Inshallah & The Creek Don't Rise

• I have thoughts about the Charlie Kirk assassination

  CONTENT WARNING: Graphic language, descriptions of violenceSocial media and traditional media alike are buzzing with discourse about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Most of the discourse I’ve seen seems to focus on Charlie Kirk’s character and hand-wringing about political violence. I see all the signs of classic online discourse - people present their hot take and then defend it against detractors.I have seen very little conversation so far that goes deeper and considers, whatever your hot take is, what is the ethical framework you are using to reach that conclusion? What is the worldview that informs your belief? And how does your position serve some kind of strategy about building the world you would like to see? In other words, the bigger questions about ethics and strategy. I often find that conversations on social media fail to examine ethics and strategy. I think this is one of the reasons why social media discourse frequently fails us, leaving us with in-group jargon and sectarian talking points, but not much of a holistic understanding of our neighbors’ worldviews or strategies to solve problems.I would like to see us collectively discuss: what are the ethical frameworks and worldviews that say the assassination of Charlie Kirk is justified? What are the ethical frameworks and worldviews that say his killing is not justified? I would also like to see us discuss: What is politically strategic about the assassination of Charlie Kirk? And what are the strategic pitfalls of the assassination of Charlie Kirk?I ask these questions not as some sort of intellectual “gotcha.” I don’t have the “right answer” either. This is not me pushing up my glasses and going “well, actually…” I ask these questions because I think they are unfortunately very relevant to our current trajectory as a society. I think we are headed into times where more deadly violence is going to happen. I think we will continue to be in the position of responding to violent attacks and, potentially, weighing whether to participate in violence. I think these are questions that people who are in community with each other should discuss. Whoever’s fate is intertwined with yours when the proverbial s**t hits the fan…we should talk about this stuff. Now. We should start working through some of the differences we have about these issues. I care about ethics and strategy because I think it’s going to matter.In this essay I’d like to offer some potential answers to my own questions, not necessarily as an exposé about my own beliefs, but as examples of what a deeper discussion could yield.Off the top of my head, here are some ethical frameworks or worldviews that might justify the assassination of Charlie Kirk:Let’s start with the “violence against fascists is justified” argument. This is the idea that you cannot defeat fascists with persuasion. Whether the violence is in the future or now, it really only is violence or the adequate threat of violence that reigns them in, so the argument goes.There is the argument that fascism is distinct from most other “political differences” or “differences of opinion.” A comedian and influencer named Mohawk Johnson recently posted a video on Instagram articulating this exact point. Mohawk Johnson states:“Instead of saying ‘Charlie Kirk had ideologies or beliefs that I don’t agree with but that doesn’t mean he deserves to die,’ I want you to say what the beliefs are…Don’t be vague…I want you to hear yourselves. And if you still feel that way, fine. But instead of saying Charlie Kirk had different beliefs, say, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that gay people deserve to be stoned to death, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.’ Say that. Type it in the comment section. Type, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that the Civil Rights movement was a mistake, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.’ Say, ‘Charlie Kirk said that women aren’t good for anything but breeding and they don’t deserve human rights, but I don’t believe he deserved to die.’ Say the stuff he said. Say, ‘Charlie Kirk believed that it was okay that children died from gun violence, because as long as we got to have the Second Amendment that was the price we have to pay, but I don’t believe he deserved to die.’ Say, ‘Charlie Kirk called for public executions…and said that we should bring children to those executions, but I don’t believe he deserved to die…Say the s**t he said, and if you still believe it, fine. But say what the f**k he believed instead of hiding behind the word ‘belief.’”I don’t know how Mohawk Johnson would describe his own worldview. But there is a worldview which argues that the battle with fascism is not really a “sectarian” conflict, it’s not a conflict between social groups that somehow need to find a way to co-exist in the end. It sees fascism as an existential threat. Now and always. This worldview argues that we need to get over any squeamishness about killing fascists and recognize that it is a justifiable form of violence. This ethical framework says: If you’re okay with “historical” versions of fighting fascism, you need to understand you are living through history right now. Another rise of fascism is here and now.Then there is the “oppressed groups will strike back” argument. This line of thinking goes that if you publicly call for certain groups of people to be harmed or killed, then it should be no surprise if someone is violent towards you as an act of preservation and protection. Threatened people defend themselves. Oppressed people eventually lash out. There’s only so far you can push people until they push back. This is nothing new and no cause for pearl-clutching, so the argument goes.Then there is the argument that “people in positions of power are fair game for political violence.” This ethical framework asserts that “ordinary people” or “civilians” should not be targeted for killing, no matter how abhorrent their personal worldviews are, but people in power are acceptable targets. It’s why someone might believe it is fair game to kill Charlie Kirk but not the college