What It Means - Day 24

Normally this is where I'd be featuring a Quranic passage of something from the Ahadith, but I'm also going to devote this process to talk about more general issues of being a Muslim. This posting will be short, but also meaningful in its own way.  Ever since the New Zealand mosque attack there has been even more fear inside of the Muslim world about attacks from Islamophobic extremists or just your basic run of the mill white supremacists (since they're essentially running the government now).  Immediately after the attack I was talking to my students I told them that I was anxious to get to the mosque later that day because, one, I had been out of town and missed a couple Friday prayers, but also because in the light of the shooting I felt that need to spend time with my brothers and sisters at the ISVT.  Truthfully, I was also interested in what I would find waiting for me upon my return. I told a student that I thought there'd be a police presence and maybe even some representatives of other religious organizations to lend their support or maybe even to ceremonially surround the mosque to act as a human shield (even if only a symbolic one). As it turns out I was right on the former prediction and less so on the latter.  That said, there were a lot of cards and flowers in the front from other churches and synagogues in the state, which was greatly appreciated.  It was reassuring to have some police both inside and outside of the mosque, although obviously also heartbreaking. By the next week that was reduced to one officer sitting in his patrol car outside, but that's still a nice gesture.  Every time it happens I go out of my way to go thank each of the officers personally, although I tend to do that anyway; while I'm always one of the first person to call out instances of police brutality or to point out that militarization of the police I do still appreciate the times that they go above and beyond. Since then we've also changed the doors on the mosque.  We were told it was because of a couple break-ins where someone plundered the donation box of a grand total of around $20.  While that's no doubt true, I wonder if there are greater security concerns present as well.  It's a scary age when you have to be afraid to go pray at whatever your religious institution is. Trump has so unabashedly and so unashamedly appealed to racism and Islamophobia in his increasingly radicalized base that this is only going to get worse.