By By Imran Malik
As our nation remembers the 25 years occurrence of the horrors of 9/11 this month, it takes me back to my own journey of becoming a new parent just days before the horrors of this devastating tragedy that still haunts millions of us who witnessed the direct and in direct impact of the day in days, weeks, months, and years later.
My wife and I were still putting our heads around our emotions and joys of being first time parents. While we were planning and dreaming of a world with a transitional roles and responsibilities when we got hit by this surge of a global tragedy that happened in our own homeland.
I had grown up in Arabian Guff region, witnessing and experiencing the first hand impacts on sociopathic-political and socioeconomic aid the region during the 9 year Iraq-Iran war of 80s and then the First Desert Storm War of Kuwait’s invasion and NaTO’s war on Iraq. The tragedies of 9/11 took me back to that negative nostalgia of my teen years which after my move to United States as an international student had ceased to exist in my physiology for over a decade or so.
The high and lows of being a new parent and then the national tragedy scarring the living experiences of millions around the globe compelled my wife and I
To contemplate the question: is this the world we will transition to our next generation?
There was days of silence, a quite place environment, with looming fear of ignorance and hate spewing news of events and targeted attacks towards marginalized communities of Muslim and anyone who may be perceived like a Muslim (commonly members of Sikh and Indian and African communities). The fear was real, the isolated but targeted hate incidents were heart drenching, the unknown next steps and political back lash towards the Muslim community was becoming more apparent. But, again the question remained how do we face all these multifaceted challenges of social and political dea parity.
Days passed, weeks passed but our fears as new parents counted to escalate our apprehensions and increased frequency of sleepless nights. All amidst these life changing events and impacts I also started my classes for the graduate school at the Antioch University, which was a cohort based program of professionals focused on organizational management and leadership learning. During the very first week of classes, we heard from one of the cohort member that he and his wife were at the New York airport and witnessed the boarding of the men in the same dress code who might have been the possible suspects, responsible for one of the plane crashes into the Twin Towers.
These stories and many other forms of news day in day out only kept taxing our sanity and burdening our mental peace!
After much deeper soul searching and spiritual guidance, my wife and I decided that we cannot allow the fear mongering and hate waging to win this. We need to connect, build reach outs and share message of service and love of our faith and cultural practices which overlaps with many other faith and cultural reasons of the world. We cannot allow a hand full of wrongly motivated extremist hijack the beautiful essence of a froth practiced and followed by the one fourth of the panel earth’s population.
Hence, started doubling up on our inter and intra faith efforts. Bringing people of diverse faith or no faith, cultural and tradition aists together on the basis of humanity which connects us all many folds. We build relationships across churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and anywhere we felt the call of love and service will bond the people.
The momentum was hard to build and had its fair share of challenges, the efforts were laborious but very intentional. The success stories were great but often a times the rejections and pushback were hurtful, but it all was acceptable as we had committed ourselves to the cause of bringing people together. We knew it will be one step at a time and one day at a time. There were days we felt exhausted and desperation slapped us intensely that this pathway is a dead end, what what kept us all going was to see that there were many others who joined the journey over the coarse of time and we complimented each other’s efforts.
We formed new partnerships , we formed new alliances and we formed new friendships and we all kept the needle moving which enlightened our inertia day in day out.
Looking back on this trajectory of last 25 years of this journey, though our work is not finished yet, it only emphasizes that how important our work is — to bring people together. The science is not who is right and who is wrong the science of our human civilization’s successful existence is simply hidden in the words: ’empathy and understanding’. It is only through these abstract attributes that we can learn to respect our differences and respect each other and accept each other for who we are! The Divine wisdom to create us all different color, shape, size is to candid us an opportunity to learn about each other and get to know each other rather better rather then amplifying on these deltas.
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 is not just a commemoration to remember this as day of grievance, but it should be practiced as a day of reflection and remembrance. It should be an opportunity for our next generations to learn that the Freedom of our Democracy demands us all to become leaders and build the courage to stand to defend our nation and land. We are living in a very highly competitive world but it is only through bustling outreach and alliance building we will be able to all work together towards a universal mission of global peace. The road ahead is long, curvy and may have many road blocks and detours but it’s only through togetherness and collectivism that we can complete this daunting task!
As the 25th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, we also count our blessings and hold our loved ones close while cherishing the pledge of allegiance to our flag. As Americans (born or naturalized) this is the land of the free and home of the brave, and ali us have to believe in taking care of our homeland. America, despite all its imprecations and defects, is still the strongest democracy of the world and it will continue to be the beacon of hope for millions around the globe.
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