students who came to listen to him. It is the ethical bedrock beneath the idea that even oppressed people have the moral responsibility of picking the right targets for their resistance. Slave owners, imperial officers, politicians, cops, corporate executives, soldiers, prison guards, domestic abusers, militias…these people wield direct power over life and death and therefore their life and death is fair game. This argument does not justify assassination for “thought crimes” but rather for “power crimes.” It’s not so much that a target deserves death for their personal beliefs but rather because of their positions of power. This worldview acknowledges the reality that plenty of oppressed people also hold views that are misogynistic, homophobic, or prejudiced towards another ethnic, religious, or racial group. This worldview holds the ethical line that you don’t kill people for being wrong, you kill them for being powerful and dangerous.And to that point, propagandists are sometimes considered powerful and dangerous, and have been punished for their use of that power, even if their influence over life and death is more indirect. One prominent example is the radio DJs who were successfully prosecuted for their role in the Rwandan genocide. Charlie Kirk could certainly be viewed as something of a radio DJ for white Christian nationalism.Off the top of my head, here are some ways that one might view the assassination of Charlie Kirk as strategic:Some people might believe that it is time to give a warning to fascists, to let them know it is possible to kill them.Others might believe in the strategy of using assassinations to inspire insurrection. This strategy is less about proving a point to the enemy and more so about proving a point to the populace - “You can fight back.” The strategy has historical precedent. Assassinations of imperial officials helped spur decolonization in many countries. Assassinations of British officers in India come to mind in particular.But this is also the logic behind the “accelerationist” perspective on the far right. This might be a good moment to mention that the exact political orientation of Charlie Kirk’s assassin is still unclear. Early media reports labelled him as left-wing “antifa” based on what was found written on his bullet casings, but other people have asserted that the bullet casings were references to alt-right memes and that he might be a “groyper.” For those who are unfamiliar, “groypers” are a faction of the far right led by influencers like Nick Fuentes, who believe in “accelerating” a race war, and who frequently viewed Charlie Kirk as being too mainstream. We don’t know the killer’s true motives at this point in time, but we can still safely state that multiple political perspectives may view assassinations as a strategy to foment insurrection.Off the top of my head, here are some ethical frameworks and worldviews that might say the assassination of Charlie Kirk is not justified:One such perspective is that “many people deserve to die but we do not deserve to become their executioners.” This is a point of view that I see articulated by death penalty abolitionists in particular. These activists often acknowledge that there will always be crimes so heinous that death feels fair - but do we deserve to become their executioners? As individuals and as a society, do we deserve to take on that moral injury to our own humanity?Earlier this year I had the unique experience of talking down a teenage boy who intended to kidnap and kill the man who raped his mother. Our conversation focused on exactly this point - maybe the man did deserve to die, but the boy did not deserve to become a killer. Thankfully, the boy changed his mind and decided to seek justice and support his mother in other ways.Recently, I was struck by the case of Brian Dorsey, a man who was executed in Missouri in April of 2024. Dorsey had killed two people in a drug-fueled rage in 2006. He was not innocent. But a diverse array of people, including people who are not ordinarily death penalty abolitionists, advocated for his life to be spared. Apparently he had undergone a transformation in jail to such an extent that prison staff viewed killing him as “pointless cruelty.” The pleas from the prison staff to halt his execution were exactly this argument - “Don’t make us become killers.”This argument also points to the example of Shalom Nagar, a man who was the final prison guard and eventual executioner of Adolf Eichmann, one of the primary Nazi architects of the Holocaust. Eichmann did not experience any transformation while imprisoned in Israel and remained unrepentant to the end. But Nagar was still profoundly traumatized by the experience of being his jailer and killer. His bond with Eichmann was bizarrely intimate - Nagar was tasked with eating the first few bites of Eichmann’s food at every meal to make sure Eichmann was not being poisoned. The two spent 24-hour shifts together in incredibly close quarters, usually mere feet away from each other. Nagar, at the age of 26, begged to be spared from the task of executing Eichmann, telling Israeli authorities that he was not capable of hanging anyone, even an unrepentant Nazi. But his superiors made their orders clear, and he was chosen to complete the task. Eichmann refused a blindfold and looked Nagar in the eyes as he pulled the trapdoor. Nagar was then tasked with taking down Eichmann’s body, wrapping it in sheets, and pushing it on a stretcher into an oven for cremation. Taking down the body involved lifting Eichmann’s head which drove trapped air out of the body in a booming cry. Nagar broke down, shaking all over, and was unable to put Eichmann’s body in the oven. The experience gave him nightmares and terrors for years.Not everyone who kills another human being is an executioner. Some people are just survivors. Take the case of Joan Little, a Black woman from North Carolina who killed a white prison guard while he was threatening her with an ice pick and sexually assaulting her. Joan Little stood trial for murder in 1975 but was acquitted. Joan Little survived her attack by taking a life, but I suspect the psychological experience was very different from that of a pre-meditated