"In the name of the Iranian people, who have themselves been victims of terrorism, I strongly condemn these crimes against humanity and offer my condolences to the grieving French people and government."
Similarly, President Obama should meet with the leadership of the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of leading national and local Muslim organizations, which yesterday (Saturday) strongly condemned "the abhorrent terror attacks that took place yesterday in Paris and left over 150 innocent people dead and scores injured."
Its statement continued,
"USCMO stands consistent with its position against all forms of violence against innocent people anywhere in Turkey, Beirut, Syria, Paris, and on our soil irrespective of the perpetrators, targets, or reasons. These repugnant acts of violence defy the sanctity of every innocent human live and shall always be condemned and rejected."
"The US Council of Muslim Organizations sends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and to the people of France and stands in solidarity with them against terrorism and violent extremism. We ask the American Muslim community around the nation to hold candle light vigils in memory of the victims and in support of their families."
The point is that if action against ISIS is done with the rhetoric of rage against Islam as a whole and if it is undertaken in actual practice with attacks on civilian Muslim populations, as was the Iraq War, then the result will be still more violence against the US and other Western nations.
Any statements by Presidential candidates or others that fuel Islamophobia should be condemned by churches, synagogues, and other ethical opinion leaders in academia and the press as false and slanderous -- and in this historical moment, as incitements to terrorism both by some Islamophobes against Muslims and by some Muslim terrorists against the whole fabric of our own society.
Finally, I offer us all a Mourners Prayer that is rooted in the Jewish tradition of Mourners Kaddish and goes beyond it to mourn the dead innocents in every community who have been victims of war and terrorism: Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, the peoples of Syria and France. I urge Jewish congregations to use the Aramaic and English that are intertwined here, and others to use the English and to translate it into their own tongues.
If we can mourn the dead of "the others" as well as of "our own," we are more likely to grow not a future where more and more of us die together at each others' hands, but one where more and more of us live together in the warmth of each others' compassion.
Shalom, salaam, peace, Earth! -- Arthur
Mourners Prayer in Time of War and Terror
Yitgadal V'yit'kadash Shmei Rabah
May Your Great Name, through our own expanding awareness and our own fuller action, lift You to become still higher and more holy.
For Your Great Name weaves together all the names of all the beings in the universe, among them our own names and the names of those we mourn -- (Cong: Amein)
B'alma di vra chi'rooteh v'yamlich malchuteh b'chayeichun, u'v'yomeichun, u'v'chayei d'chol beit yisrael u'v'chol yoshvei tevel, b'agalah u'vizman kariv, v'imru: -- Amein.
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