Everyone belongs, everyone deserves acceptance
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Today, 15 March, marks the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. With tensions across the world running high, interfaith and cross-cultural trust is thinning. As followers of Jesus, The Salvation Army stands against judging religious and cultural groups and seeks to embrace everyone with love and acceptance. At all our services, people of all faiths are welcome. You can read our Inclusion statement to find out more. In this piece, Salvos Online journalist KIRRALEE NICOLLE reflects on growing up and changing perspectives amid wider cultural shifts.
The day before 9/11, I had just turned seven.
I remember my brother running into my room to tell what had happened, and the TV, which usually stayed off during the day, blasting the scene over and over until late that night. This decade-defining moment was terrifying, jarring and ushered in terminology which I had previously never encountered.
Going from cake and balloons and new toys to footage of killing and destruction on a horrific scale marked a clearly defined realisation for me: no matter how enjoyable it was to be a kid, the world strode on, and people died.
From that point on, there were people who blew up buildings, and then there were the others, who didn’t. The people who blew up buildings were known as Muslims and terrorists. In my monocultural, very Caucasian beachside town life, Muslims seemed a long way away. Around me were Christians, non-Christians and a few New Age hippy types, and none of them blew up buildings, as far as I could tell. But there was a creeping sense that the people we feared were on their way to us.
In the conservative church environment I was in, the political climate of my region and the culture within my own family, we didn’t talk about Muslims as being multifaceted people from a different religious background to us, we just talked about how they were wrong, and dangerous.
I’m not sure how we can deescalate and disarm a society that is showing ever-widening cracks in its tolerance and its love.
It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and my university years that I met my first Muslims in real life. I was somewhat shocked to find that they could be kind, intelligent and perhaps most surprisingly – normal. Beneath the occasional head coverings, which I had also been taught to fear, were people who were often sassy, warm and full of stories which set my head spinning – lives they had lived elsewhere, the problems they had faced growing up in multiple cultures, and knowledge they had gained from adversity. At other times, like everyone else, they were less sociable or charismatic, perhaps more internal.
They were just people, in all their multitudinous complexities. Realising this was more distressing than reassuring in some ways, as it pointed back to me as the source of the problem. It was me who made the judgments, and me who had assumed. What else might I have wrongly assumed, I wondered (in short, a lot).
My realisation should not have come so late, nor should it have come because through a series of small decisions, I found myself in a scenario where I came to meet the very people I’d been encouraged to fear. Being able to humanise those who are different to us is something which shouldn’t be tied to privilege or rare circumstances. It shouldn’t be something confined to larger educational spaces or certain faculties. We, of course, shouldn’t presume the worst of someone before we realise they don’t deserve any of our assumptions, they simply deserve to live a life of their choosing.
As in the case of Ahmed Al-Ahmed who intervened in the Bondi shooting, decidedly a hero of our time, someone shouldn’t have to demonstrate their worth to be seen as a valuable member of our society. The fact he stepped in and risked his own life was remarkable and superhuman, the fact he deserves to be viewed as an equal Australian should be a separate reality that is just as true. The work Muslim Australians are required to do to prove they deserve to live here and be accepted fully into our communities is not just inhumane, its abhorrent.
As someone who grew up in the post-9/11 political climate, it’s been devastating to see the same tired and dehumanising rhetoric recycled following the abominable events at Bondi. What was a criminal act carried out by unjustified actors has recently been used as a reason for, once again, vilifying entire groups. To watch many in the church join this brigade of hatred brings another layer of misery. I can only imagine how distressing it is to be a Muslim in Australia today.
Matthew 22:37-39 describes the two commandments which Christians are to follow – firstly, to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds, and the second, to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Loving others means actively choosing to resist narratives which portray whole groups as carrying guilt which should only be attributed to individuals. Loving others means believing they hold just as much inherent value, worth and the right to a peaceful life as you do. Loving others means choosing to include them in our communities, policies and friendship groups. Loving others means noticing when they are struggling to settle in or needing more information and seeking to offer help and assistance. Most of all, loving others means seeing the image of God reflected in them, and treating them with dignity and reverence.
I’m not sure how we can deescalate and disarm a society that is showing ever-widening cracks in its tolerance and its love. But I do know that we can start with a stand we take as individuals, as households and as communities. A stand which says any rhetoric that sounds like ‘those who are different to us do not belong’ is not welcome.
But people of all kinds are, and that’s also non-negotiable.