execution. Not all killing creates the same type of moral injury.Even some types of pre-meditated murder do not appear to damage people’s humanity. I think of the teenage girl Nazi assassins during WWII as a prime example. Throughout Europe there were these assassin cells made up of teenage girls that were instrumental in resistance to Nazi occupations, using their easy access to Nazi officials to conduct covert assassinations. When I was in Serbia in 2019, I had the honor of meeting a woman who had been part of one of these teenage girl assassin cells during WWII. Her granddaughter was in the process of interviewing the few teenage girl Nazi assassins who were still alive. These interviews painted a picture that, while the whole of WWII was traumatic, obviously, the act of killing Nazis did not appear to cause the same kind of “moral injury” to these girls as the execution of Eichmann later caused to Shalom Nagar.If I had to guess, I would guess that, even though war involves pre-meditated murder of your opponents, people who face invaders often have moral clarity about the war they are fighting: “these are the enemy combatants, they are armed and dangerous, we have no choice but to fight in order to defend our lives and homes,” etc. etc. etc. War is hell no matter what, but sometimes you don’t have a choice - hell simply arrives on your doorstep. It appears to be a different experience for us humans when we willfully kill a person who is an active threat, compared to when we willfully kill a person who has been neutralized, who stands before us no longer armed and dangerous but instead bound in chains. Things change when a soldier from the battlefield becomes a prisoner of war.Or, as the case may be, perhaps we experience moral injury when we willfully kill a person whose rhetoric calls for violence against others but has never wielded a weapon other than words, a person who is the PR for violence rather than the violence itself. In this worldview, maybe Charlie Kirk did deserve death, but we do not deserve to become his executioners. Maybe the Tucker Carlsons, Glenn Becks, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaughs, and Joe Rogans of the world don’t deserve life, but we do not deserve to carry the burden of their deaths.Another perspective says, yes, some people in positions of power might be fair game for death. But deciding at what proximity to power the penalty of death kicks in is actually extremely difficult, and people who pretend it is simple are fooling themselves. One need only look to revolutions in Cuba, China, Russia, France, and Cambodia to see that many people have grappled with this question: how close did you have to be to power to be purged? No one ideology has asked this question either, this has been a reality faced by all different flavors of regimes and rebellions. Syria seems to be in the middle of asking itself these questions right now with the recent toppling of the Assad regime and the installation of former militants as the ruling party. Truth and reconciliation efforts after wars and genocides have also dealt with these questions - just think of the lengthy reckonings that happened in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Colombia, for example. When a war or genocide sweeps up an entire society, who gets punished and how? Do beliefs and rhetoric count? Or does only the body count count? Which words and which actions are considered crimes? Who is a civilian and who is a combatant?This is a worldview that is able to distinguish between different types of political violence. It is a worldview that can speak to the incredibly human reasons why those teenage girls in WWII had a different experience killing Nazis than Shalom Nagar had in an Israeli prison some decades later. Or why Joan Little was no executioner for killing her rapist, but the teenage boy I spoke to would have become one had he killed his mother’s rapist.This ethical framework or worldview might urge caution - do not believe it is easy to draw the line about who deserves death and who deserves life. Do not hasten putting yourself in that position. Be careful what you wish for. Urge caution when it comes to meting out death. Outside of direct self-defense and “just” war, those decisions can cause tremendous moral injury and trauma, and potentially damage collective humanity when permitted on a large enough scale.Off the top of my head, these are some of the potential strategic pitfalls of the assassination of Charlie Kirk:One argument might be that killing people as a way to try and kill ideas rarely works. This argument might point out that killing the propagandist accomplishes very little unless you topple the “regime” that the propaganda is serving. You cannot kill ideas, you can only defeat oppressors until they no longer have any power to oppress. Sometimes this involves violence, like civil war or revolution. But it doesn’t always take violence to make certain regimes, political parties, or extremist movements crumble. There’s no one way to achieve this tactical defeat, this rendering of a political movement as ineffectual or obsolete. You can’t actually get rid of what they think you can just make sure they don’t have any ability to do, so the argument goes.But in this line of thinking, a person like Charlie Kirk did not have the right type of power for his targeting to be strategic. The power of white Christian nationalism, the ability of that belief system to build an even stronger apparatus of power, has not been altered by Kirk’s death, one might argue. One might argue that killing Charlie Kirk has not hurt their infrastructure of power at all and that their ability to do has not been undercut.This line of thinking also ties into the idea that media personalities and activists who are killed often turn into martyrs. They are often the public face of an ideology, the object for people’s emotional attachment and investment in the cause. Their deaths often play out differently than people in other positions of power, like, perhaps, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, who almost no one has turned into a martyr.Some also may question the strategy of trying to hasten an insurrection in the U.S., pointing