Whispers of Peace?

Today I was able to smile a bit brighter. This evening we had our winter concert at school and watching those beautiful faces earnestly singing, holding hands, beaming, I began to come out of the unpleasant reverie the horrific events of the past week had thrust me into.

The murder of Aqsa Parvez came at the heels of a weekend when I was witness to someone – a young person – being dragged to the middle of the road late at night by a large group of teens to be viciously assaulted. It was like seeing the tragedy of Omar Wellington playing out right in front of me. Except that this was in a tonier area and that it was in the aftermath of what looked like a massive house party breaking up, it could have very well been an almost exact replica of what I read about Omar.

I thank God that previous circumstances (including me being impatient at the time it took for my sister to come down from her condo as I sat waiting in my car) allowed me to be there and pick up my cell phone to call 911 and that the police and ambulance arrived almost within seconds (it so felt like that) and that there was not another Omar to hear about the next day.

Instead, on the very next day, I hear about Aqsa – a Toronto girl murdered by her father (allegedly). This was a Muslim family. From what her friends say, the girl had had arguments with her father about hijab previously. So despite there being a myriad of issues in this tragedy (the prevalence of domestic violence being one of them) most of the spin in the local media seems focused on the “clash of cultures” (Aqsa just wanted to be a “normal” girl while her father had other ideas) with Hijab being painted as a divisive issue between teenage girls and their families.

There’s too much on my mind when it comes to this story. Asmaa so eloquently sums up one portion of my thoughts on this with her post “How do you explain violence?”. Margari eloquently and painstakingly sums up another portion with her thoughts which end with a listing of organizations dealing with domestic violence.

I particularly have no patience for those who view this sad, sad story as an excuse to pull Islam down – is this all that can be done to honor Aqsa’s memory? The talk radios here are rehashing the “Is Multiculturalism Destroying Canada?” bit to the delight of Islamophobes. Aqsa was murdered by someone who turned to an act of violence – an act as ancient as Cain and Abel – to settle his disagreement; not someone who turned to the Quranic descriptions/injunctions of the mercy between a parent and child, between husband and wife, between believer and non-believer.

What a week – with a horrific beginning but, a faintly hopeful ending? I could not help thinking this as a I watched my students up there singing three songs – an Inuktitut one, a Hebrew one and a modified version of Dawud Wharnsby’s A Whisper of Peace:

A whisper of peace
Moving through the land
The world will surely run to us
If we hold out our hands
A word of hope
A call to every woman and man
A light until the end of time
This is As-Salaam.