We have watched, with sorrow but without surprise, the rising tide of rhetoric that paints Muslim Americans as strangers in their own country. We respond not with a counter-fear but with a reminder — to our neighbors, and to ourselves — of the duty the Prophet ﷺ placed upon us toward the neighbor, repeated until his companions thought the neighbor would be named an heir.
Words prepare deeds. The vocabulary of infestation and invasion has never, in any country or century, remained vocabulary for long. We call on public figures of every party to retire it; on platforms to decline to amplify it; and on communities of every faith to answer it the way fear is actually answered — by acquaintance, at table, across the fence line.
To congregations facing intimidation we offer what we have: our presence, our advocacy, and the witness of a tradition that met persecution with steadfastness for thirteen years before it was permitted any other reply. And to our own community we repeat the standing instruction of the Qur’an: repel evil with what is better, and watch enmity become friendship — slowly, unglamorously, and for good.