towards arguments that the general population is not organized enough yet for that to make sense. Or who may want to exhaust other strategies before opening the gates to the hell that is war. Those who open those gates can’t always control what comes through.Time to log offOkay, time to put down the phone and go talk to people. I asked the questions I wanted to ask. My own off-the-dome answers to those questions are by no means exhaustive. I hope you can think of plenty more. I also hope that reading this essay has felt different for your heart and body than consuming social media content about this exact same topic. I hope this space was one where you could think and feel freely and where listening was not threatening. My hope is that, no matter where your train of thought is at, you will take it offline and talk with the people who are shoulder-to-shoulder with you. Ethics and strategy matter. Talk about this stuff now. This is not the last we will see of it.—Episode image is undated photo of women Yugoslav Partisans, WWII This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

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• The Bullet From Behind

  A concert I was scheduled to play in Glencoe, IL sparked backlash due to my stances on Palestine. The day of the concert and the aftermath proved an interesting case study in the politics of outrage, conflict, and "the bullet from behind." This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

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• This Eid I Wore a Crocheted Shawl

  This weekend Muslims around the world celebrated Eid Al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice. Over the years my relationship to this holiday has grown deeper and my understanding of the story that inspires it has blossomed. But it’s a challenging one, one that required a lot of working through before something finally clicked.This essay is an attempt to share what I’ve learned from Eid Al-Adha with a broader audience. Many hearts are troubled these days and looking for sources of courage. I hope to walk you through my understanding of the Eid Al-Adha story and tie it to our present moment in the world. For Muslims, I hope it enlivens your connection to this tradition. For everyone, I hope you take some inspiration, and that you feel more connected to the stories and people in your life who help you face the biggest, hardest questions.This whole essay series, this whole Inshallah & The Creek Don’t Rise project, it’s all about the power of story. And the reality that many communities are facing crises at the same time. And that we need to tell our stories. And that we need each other. Today, we’ll touch on all of these themes through the story of Eid Al-Adha.First, let me tell you about Eid Al-Adha and how my understanding of it has evolved. For some of you, talking about the Quran may be familiar, for others of you, this may be a very strange, new experience. Thanks for diving in. Just remember, every culture has its stories, and every culture can get stuck within its own stories. But some storytellers are able to breathe new life into a story and help their people grow and heal. That’s what we’re trying to do here, inshallah.For those who are unfamiliar, Eid Al-Adha revolves around a story that is shared in both the Quran and the Old Testament: the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, has a vision that he is commanded to sacrifice his son. In the Quranic version of the story, Ibrahim tells his son about the vision and the son submits willingly to the sacrifice. But God intervenes, provides a ram to sacrifice instead, and blesses them both for their virtue. For Muslims, Eid Al-Adha tends to be a somber, serious festival that celebrates the willingness to sacrifice and unshakeable faith.If this story about Ibrahim and his son causes some discomfort, you’re not alone. It raises a lot of hard questions: “What kind of faith would reward the willingness to commit human sacrifice for no apparent reason?” or “What kind of parent is praised as being virtuous because he became convinced God wants him to murder his child?” Plenty of Muslims ask these questions as well. It’s one of these really, really, really old stories that is hard to grapple with in the modern day, in no small part because of how much damage has been done by religion and people with religious power. Celebrating the idea of religious obedience can get real dicey. But that’s not the only way to understand the story.My first breakthrough about the Eid Al-Adha story came from my experience facilitating the Quran Study at Masjid Al-Rabia from 2018-2020. Masjid Al-Rabia was an Islamic community center in Chicago focused on the needs of marginalized Muslims. Many people who came to Masjid Al-Rabia had been abused in the past and had religion used to justify this abuse. Many came to our Quran Study hoping to work through that trauma and rebuild a relationship to their identity and faith tradition, whether that meant becoming a practicing Muslim again, or simply having a new appreciation for the beauty of their identity, free from the control of their former abusers, free to heal as they chose. The Eid Al-Adha story was always a tricky one. Many people who had experienced abuse being justified by religion found this story troubling and alienating. If the takeaway message of this story is obedience to the point of self-sacrifice, or obedience to the point of committing murder, that sounds a whole lot like real abuse that real people have suffered.In working through this story at Masjid Al-Rabia, I started to really zoom in on the fact that both Ibrahim and his son are described in the Quran as being gentle-hearted. The story begins with Ibrahim having a vision that he kills his son, but to me this sounds more like a nightmare. And Ibrahim, the gentle-hearted man, shares this nightmare with his son and asks what he thinks - “What do you see?” Ibrahim asks (37:102). The gentle-hearted son responds that he believes his father should do as he is commanded and says, “You will find me, God willing, among those who are patient” (37:102). But God intervenes and provides a ram to sacrifice instead.Something about the