This Man Riddled A Mosque With Bullet Holes. Now They’re Forgiving Him.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/04/04/3766326/mosque-forgives-shooter/

Just hours after a series of deadly terrorist attacks struck Paris, France, on November 13, 2015, Ted A. Hakey Jr. slipped deeper and deeper into a drunken rage. Convinced that Muslims were inherently dangerous and overcome with anger, the inebriated Hakey — a retired Marine and resident of Meridian, Connecticut — snapped. At around 2:00 a.m., he grabbed one of his high-powered rifles, pointed it out the window at a nearby mosque, and squeezed off several shots.

Many of the bullets pierced the wall of the Baitul Aman “House of Peace” mosque, leaving holes just feet from where worshippers sat a few hours earlier reading the Quran. The chilling episode was the first in an unprecedented wave of anti-Islam incidents that swept the country in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, with an ever-growing number of Muslim Americans falling victim to harassment, threats, and assaults on their houses of worship.

When we heard that it was our neighbor, we said, ‘where did we go wrong, not reaching out to our neighbors properly?

But if Hakey’s attack set in motion a rash of anti-Muslim violence and negativity, he and members of the Meridian Muslim community are hoping to usher in a second, stronger movement rooted in something very different: forgiveness and reconciliation between American Muslims and their neighbors.

After the shooting, police officers quickly arrested and charged Hakey with intentional destruction of religious property, which is classified as a federal hate crime. But soon after discovering evidence of the shooting, officials at the Baitul Aman — a mosque affiliated with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a subset of Islam that believes that a messiah has already come — offered their forgiveness to the then-unnamed shooter. When Baitul Aman outreach director Zahir Muhammad Mannan and others learned that the shooter lived next to their worship community, they were shocked — but remained focused on what they could do to be closer to their neighbors in the future.

“When we heard that it was our neighbor, we said, ‘Where did we go wrong, not reaching out to our neighbors properly?’” Mannan told ThinkProgress.

[Janelle2002 3,865]

We should all be so forgiving when someone does something to us. It's humbles us

[Jacque67 7,328]

We should all be so forgiving when someone does something to us. It's humbles us

I spend my free time forgiving peeps here on VJ! Aiming for sainthood by summer!

[elmcitymaven 9,712]

I can't forgive one thing about this, it's "Meriden," not "Meridian." Fire the editor!

[Janelle2002 3,865]

I spend my free time forgiving peeps here on VJ! Aiming for sainthood by summer!

Ow please. By the summer you'll be holier than Jesus.

[Jacque67 7,328]

Ow please. By the summer you'll be holier than Jesus.

Yeah, I aim to be able to walk over the ocean and chew the fat with Kim Jung-Un;)