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Nearly 150 residents of various faiths joined together outside the Muslim Community Center of the East Bay in Pleasanton on Friday afternoon to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants and refugees.
The hour-long event, organized by the Livermore-Pleasanton Interfaith Clergy Association, featured several speeches, a group prayer and a peace ring where attendees spread into a large circle outside the mosque to offer support to their Muslim neighbors.
“We want to cultivate a sense of being neighbors,” Rev. Heather Leslie Hammer, of Lynnewood United Methodist Church, said to the group. “We are standing, literally standing, in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors … to say we trust you, and we want you to trust us.”
The other speakers included Hina Khan-Mukhtar, Rev. Lucas Hergert, Rabbi Laurence Milder and a local 16-year-old Muslim girl. With occasional reference to President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration and discourse at the national level, the speakers said they were promoting solidarity, love, understanding and support.
“We want to be part of a nation that welcomes refugees and immigrants as brothers and sisters in one human family,” Hammer said.
“I have nothing but words of gratitude,” Khan-Mukhtar said.
“I’m grateful for the ring around the Islamic center,” she said, later adding the group also formed “a ring around our hearts.” She closed by saying, “Love will trump hate.”
The group of women, men and a few children gathered outside during two afternoon prayer sessions at the mosque, greeting dozens of local Muslims as they arrived or exited and forming the large ring twice while the worshipers prayed inside the mosque on West Las Positas Boulevard.
The speaker presentations occurred in between the two prayers, and many of the worshipers from the first session came outside and listened afterward.
I enjoyed meeting and talking with several of my Muslim neighbors. I love that we live in such a diverse community!
Pleasanton should be a model for our nation on this topic.
What a lovely kumbaya moment, just wait until another major terrorists attack!
The people who reach out to the Muslim refugees would be better served by asking the the so called refugees to condemn the atrocities done by Muslim terrorist. Good luck wth getting any comments from them. Just silence and dazed looks.
Are you asked to condemn or comment on the atrocities done by someone of your faith every time they commit such act/s?
Try your “Peace Ring” in Iraq.
Let’s see how far you get.
I am proud of our town but ashamed of some people, some posters. How can you people be so blinded by hate? I understand the concern but not everyone is evil. Not every Muslim is a terrorist just like not every Christian was a cruel crusader. We all have episodes of fear and cruelty in our races, countries histories. We have to be above prejudice. There will always be bad people out there but it is not a matter or religion, race or background. We, as humans, are different and that is our strength:
http://www.everyculture.com/