detail of these people being gentle-hearted cracked the whole story open for me in a new way. I was touched by imagining this as an intimate conversation between a father and son who are close confidants. Ibrahim and his son began to feel so much more like ordinary people. I began to imagine this story as a tale about a very gentle-hearted and loving person having a nightmare about the worst thing that he could ever imagine: being asked to kill the son that he loves. And he confides in his son about what is probably the worst thing the son could ever imagine too - having violence done to him by the father who he loves. Then the father and the son grapple with this nightmare together, affirm their trust in God, and conclude that they would both do what was needed, if that’s what it came to.This is where I really started seeing this story more as a representation of a deeper truth rather than a literal model of what obedience should look like. What is this deeper meaning? For me, this became a story of two gentle-hearted people trying to remain steadfast even as their worst nightmare is coming true. And I also see that the Divine’s main role in this story is intervening and stopping the nightmare from occurring and blessing these two people for their pureness of heart in the face of the unfathomable.In our Quran Study at Masjid Al-Rabia, I think it was far easier to feel kinship to Ibrahim and his son when we thought of them as representing ordinary and kind-hearted people facing their worst nightmare together. Perhaps in the case of this story, the worst nightmare is having to kill one’s own son, or having violence done to you by a family member. But in our discussions we connected this story to a whole range of things, whatever any of us might consider to be our worst nightmare. And what we chose to take from the story was not that we should practice unquestioning obedience, but more that we should ask ourselves - how do good people respond when their worst nightmare is coming true, or the most ultimate sacrifice is asked of them? We began to see the story as an invitation to ponder - What happens when ordinary people are confronted with no other option? When the end of the road comes, what would we give of our life, our livelihood, our liberty, or our love? What would we sacrifice in a situation in which our worst nightmare was coming true?In our Quran study at Masjid Al-Rabia, we started to reclaim this story as being a call to pureness of heart in the face of the unfathomable, not a call to commit the unfathomable. We realized we did not have to see this story as, “You should be willing to kill your kid if you think God is telling you to,” or “You have to let your dad do whatever he wants to you if he tells you it’s what God wants.” Instead, we chose to let the story ask us: “How would you respond if your worst nightmare was coming true?” We were proof that the Eid story does not have to be a call for religious fanaticism, obedience to the death, and pointless suffering. We chose gentle-hearted, poignant, and intimate questions about ultimate sacrifice instead.This was the first breakthrough* I had about Eid Al-Adha while working at Masjid Al-Rabia. But I had another breakthrough recently, this past Ramadan, when I heard someone tell an extremely powerful story and thought to myself: “This is the real-life, present day version of the Eid story. This person’s story describes exactly what I’ve been trying to take away from the Eid story for years.” The person who I met, who I heard tell their story, was Marcellus Williams Jr., the son of Imam Khalifah Williams.Imam Khalifah Williams was wrongly executed in Missouri in September 2024. The campaign for his life to be spared garnered international attention. Even the prosecutor who had originally sought the death penalty fought for Imam Khalifah’s life to be spared. During Ramadan this year, I got to hear and meet Marcellus Williams Jr., his son. His son spoke about his father’s profound faith and unwavering bravery in the face of his fate. Imam Khalifah was a devout Muslim. His last words were, “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation.” He frequently made the traditional du’a (prayer), “If life is good for me, give me life. If death is good for me, give me death.” He gave advice to others on death row: “I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be okay, I’m going to tell you God carries you through all things.” He was a spiritual advisor to many, both inside and outside prison walls, and corresponded with hundreds of people. Close to his death, he wrote a poem about “The perplexing smiles of the children of Palestine,” and how the persistence of their smiles even in the face of genocide strengthened his faith. According to his son, he went to his death peacefully, even telling the prison guards, “Let’s go, let’s do this.” On the execution gurney, Imam Khalifah was dressed in a white robe and had his arms crossed over his chest, the position Muslims take for prayer. From the death chamber, he checked on his son repeatedly, asking if he was okay, asking if he needed to leave. His son stayed.In the case of the nightmare that this father and son faced, the roles were reversed. It was the son who watched his father be laid down to die, and it was his father who went willingly. But I can think of no better example of what the Eid Al-Adha story is really about for me, and what it is that gentle-hearted Muslims all around the world are truly yearning for by celebrating this festival. There is something within our faith tradition that calls us to the type of dignity, grace, and bravery that Imam Khalifah and Marcellus Williams Jr. showed. I see Imam Khalifah and Marcellus Jr. as walking in the footsteps of this sacred story they both held dear. This is the pinnacle of faith that many Muslims aspire to, and which moves the hearts of many, regardless of religious background.But of course it’s not just Muslims who can possess astounding dignity, grace, and bravery in the face of doom. No one culture or faith tradition has ownership over any of these traits. People from all backgrounds show the tremendous beauty of the human spirit in unthinkable circumstances. And ever