My wife and I have a dear friend, a Muslimrefugee who fled civil war much like the Syrians causing the GOP-o-sphere to engage in massive freak outs. Today I was helping my next door neighbor move. Three of us — a friend of his (a strapping guy in his early 40’s), my neighbor, and I - were chatting. The subject of “Muslim refugees” came up and my neighbor’s friend said something to the effect: “Obama’s a Muslim who wants to let terrorists in!”, to which I replied “Really? After years of attending a Christian church for years after he moved back to Chicago?” “Oh, that’s just a cover story,” he replied. And so on ....
I replied, “terrorists aren’t going to spend years in refugee camps and then undergo 18 months to 2 years of rigorous scrutiny. They’ll enter with tourist visas like the 9/11 Saudis, or sneak across our Southern border where they can then buy all the assault weapons they want to anywhere in the Southern U.S.” And did he know people on terrorist watch lists have bought thousands of guns because it’s perfectly legal?
He paused for a moment and said, “I was driving past a mosque next to the State Fair Grounds, and they have a terrorist training camp there.” Hm.
It’s actually a playground for kids with plastic tunnels they can crawl through, you know, like you see on playgrounds across America. I mentioned the majority of the Muslim refugees in my city are Kurds from Iraq, and that I know many of them … all really good hard working people with good families and good hearts.
“The black ones. They wear robes and those things on their heads!” exclaimed my neighbor’s friend. “And the women cover their faces” He was talking about the refugees from Sudan who have also been relocated here. Ya, I calmly explained, they’re Sudanese, who also fled a brutal civil war, going to the Mosque and dressed for services. Sunday church clothes, so to speak.
I also heard the usual Free Republic/Red State/Right Wing Radio nonsense: “Obama doesn’t wear a flag pin … he stands in front of ‘Islamic’ flags!” I knew trying to talk to someone who gets his ‘news’ from right wing propaganda sites and had been spoon fed every bit of hyperbole he was spouting. I listened and continued to calmly offered the facts to some of his rhetoric.
A thought about how to handle this conversation struck me like a lightbulb going off: Put a human face on it. And since I had my laptop just next door, I had the opportunity to deliver some reality about refugees in a polite, anecdotal, matter of fact way.
My Muslim refugee friend was 9 years old when rebels came barreling into his village in Sudan in the middle of the night. His father and mother yelled “RUN INTO THE JUNGLE!!!!!” They knew what was coming next. He and his siblings made it into the jungle and heard the gunfire as his parents were killed, along with every other adult and the children who didn’t make it to the relative safety of the jungle. He and his siblings were separated, not knowing each others whereabouts for some time. For months these children and thousands of others like them hid from rebels who killed every boy over 13, and offered younger ones the choice of taking up guns with them or being shot on the spot. Crocodiles, lions, and raging rivers in their way as well.
Fast forward years later … Hamza was relocated to the U.S. He is now a proud U.S. citizen, and an accomplished one at that.
He was 19 when we met him at our local Walgreens, where he worked full time as well as taking full time university studies. Knowing the story of The Lost Boys, I was struck by his beautiful countenance despite unimaginable horrors he experienced as a child as one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”, victims of a bloody civil war. He’d recently been settled in my city after years in refugee camps in Kenya and Egypt. He even has Christian friends who were on the opposite side of Sudan’s bloody civil war. Kindness and compassion and forgiveness are not limited to Christianity.
“The Lost Boys of Sudan” is an excellent documentary, by the way. Here’s part one of 60 Minutes report with a couple of their stories, and more video stories which continue when Part One ends:
x YouTube VideoBack to my neighbor’s friend, whose only ‘experience’ with Sudanese refugees was seeing them driving cabs and playing soccer at middle and high school fields on the weekends - the limit of his ‘knowledge’, as it turns out. Stereotypes. People he’d never ever spoken to.
I went home and grabbed my laptop, went back over and opened it with the picture of Hamza on my screen. Rather than preaching to this guy, I simply opened my laptop, a picture of Hamza on the screen, and said “this is my friend Hamza. My wife and I met him when he was 19. He’s not only a Muslim and refugee, but he’s of the best people you’d ever want to meet. Gentle, quiet, unassuming, forgiving of the people who slaughtered his parents. My wife and I befriended him as he worked on a degree in biochemistry, and count him among the most admired people in our lives. He graduated - with honors — and is entering a post-graduate program, with dreams of attending medical school so he can help people. I just wanted to share that with you. I haven’t met a refugee who isn’t a kind, polite person who’s grateful beyond words for having the chance to be a citizen of the United States.”
His reaction? “Well, I never knew that. Glad you shared that. It helps take away some of the fear ....” Big strapping guy in his early 40’s afraid of people he knows nothing about beyond stereotypes because he’s been spoon fed right wing idiocy. ‘Contempt prior to investigation.’
Sometimes, like today, bigotry and misconceptions can be countered with a story behind the smiling human face of a refugee who happens to be Muslim , making America better for his having arrived.
Hamza mentioned that someday he’d like to write a book about his harrowing experience in the aftermath of the attack on his village (many details I didn’t include here … way beyond the general Lost Boys of Sudan stories), but he’s a scientist, not an author-type. It would be great if someone were interested in doing so. I’ve never heard a more profound story.
Thank you very much for reading and recommending this diary about him and the effect he had on changing a mind today. It can be done one life story at a time :)
When I called to ask permission to tell this story, I made a point of telling him the difference he made in the world today. My wonderful, Muslim, refugee, proud U.S. citizen, and friend.
Below, this good man and his lovely fiancee, a fellow Sudanese orphan/refugee. She just got her RN degree. We’ll be attending their wedding next spring … and beaming like proud parents: <a href=”
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Oh, and he found his brothers and sisters ….
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door
- Emma Lazarus’ inscription on the Statue of Liberty