Muslim Victim Rais Bhuiyan Campaigns to Save His Attacker

Ten days after 9/11, Rais Bhuiyan, an immigrant from Bangladesh, was working at a gas station in Dallas, Texas when a man walked in with a gun. Thinking the store was being robbed, Bhuiyan opened the cash register. Instead, the man asked him where he was from. "Excuse me?" Bhuiyan responded. Mark Stroman, a white supremacist who was targeting men who appeared to him to be Middle Eastern, then shot Bhuiyan in the face.

Stroman is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on July 20 for the murder of Vasudev Patel, an Indian immigrant killed on October 4, 2001; evidence was also presented at trial that Stroman shot and killed Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant. And Rais Bhuiyan is fighting to save Stroman's life through a campaign to convince the parole board to overturn the death penalty in Stroman's case. I had a chance to interview Bhuiyan and he told me that his faith was his primary motivation.

In 2009, Bhuiyan completed the haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, where he saw an amazingly diverse group come together to pray and worship. He recalled growing up as a young man in Bangladesh in a religious family, where his family prayed five times a day, and his grandfather would visit every Thursday to read the Quran and tell his family stories from Muslim tradition, especially about the Prophet Muhammad.

One of the stories that impacted Bhuiyan the most was that of Muhammad's visit to Ta'if, a valley near Mecca, to spread the message of Islam. The people of Ta'if reacted cruelly, forcing him to leave. In the version of the story that Bhuiyan learned growing up, the angel Gabriel appeared with the angel of the mountains, who said to Muhammad, "If you like, I shall cause mountains surrounding Al-Ta'if, to fall on them, and crush them into pieces." But Muhammad declined, saying that the children of those who had been responsible for casting him out might someday embrace the message he had come to spread.

The message of forgiveness and redemption at the heart of this story rings powerfully true today in the lives of Mark Stroman and Rais Bhuiyan. When Stroman learned about Bhuiyan's work for his case, he broke down in tears. If Stroman is not executed, Bhuiyan says, "I believe he will be able to reach out to others. If he [can] touch one life, that would be a success. If he is gone, we lose the opportunity to educate others."

This faith in the future, and in the belief that we can positively impact the lives of others by sharing our stories, is a powerful anecdote to the fear that has gripped our country in the years since 9/11 -- fear that has sometimes sparked violence. What is at the root of Stroman's crime, Bhuiyan believes, is hate. And he believes that the antidote to this hatred is education and compassion, not further violence. Despite what has happened to him, Bhuiyan believes that the United States is "still a beautiful country."

After hearing Bhuiyan's story, I realised I had gained a deeper understanding of forgiveness and compassion, some of the highest principles of my own faith tradition as well as his. His story should compel us to look at our country and its future.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we must ask ourselves, will we choose fear? Or will we choose to reach out to those who are different from us, to hear their stories, to begin to dismantle our fears and choose instead to have faith in our future?

Laurna Strikwerda is a programme coordinator with the Muslim-Western dialogue programme at the international conflict transformation organisation Search for Common Ground. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).