since I had this breakthrough after listening to Marcellus Williams Jr., I’ve been finding the core human truth of the Eid Al-Adha story everywhere I look.One of the very first people to teach me about the human spirit was a woman who I’ll call Mrs. E. She was a Lutheran elder in my hometown in Indiana, and when I was maybe about 12 years old, she came to tell me and other children about her story. When Mrs. E was a child, she witnessed her family be murdered. She was hiding behind the couch and watched them be killed. In a few horrific moments, she became totally alone in the world. But Mrs. E was not there to tell us about the horror. She was there to tell us about how in the aftermath of this trauma, she discovered that she is never alone. She discovered love. And not just any love, but what she understood as God’s love, the sense of being held in something so much greater than herself, something that is always loving and ever-present. When I was a little older, about 15 years old, I went through some very difficult times with my health. Mrs. E crocheted me a shawl that I could wear in the hospital to remind me that I too am held in love at all times. To go through something like Mrs. E went through and have it turn you into a more gentle and loving person - this is exactly what our Eid story is about, as I now understand it.In October of 2023, I was working at the health clinic of the Inner-city Muslim Action Network on the southwest side of Chicago where many staff and patients are Palestinian. As bombs began to rain down on Gaza, one of our colleagues lost 24 members of her family in a single night. Many of our patients came into their appointments distraught about current events, regardless of whether or not they were Palestinian. As a team, we talked about these very same questions - “How do you respond when someone’s worst nightmare is actually coming true?”So much wisdom was present in the room, and many people shared perspectives that strengthened all of us. Personally, I shared about my time in 2019-2022 working with an underground railroad for LGBTQ+ people fleeing Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The work sometimes involved staying on the phone with people as they made incredibly dangerous feats, like making a run for it from a safe house, or crossing a militarized border, or navigating human traffickers and militias and armies and vengeful families. It meant talking to people who knew they could die at any moment. And unfortunately, some people did not make it. One young man was cornered and killed by the Taliban in real time on the phone with someone from the railroad.Mercifully, no one that I worked with died while on their journey, but I was involved for some incredibly close encounters with death. What do you say in moments like these? You say, “I’m still here. Listen to my voice. I’m here with you. I’ll stay with you.” You say, “God loves you, so so much. We love you, so so much.” You say it over and over again. You say, “We will tell your story no matter what. We remember you always.” I shared this with my colleagues at the clinic just to say: even in the face of nightmare, you can still bear witness, you can still help carry someone’s story onward, and you can always remind others of love. You can be as peaceful as Ibrahim’s son. You can be Mrs. E’s crocheted shawl with your voice, holding someone in love, no matter what.We never know when we may be called upon to respond to nightmare, and what we might find within ourselves in the process. Last month I had the opportunity to meet some organizers from a community group called ROAR. The group is based in the remote mountains of North Carolina and were suddenly thrust into doing emergency response work when Hurricane Helene tore through Appalachia. One of the things that stuck with me from the conversation with ROAR was all the stories of how ordinary people rescued one another. People chose the hard, brave path of going back into the flood waters to rescue neighbors who were stranded on their rooftops, watching the waters rise, unsure whether anyone would come to save them. ROAR’s stories carried the incredible intimacy of those moments - the thoughts, the facial expressions, the words, shared amongst people in their moments of doom, watching the waters close in on them. The grit and resolve of people in the boats determined to save even one more life. And then all the emotions that flow when rescuer and rescued meet. These are moments that are so incredibly vulnerable and raw. These are moments filled with awe and wonder and near-death trauma and the overwhelming force of life.Now when I celebrate Eid Al-Adha, personally, I am celebrating the awful, wonderful intimacy of those moments when people respond to nightmare. From ancient stories to today, I am cherishing the beauty within people’s hearts that is revealed in the ugliest of times. I yearn to echo the words of Ibrahim’s son: “You will find me, God willing, among the people who are patient,” whatever nightmare may be lying in wait. I am fiercely proud of the incredible human beings whose dignity, grace, and bravery in the face of doom are beacons for all humanity. No matter their background and culture. And I am summoned by the story of Eid Al-Adha not to accept needless suffering justified by authority, but rather to consider what sacrifices I would be willing to make in the darkest hour. We pray for such times to pass us over, but when they find us, what is the state of our hearts?We are in troubling times. We need people like Imam Khalifah and Mrs. E and the perplexing smiles of children in Palestine and neighbors with a rowboat to show us the astounding capabilities of our own hearts. We must call one another to extraordinary feats of love, bravery that moves mountains, and peace that defies explanation. We need tools to respond to nightmare with unflinching beauty.This Eid Al-Adha, I wore the shawl that Mrs. E crocheted.—*In 2020 I presented at an Eid Al-Adha halaqa (study group) with Receiving Nur about this very breakthrough. You can listen to that presentation here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

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• "please look."

