place, there is always a backlash against all Muslims, and Muslim-Americans are part of it,” said Mirza, who was born in Pakistan. “The same thing has happened here again.”
He said that the conference represented the eighth or ninth time members of Long Island’s Muslim community publicly condemned terrorist acts. Mirza added that “it is assumed” that when individuals from other communities commit acts of mass violence, those communities don’t support the violence, but not in the case of Muslims.
Mohammad Usman, imam of the Jamia Zia-ul-Quran mosque in Elmont, recited a verse from the Quran, first in Arabic and then in English: “Whoever killed an innocent person is exactly like he killed the whole humanity.”
Northport resident Ijaz Bokhari, 58, said that terrorists who kill innocent people are not true Muslims. “I’m here because I’m angry and I am confused as to what is going on,” he said. Bokhari said that he didn’t understand how a religion that teaches “tolerance, love and peace” could be the religion of “thugs” who kill innocent people.
“Surely they are human beings, too,” he said. “They must have emotions, so how can they go and kill innocent people and sleep at night?”
