In Theory: What can we learn from #illridewithyou?

Last week, self-proclaimed Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis took 17 people hostage in a café in Sydney, Australia. After a 16-hour standoff, during which Monis reportedly demanded to speak with Prime Minister Tony Abbott and have an Islamic State flag brought to the café, police stormed the café upon hearing gunshots. When the situation resolved, three people were dead, including Monis.

During the crisis, a social-media campaign went viral in the form of the hashtag #illridewithyou. The hashtag was started by Sydney television editor Tessa Kum, who witnessed a Muslim woman on a train take off her hijab out of fear of retaliation.

The #illridewithyou hashtag grew from there, as a show of support for Muslims fearing reprisal.

Q: What is your take on the social-media campaign? What can we learn from the incident, as well as the online response?

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Since I am not on any social media (Is the Internet part of social media? I really don’t know), I won’t comment on that aspect of the story. I do have a computer — obviously — and I do send emails. But I’m not on Twitter, Facebook or any of the others.

Regarding the woman removing her hijab — how sad! She has to be feeling some guilt in denying who she is, but I can’t blame her. I have some Muslim friends in La Cañada, and they wear Western dress. Would doing so be possible for other Muslims? I can understand being torn, but I am also familiar with the old saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

I also have some Jewish friends, and they have always tried to fit in. They would never deny their ethnicity or their faith, but they really try to fit in. Why don’t more Muslims do the same? Forgive me if I seem chauvinistic or prejudiced; I don’t mean to be. But in today’s climate, why try to stick out as different? A Muslim has every right to dress as he or she wants, but sometimes wisdom is the better part of valor. Would you purposely wear a red shirt and run through a pasture where you knew there was a raging bull? Would you purposely wear a swastika to a Passover Seder?

In my opinion, in these days when we are all talking about our rights, how about if we think beyond ourselves and think about how we can lessen the negative impact we have on others? As the late Rodney King said after he was beaten, “Can’t we all just get along?” Let us try, and let us try to think of others instead of always thinking of ourselves.

The Rev. Skip Lindeman
La Cañada Congregational Church
La Cañada Flintridge

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As one who regularly wears religious garb and has had to remove it for fear of violence, I feel strongly that violence against any innocents should never be allowed to occur. The lives of those created by Elohim (God) are the most precious entities on Earth.

Given what occurred in Australia, as well as other similar situations where innocent lives were taken by people claiming to be acting in the name of Allah, and the lack of strongly worded condemnations, reprisals may be inevitable. Perhaps the reprisals would end or be severely limited if a number of Muslim leaders throughout the world would condemn the killing of innocents. If a leader would emerge who would categorically deny the indiscriminate killing of innocents as have many Christian, Jewish and Buddhist clergy when it was their co-religionists who were responsible, it surely would make a difference. Instead of trying to apologize away the meaning of Jihad as an intellectual endeavor and not a physical one, they could quote the Koran, Sura 5:69,”Those who believe (in the Koran), those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), the Sabians and the Christians, any who believe in Allah (Elohim in Hebrew) and the Last Day and work righteousness, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” (“The Koran,” translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali). The parentheses are mine.

How much grief have the families of innocent Jewish, Christian and fellow Muslim families felt as a result of extremist violence? How much have these killers of innocents brought terror and fear to the populace of the world? How long will the leadership of the Islamic world remain silent? The longer there is silence, then that much longer innocent people will be afraid to wear religious garb in public for fear of being made a further victim of religious violence.

If you truly believe in Sura 5:69 and Leviticus 20, “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” then you have no alternative but to allow all people to be free of fear and of grief.

Rabbi Mark Sobel
Temple Beth Emet
Burbank

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My take is that I am pretty much left behind by the social media world at this point. I know about the #illridewithyou campaign via the bundles of newsprint, which a faithful courier tosses into our driveway around dawn, every day.

Fortunately, a medium now in its fifth century, print journalism, seems to be doing its usual thorough, thoughtful, and entertaining job covering the phenomena of people spreading news, opinion, gossip and all manner of other chit-chat, pictures and sounds via their electronic devices.

So even though I am a nonparticipant other than occasionally visiting Facebook to spy on my daughters — in a loving way of course — I applaud the use of social media to create what the organizers describe as “a practical and symbolic show of an inclusive, supportive, united Australia.”

But too often what I read about the use of social media is the reverse. Here is what journalist Jim Dwyer said about the online reaction to the recent killing of two NYPD officers: “To look upon social media now is to see a river of rage, a contempt for racial others and political others that is raw or scarcely disguised.”

I worry that this so-called social media isn’t really very social. It may be that true sociability requires some basis in direct human contact. Look how easy it can be to miscommunicate on email, especially with people we don’t know well. Emoticons can’t replace nuances of facial expression and tone of voice.

Years ago I swore off reading online comments on newspaper articles. The ignorance and venom, even by people I agree with, is just too depressing.

I know though that you are reading this right now on your various gizmos, so I can only hope that airing these very different opinions promotes understanding, not further division.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

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We can all be incredibly sympathetic with the seventeen hostages who were rounded up by self-proclaimed Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis and held for 16 hours in a Sydney cafe, not knowing whether they would live or die. And three people, including the perpetrator of this madness, were dead, along with number of others who were injured, by the end of the standoff.

The person who orchestrated this horrible event must have been filled with all kinds of volatile emotions. But I doubt if many of us feel compassion for him. A problem was that some people in Sydney evidently made the leap from blaming this one Muslim for the terrible actions to blaming all Muslims. In fact, many Muslims in the city reported incidents with local residents that made them fear for their lives. It is the kind of stereotyping that we saw in some places in our country after 9/11, and it is not OK.

But then Tessa Kum and some other young people in Sydney used technology to turn the tide. By means of a tweet organizing a message called #illridewithyou hashtag, they offered support to Muslims who were afraid of going around in the city. And many others picked it up. Hashtags are a tool that are totally foreign to me, but I am so glad to hear of this innovative way to combat prejudice and violent behavior. I just hope that those of us who do not have the same forms of technological savvy will be able to find our own ways of creating peace and compassion in the world.

In this season and throughout the year, people of faith, whatever their religious tradition, need to find all the ways they can to practice love. May it be so.

Rev. Dr. Betty Stapleford
Unitarian Universalist Church of the Verdugo Hills
La Crescenta