  Watch the video version here.Gather around children, it’s story time. [Hi, Sweetpea (the cat).]Okay, story time. So I grew up in a small town in Indiana called Bloomington. And in 1968, I believe, there was a firebombing of a Black-owned bookstore. And after the firebombing, the original owners of the bookstore dedicated the lot where their store had been to become “People's Park.” And they worked with the city to designate the lot as a park that was for the people, by the people, of the people, and wrote it into the deed or agreement to ensure that the People's Park would be open to all people. So, fast forward to my childhood. I grew up during a period of time in Indiana where we were seeing waves of both the meth epidemic and the opioid epidemic. We were also seeing the economic downfall of so much of rural and small town America. We were also seeing nationwide and worldwide wealth inequality get worse. We were also seeing housing crises get worse. I mean, it was everything all at once. And so homelessness in the area skyrocketed. Not only that, but because Bloomington was a university town and hypothetically had more resources, more social organizations, things like that, small towns elsewhere in Indiana would buy people on the street bus tickets and send them to Bloomington. Rather than face their own people who are hurting and suffering within their own communities, they would to send them to Bloomington. But even the resources that we had in Bloomington got overwhelmed, because when the entire state sends people, it wasn't actually a solution. Anyway, unsurprisingly, because People's Park was open to everybody, there were lots of people who lived in People's Park. This wasn't the only place where homelessness was occurring, where there were tents, where there were people living, but People's Park became kind of a focus point. And it also became symbolic because around People's Park there was a bunch of gentrification happening in this university town. People's Park was very close by to the university. And so as we're seeing all of these compounding social crises and homelessness on the rise in Bloomington, People's Park became this area where the state (as in like the city government and the cops, just the government in general) really started to be aggressive about social cleansing. It was sort of like, “we can't have these two things so close to each other,” right? “We can't have this big push at gentrification happening right next to this really high concentration of people hurting in these particular ways.”This was all over town. Encampments started to get swept and the aggression and violence increased, which doesn't solve anything. But the more that people were pushed from place to place in town and kicked out of People's Park, people would get shunted into the woods. But this is where things really turned dark and violent. Because once people were invisibilized in the woods, that's where violence against homeless people really could kick off. And that people could get away with it. And there's been a series of homeless encampments deep in the woods being set on fire. My understanding is that there's a variety of people who have done this. Some off-duty cops and also just some right-wing vigilante types. [Bye, Sweet Pea (the cat).] Yeah, uh pouring accelerant on homeless encampments and setting them on fire in the woods. And as this started to happen, it meant that people understood: once the homeless encampments get successfully broken up in town, the alternative in the woods is so much worse. And so much darker. And people aren't gonna make it out alive. So people increased their defense of homeless encampments in town, resisting sweeps, resisting having the encampments dismantled.And there was a showdown at People's Park - I remember - in 2017, right before I moved away. Where again, people understood this was sort of like the last line of defense. And a prison guard plowed his car through the people who had gathered at People's Park to try to defend it from a sweep. Yeah. He plowed his car through the crowd. He missed me by about that much and took the person right next to me. Thankfully no one was killed.I have told these stories to people in my life in Chicago. People have kind of been surprised and shocked. Not about the whole story, because this happens in Chicago too. Encampments get broken up, homeless people get pushed around all the time. It’s the element of…once you push people into the woods, they become truly invisible. And that this is just a regular thing: that people get pushed into the woods and then set. on. fire. And also people have been really shocked, like, “why hasn't any news covered this? I’m shocked that i've never heard about this!” I’m not shocked. There's so much happening in rural America and small town America that no one is paying attention to. And I didn't even have proof. I didn't even have a news story to point to, to show people in my life in Chicago that this was a real thing, that i wasn't making this up. Until just now. There was a story that was published that was about yet another encampment set on fire on December 18th, 2024. And it had pictures. And I want you all to see this. Please look at this. I've never been able to show people pictures before. But this is what it is. Please just look. I don't know what else to say or to ask. I'm not sure there even is an ask, this is a much bigger thing than all of us. But please look. Because you can. Please look. And thank you for listening. Photo credits: Jeremy Hogan/The BloomingtonianRead the original news story here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

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• A Little Mosque on the Prairie

