Unity Walk 2011

9/11 Unity Walk 2011

Opening: The Divine Names of Mercy

We begin in the name of God, Muslims say, Bismillah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, the merciful and the compassionate. It's related also to a Jewish root word, Rahim. And it comes from womb. The Arabic word for womb is Rahim. And so Rahman is a name of God, which means the merciful, Rahim is the compassionate. And there is a saying in our tradition that God has derived the womb, the Rahim, from his name Ar-Rahman, from his name the merciful.

The Quranic Teaching on Human Bonds

And in the Qur'an it says

"You should guard yourselves against any evil through God by also protecting your bonds, the bonds of the womb, the Arham."

Our Common Human Family

And one of the things that is very important for us to constantly remember is that we are Bano Adam wa Hawa. We are the children of two parents. Even our material sciences now acknowledge that we came from two original humans. This is something, you don't have to be a religious person to believe this anymore. It's not mythology, it's actually what our science tells us, that we come from two people, that we are one family, that we are a human family.

Now families always argue and fight, that's part of being in a family. And then we have the uncle that nobody wants to come to the holiday, that's also part of being in the family. So families are problematic, but they are our families. And to deny those elements within our families is to deny reality, it's to deny something that we all know. So it's important that we remember on this day, we're coming together as a family, as a human family.

The Impact of 9/11 and Historical Parallels

9-11 has been likened to Pearl Harbor for many Americans. My father, when Pearl Harbor happened, was still in high school, but at the age of 17, he was here in Rockville, Maryland, at Georgetown Preparatory School. At the age of 17, he got his mother's permission, his father had already died, to sign up in his senior year of high school. He left high school to join the military and was actually given his high school diploma as a deferred diploma.

That was the type of sentiment that happened in the United States at that time. We had people like Pat Tillman, somebody who was an extraordinary football player, who left an incredible career with millions of dollars to go overseas, believing in it. Pat became very disillusioned. I don't know if people are aware of that, but he became very disillusioned about what was going on.

The Lost Opportunity After 9/11

One of the things that happened in 9-11, we had an extraordinary opportunity. We had the entire world with us. People were saying, God bless America, in France. We had the whole world with us. We had an extraordinary opportunity. It was an immense opportunity.

What happened afterwards, yesterday there was a program called One Day of Destruction, A Decade of War. We have been now for 10 years in wars. There are over a million Iraqis dead. There are countless civilians. We'll never know their names. We have the names of our victims on stone. We won't know the names of the Afghani victims. We won't know the names of the Iraqi victims. There won't be memorials to those people. We have to really think about where we're going as a country and the type of country we want to be.

My American Heritage and the Irish Experience

This country, to me, it is my home. It's been the home of my ancestors on my mother's side, on one side, for over 200 years. On my father's side, in 1838, my great-great-grandfather, Michael O'Hanson, came to Philadelphia from Ireland seeking a new world, a better place, getting out of the poverty and the tribulations of Ireland that was about to face its greatest crisis with the potato famine. Maybe the English words, greatest crisis.

But the potato famine happened and many millions of Irish began to come to these shores. They were Catholics. The greeting that my grandfather got in Philadelphia was the Kensington Riots when Protestant Americans went and burnt down Catholic churches. Scores of Irish Catholics were killed. And it was because somebody had spread a rumor that the Catholics wanted to replace the Protestant Bible that was being taught in the public schools with the Catholic Bible. This is what started the riot.

Good Emerging From Evil: The Transformation of America

But as Abrahamic people, we believe that good comes out of evil. That actually transformed America because Americans were so distraught at the fact that people went and burnt down these churches that they actually began to transform the psyche. And Philadelphia, actually, within 10 years after those events, was a very different city because they recognized that something had to change.

These are the two ways that people can go. They can go the way of hate. They can go the way of more factionalism, more provincialism. Or they can go the way of reaching out, reaching out to the other.

The Role of Jewish and African American Communities in American Progress

What's extraordinary for me about being in a synagogue today is that the Jewish American community and the African American community have done more to transform the mental landscape of this country than any other two communities as far as I'm concerned. We are a more tolerant country today because of the Jews that went down and some of them got their heads bashed in, in the South when they went down to do voter registration, when they allied with the African American community.

And you can read this in the history of the NAACP and look at the unity because the Jewish community knew that their fate was tied with the African American community. They would not be accepted, as long as there was one group that was not accepted, they would not be accepted. And that's why they fought for social justice in this country. And that fight continues today. It continues today.

America's Founding Ideals and Diversity

What kind of America do we want? Do we want a diverse America where we can actually live up to the ideals that might have been, at the time that they were written down, that all men are created equal? They might have been not fully understood or not even fully implied, but they were there from the start in this country. And that's the power of this country. The ideals from the very inception of America were powerful ideals that still resonate in the hearts not just of Americans, but of people all over the world.

And we forget the obligation that we have to live up to our creed in this country, our civic creed, not a religious creed, a civic creed that says that this is an open space for all peoples. This is an open space for the black man, the black woman, the white man, the white woman, Japanese, Chinese, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs. This is what America was about from the very inception. This is what it was about.

Jefferson's Vision of Religious Pluralism

Thomas Jefferson, right down the road, wrote that he wanted to see an America that was open for the Jew, the Christian, the Gentile, the Mohammedan, the Hindu. He mentioned Mohammedans and Hindus 200 years ago. And atheists. Even atheists. Yes. Part of the family.

Our Continuing Mission

This is our opportunity. This anniversary should remind us of what went wrong. Some things went wrong, but what we need to continue to set right. That's what we're about as Americans. The thing I love most about going to a bookstore is the self-help section is the biggest section. Because Americans know we're screwed up. We know it. But we want to get better. We want to get better. And that's why the self-help industry is the biggest industry in the publishing business. Because we do want to get better. But we have to know what makes us ill.

Justice Tempered With Mercy

And just in conclusion, those people that struck those towers on September 11th, in their misguided minds, they felt that they were doing something that was justifiable. They justified it in their minds. The man who recently, in Oslo, who recently killed those people, in his mind he felt that he was doing something justified. There are people in Palestine, in Israel, that do heinous things, thinking in their minds that these are justified. These are happening all over the world.

Justice is nothing if it is not tempered with mercy. This is the essential truth. And our religions, all of them, teach this truth. The quality of mercy is not strained. It drop it as a gentle rain from heaven. Upon the place, upon that place, it blesses him that gives and him that takes. That is what mercy is. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. It's above the sceptered throne of kings. It's something that resides in the hearts of people.

A Call for Unity and Solidarity

What we need to do is elicit more mercy, to reach out to each other, the Jews, the Muslims. We have a shared destiny as a people. When the Jews were threatened by extinction in Andalusia, it was the Moroccans and the Ottomans that said, come. Come to us. And the Jews in Morocco to this day, they acknowledge that. Even the Jews in Diaspora from Morocco acknowledge that.

The Jews in Muslim countries have always known that it was the Muslims that gave them haven when they were being persecuted. And of all communities, I call on the Jewish community to rise up to the truth of your religion and to recognize this type of fascistic thought, wherever it comes from, whether it's from the people that hate Islam or the haters within Islam, to recognize it for what it is.

Conclusion: Coming Together in Hope

We need to come together in solidarity. And I believe that we can do it, inshallah, and this is a sign. Thank you very much.