When hate comes, it comes for all of us

Hate came to Salt Lake City three weeks ago.

On July 13, police say Peter Michael Larsen walked up to Syed Sohail’s kiosk in Valley Fair Mall and asked whether he was Muslim. Sohail said yes. Larsen then stabbed him more than a dozen times, according to police, stopping only when bystanders knocked him out. Prosecutors charged it as a hate crime.

Sohail survived. Barely. He is a husband, father of a 5-year-old, his family’s sole provider.

Larsen told investigators he wanted to “make an exhibition of Muslims and hopefully be a catalyst” so people would rid the country of them.

Hold on to that word. A man does not call himself a catalyst unless he believes a crowd is waiting behind him.

It would be easy, and wrong, to file this away as one deranged man losing it. He did not build this view alone. Something has been eroding for years, and many of us have been part of the erosion.

What we are losing is courage. Not the courage to fight, there is too much of that. The courage to question our own convictions. To be curious about people we are taught to fear. To love a neighbor we don’t understand. Especially then.

The faith I practiced for 45 years grants everyone the privilege of worshiping by conscience: “let them worship how, where, or what they may.” But I know the zeal of being so certain you are right that certainty becomes a wall. I had it. It is comfortable, but it can become cowardice; it spares you from knowing anyone outside the wall.

Ignorance becomes fear. Fear, handed a target, becomes hate. Violence is the last link in that chain, and by then the argument about rhetoric is over.

Utah just celebrated Pioneer Day, honoring ancestors driven out of Missouri and Illinois who buried loved ones on the trail and came here because nowhere else would have them. They were hated for what they believed. Some were killed for it.

That is Utah’s origin story. And almost exactly the same story of the refugees among us now, who left everything for the same reason and get asked in malls what they believe, not knowing the answer could get them stabbed. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints saw the parallel in 2016, calling members to serve refugees under the words “I Was a Stranger.” Utahns should be the last people in America who need reminding. 

For 10 years I have built soccer teams putting refugee and non-refugee youth on the same side. I didn’t hear about Sohail for nine days, and this happened a few miles from my home.

That is not an excuse. It is the point. A man was nearly killed for his religion in our valley and the news didn’t travel. Maybe because we absorb this violence as ordinary now, or because it doesn’t fit a worldview in which only other faiths produce violent zealots.

That ninth day I sat at the Utah Islamic Center with civic leaders, police and neighbors, asking how we prevent the next one. Partway through, Sohail appeared on screen, bandaged and weak, and he said in a soft but clear voice that he holds no grudge against the man accused of nearly killing him. He hopes that man’s heart will be filled with kindness.

I have sat in many meetings about what it means to follow Christ. I have never seen it shown so beautifully.

Curiosity becomes understanding. Understanding becomes empathy. Empathy becomes love. And love takes more courage than hate has ever required — the nerve to listen before judging, and to defend someone when it costs you something.

If a man stabbed a dozen times can find that courage, the rest of us can do much better with our words and actions.

So let our leaders speak quickly when this happens; silence reads as permission. And let the rest of us be curious out loud, where neighbors can hear it: in the foyer after church, in the classroom, and at the dinner table where rhetoric goes unchallenged because challenging it is awkward.

Hate never stays where it starts. Once we accept that some people are worth less than others, everyone’s humanity gets cheaper … including our own.

When hate comes, it comes for all of us.