  For those of you who are not familiar, the start date and end date of Ramadan changes from year to year. The Islamic calendar is a little bit different from the Gregorian calendar. In 2025, Ramadan is basically the entire month of March. But it used to be over the summer.Some of you may know I'm a musician. I have done quite a bit of touring. And so there was a period of years where I would frequently be touring during the summer - during Ramadan. And I've toured quite a number of rural areas. So I have found myself in situations where it's time to break my fast and I'm in the middle of…rural North Dakota.For those of you who don't know, usually the first thing that you do to break your fast in Ramadan is eat a date (the fruit) and water. There was this one time on tour where I found myself in the middle of rural North Dakota having to figure out how to break my fast just with what was available at a gas station. And I made the decision that the thing that was the closest to breaking my fast with a date and water was…Twizzlers! I mean, it's wrinkly, it's fruit-flavored (the legal definition of fruit here is a little squishy). So yeah, my North Dakota gas station iftar was Twizzlers and water.The most interesting thing, though, is that I later learned that the very first mosque built in the U.S.A. is in…rural North Dakota. That’s right. Ross, North Dakota, population 89, is home to the very first mosque in America, built in 1929.This claim comes with a little bit of an asterisk. Muslims have been in America for a long time, much longer than 1929. Most were people from West Africa brought to the U.S. as slaves or people from the territories of the Ottoman Empire who immigrated. However, these early Muslim communities generally did not have their own mosques. They congregated in buildings that also had other uses or prayed outside. Ross, North Dakota was definitely not the first place in the U.S. where Muslims congregated for Friday prayers. But the first building to be constructed new, with the express purpose of being a mosque, was indeed in Ross, North Dakota.How did this come about?The answer is: Syrian homesteaders. That’s right, at the turn of the 20th century, a community of Syrian immigrants began to settle in North Dakota, and they built a little mosque on the prairie. This community of people from Syria filed claims under the Homestead Act to receive farmland in North Dakota. Many people from Norway, Germany, Ukraine, and other parts of Europe had been doing the same since the end of the Civil War. However, due to the U.S. government’s institutional racism, Syrians only became eligible for U.S. citizenship in 1909, so Syrian homesteaders arrived to North Dakota later than their European counterparts.The land made available to settlers through the Homestead Act was the result of the mass displacement and death inflicted upon Indigenous peoples. Many people forget that as the U.S. was fighting the Civil War it was simultaneously fighting multiple other wars against Indigenous nations. As the U.S. government claimed victory over the Southern Confederacy it also claimed victory over vast territories of Indigenous land. The federal government passed the Homestead Act in 1862, the railroad companies moved in, and westward expansion accelerated.The Syrian community in North Dakota were a relatively late addition to this westward expansion and one that has largely been forgotten. Very few descendants of the original homesteaders are left in the area. The current Muslim population of North Dakota is estimated to be 540 people, or 0.1% of the state’s population. However, enough descendants retained a connection to Ross that, when the original building of the mosque was torn down in 1979, they raised funds to build a small memorial building in its place. This new building is rarely used for congregational prayer but serves as a museum and visitor’s center for the cemetery that is still maintained on the mosque grounds. Prayer rugs are still available for any visitors who choose to pray.In 2016, a journalist who was covering the fracking boom in North Dakota stumbled upon this mosque and its history and wrote a feature about it in The New Republic. The journalist, Cary Beckwith, remarked at how striking it was to find a forgotten piece of North Dakota’s history while writing about a new chapter in the state’s life, one that was bringing more immigrants than the state had seen in a long time. Beckwith noted that while covering the fracking boom they had heard Spanish, Amharic, Bulgarian, and French Creole - but no Arabic. North Dakota, at the time was one of the states who voiced support for Donald Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” and the governor of North Dakota had sworn to refuse Syrian refugees in the state. Beckwith documented that some of the workers on the oilfields were unimpressed with the historic mosque nearby, with one worker saying, “Somebody should blow that f****r up.”As of 2025, the mosque is still standing. Google reviews from visitors are overwhelmingly positive, from Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who are touched and delighted to find such an unexpected landmark, learn about its history, and take some time for prayer or reflection. I hope it is still standing the next time I find myself in North Dakota during Ramadan. For me, it is a reminder of how disconnected most of us are from the history of the land where we live, and how much of that history is rural. To me, this little mosque in Ross, North Dakota is a reminder that rural America can be such a sign post, pointing to things past, things present, and things yet to come - for those who are willing to notice.SOURCES:https://newrepublic.com/article/128726/north-dakota-prairie-became-home-americas-first-mosquehttps://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oldest-mosque-in-the-united-stateshttps://news.prairiepublic.org/show/dakota-datebook-archive/2022-05-02/first-mosquehttps://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/muslim-population-by-statehttps://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/north-dakota/ross This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lynrye.substack.com

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