Opinion: “We Are Each Other’s Business” by Eboo Patel

November 7, 2005

Source: NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4989625

On November 7, 2005 NPR ran an opinion piece by Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based organization fostering the international interfaith youth movement. "I am an American Muslim. I believe in pluralism. In the Holy Qur'an, God tells us, 'I created you into diverse nations and tribes that you may come to know one another.' I believe America is humanity's best opportunity to make God's wish that we come to know one another a reality... A few years after [I graduated from high school], my Jewish friend from the lunchroom reminded me of an experience we both wish had never happened. A group of thugs in our high school had taken to scrawling anti-Semitic slurs on classroom desks and shouting them in the hallway. I did not confront them. I did not comfort my Jewish friend. Instead I averted my eyes from their bigotry, and I avoided my friend because I couldn't stand to face him. My friend told me he feared coming to school those days, and he felt abandoned as he watched his close friends do nothing. Hearing him tell me of his suffering and my complicity is the single most humiliating experience of my life... I cannot go back in time and take away the suffering of my Jewish friend, but through action I can prevent it from happening to others."