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#OurThreeWinners: What Muslims Still Need to Learn One Year Later

#OurThreeWinners: What Muslims Still Need to Learn One Year Later

Last updated on: February 10, 2016 at 1:30 am by Guest Contributor

#OurThreeWinners: What Muslims Still Need to Learn One Year Later 2016-02-09T20:25:56-04:00 Guest Contributor

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From the #OurThreeWinners Campaign

By Saud Inam

I remember three times in my life where I was shaken to my core and moved to tears. The first was when I lost my childhood friend to suicide in 2004, the second was when I survived my car accident in 2011 and the third was at a vigil for #OurThreeWinners, Deah Barakat and Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha.

The three young Muslim Americans were murdered in a hate crime by their neighbor Craig Hicks. The media initially reported a “parking dispute” being a cause of the murder, but later reports revealed it was a hate crime. I remember the media frenzy as well as the shock of three young Muslim Americans left myself as well as others confused, hurt and afraid.

In the wake of their terrible murders, I managed an outreach and charitable campaign to raise awarenesss and honor the legacy for #OurThreeWinners. I was literally on my phone and email 24/7 organizing the campaign. Our initial call had more than 100 activists and Muslim organizations immediately following the tragedy. I remember how beautifully bittersweet it was to see the Muslim community rally together around the tragedy and cause.

There was a powerful part of the #OurThreeWinners campaign that grew into the #FeedTheirLegacy campaign, where Muslim Americans collected more than 100,000 cans to feed the homeless in legacy of Deah, Yusor and Razan. Throughout all this hard work, there were no egos, photo-ops, arguing or bickering, but a somber resolve to honor the lives lost and to help work together to raise awareness about the three beautiful souls lost.

The campaign took its toll on me, because I felt a sense of anger, hurt, fear and sorrow. For me, though we were mobilizing to honor their lives, I still felt as if we had failed Deah, Yusor and Razan. Why? Because it was another reminder of how much harder we needed to work to ensure our brothers and sisters in the U.S. and abroad are safe from violence of all kinds.

I had held in a lot of emotions, but finally gave in to tears when I attended a vigil in Atlanta to remember the three beautiful souls lost.

I cried tears because I felt the pain and sorrow and the weight of the Muslim community on my shoulders. I felt not only the pain of the families of the Deah, Yusor and Razan, but the pain of every Muslim family member who lost a family member to violence everywhere — from Palestine to Burma to Syria and elsewhere.

I remember thinking that Deah, Yusor and Razan easily could have been my own brother and sister. That could’ve been me, targeted and shot dead, the victim of a hate crime (despite police calling it a parking space dispute).

I realized then that there were individuals working 24/7 to demonize Islam and Muslims. But where are the Muslims working 24/7 to educate people about Islam and Muslims?

Have We Effectively Mobilized?

We need to ask ourselves this: How as a community have we made progress since we lost our brother Deah and sisters Yusor and Razan? Have we gone back to sleep or have we woken up as a community and learned how to effectively mobilize? Are we proactive or still reactive?

Have things improved or gotten worse for Muslims in America and the world? Have we made progress or are we still where we started?

Here are a couple of my reflections/thoughts about our progress in the past year.

We mobilized beautifully in February of 2015.

I want to emphasize this again for those who may have not been as involved in the campaign, to understand that it was beautiful as a manager to see our community mobilize so efficiently and effectively to raise awareness and respond to the tragedy. There were no egos, no photo-ops, no seeking credit, no us vs. them type of attitudes and no negativity.

Everyone worked hard to respond to the tragedy and worked so well together. Many American Muslims worked hard behind the scenes to organize our community into a coordinated and effective community using committees to keep activists organized. We created the #FeedTheirLegacy campaign, which my friend Tarek El-Messidi was able to organize and spearhead, and for the first time our community rallied together and united over one cause.

Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha

We fell asleep after February, 2015.

As much as the campaign was successful in February of 2015 we unfortunately collectively fell asleep as a community. Once we had achieved our goals to honor Deah, Yusor and Razan and to own the narrative and teach America what and who Americans were all about, we unfortunately failed to keep the momentum going.

It took another unfortunate event in San Bernardino to shake us awake again. And yes, there were great responses, but our ability to mobilize to react to San Bernardino was not as efficient as we were in February 2015. Yes, we raised over $100,000 for the victims’ families, but our response was reactive and not proactive.

We are now facing an election campaign that is seeing the increase in Islamophobia and hate crimes and it is now more important than ever to mobilize and organize once again like we did in February 2015.

We’re still reactive, not proactive.

Unfortunately, it still seems like a tragedy has to occur for our community to wake up and care about Islamophobia. What we learned in February 2015 was Islamophobia is not just ugly words, but also has the ability to drive people to kill Muslims. I still feel that largely, we are still reactive in our approach to countering Islamophobia.

You may disagree with me. Yes, we are making great strides in being proactive, For example, we are responding to local crises like Islamic Relief USA and the Compassionate Care Network is doing in Flint, Michigan by providing water bottles to neighborhoods there. Muslims have joined in with other groups to work in Flint as well. CAIR also has done great work in supporting Wheaton College Professor Hawkins for wearing hijab in solidarity with Muslims. There are many other great examples.

But still more work needs to be done for Muslims to be proactive. It requires every Muslim to wake up and become a change maker in their own capacity. We cannot afford to relegate the task to a small group of activists or organizations, or a small group of imams, sheikhs and scholars. This will require all hands on deck and for every Muslim to realize that it is their duty to counter Islamophobia.

Find a cause you’re passionate about and join an organization focusing on that cause.

We need a mobilization strategy.

It’s unfortunate, but after the #OurThreeWinners campaign I tried to rally the community around the idea to create a mobilization strategy, but unfortunately calls to create this strategy fell on deaf ears. People are busy and involved in a number of activities, with jobs and families to juggle. I do get that. However, we need to better mobilize and organize as a community.

Our inability to respond to tragedies and events effectively only hurts us in the long run. I’m hoping to rally individuals around a strategy I created to mobilize our community. If you’re interested in joining me in creating a mobilization strategy feel free to reach out to me!

There some great initiatives already underway as well, and you can be involved in that as well. The Hope Initiative aims to flood the internet and world with positive narratives to stem the tide of hate and bigotry. We need more of this – an overall strategy we call all tap into.

We Need do-ers, not just ideas and criticisms.

There are thousands of ideas of how our community can be improved and thousands of criticisms of how bad things are in the world, but how many of us are putting in work to change the world and change the condition of things we have the ability to change? If you’re unable to help the Syrian refugee or the Palestinian child or the Burmese Muslim brother other brothers and sisters abroad — help your community locally.

Think globally, but act locally.

We’ve come to a point in time where we don’t have time for complainers and criticisms. Yes, we’re aware of the evils and injustices of the world, but simply complaining about them doesn’t change things. We can post thousands of updates and articles on social media about various evils and injustices, but a far more productive use of our time would be to come up with solutions to those problems.

I pray our community can work hard and continue to improve ways to mobilize and organize to impact the communities in with they live. May Allah grant us the ability, the resources, the purity of intentions, clarity of mind, wisdom, knowledge and strength to serve others and help improve the condition of the oppressed, of Muslims and people of other faiths and no faiths, people of all ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Saud Inam is a Muslim American activist, social entrepreneur, blogger and Project Manager for Discover Islam-USA a Muslim American media company dedicated to producing high quality media about Islam and Muslims. He is always on the lookout for more opportunities to help empower the Muslim American community.

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