Monday, August 6th, the Islamic Society of Joplin’s mosque was burned to the ground.
An investigation is ongoing involving the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department.
But this incident has sent shockwaves throughout the Kansas City Muslim community. Susan Wilson spoke with Mahnaz Shabbir, an advisor to the Midland Islamic Council and the Crescent Peace Society, about the incident.
Interview Highlights:
“What we have to do is keep on trying to put the positive messages out there and show that there’s a lot of support from within the Muslim community, but also the greater community, that as a greater community we won’t stand for that kind of violence in our society.”
“Unfortunately it seems like during the election period, when certain individuals that are elected officials are running for office use Islam in kind of a ‘Let’s beat Islam and try to get votes,’ we see a spike in this kind of violence.”
“You have bad people doing bad things, and we have that in all faiths, and terrorism has no religion as we can see. And so bad news unfortunately gets more play in the media than good news, and there are so many good things that are happening. For example, those physicians that are at the mosque in Joplin, in post-tornado Joplin, many of those physicians lost their own homes, they lost their clinics that they were doing the free health care. But they worked constantly without a break taking care of the people of Joplin, because that’s what they do.”
“The council of American Islamic Relations has been keeping track of hate crimes and discrimination to Muslim workers in the workforce. It has been increasing, and it started from 9/11.”
This story was produced for KC Currents, which airs Sundays at 5pm with a repeat Mondays at 8pm. To listen on your own schedule, subscribe to the KCCurrents podcast.
