12/20/12: Celebrating Life & Honoring the Memory of the Connecticut Catastrophe
Summary
of Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi's words delivered last Sunday at the Islamic
House of Wisdom in memory of the Connecticut tragedy!
Celebrating Life & Honoring the Memory of the Connecticut Catastrophe
20 kids and 6 of their teachers were targeted during a terrorist attack in an elementary school on the eve of this New Year to come.
During the Sunday family breakfast service following this tragedy, Imam Elahi the spiritual leader of the Islamic House of Wisdom dedicated his Sunday message addressing this tragedy and the lessons our community and nation can learn to prevent future fires of disaster.
We understand the pain of those parents who lost their beloved ones and share our thoughts and prayers with the rest of our nation in sympathy and solidarity with those suffering families, the imam said.
Imam continued his sermon by saying the real solution for more security is not having more guns but more God consciousness.
To protect society and establish a foundation of national security we must start from home by instilling faith, family values and educating our children with the principles of love, forgiveness, respect, responsibility, modesty, humility and positive energy.
Increasing the sale of guns in addition to the widespread abuse of drugs, alcohol and violent video games calls on society to evaluate its direction. Mental illness, which has become a recent scapegoat of blame in many tragedies calls for allocation of financial resources, study, proper care and awareness.
If Adam Lanza had ever experienced the human obligation toward his parents which is the most common Quranic order he would not have shot his own mother nor inflicted any type of harm on any soul!
For the Muslim community to protect our children we must teach them the importance of loving the Lord and His creation, reflection of God's attributes towards application within our own lives and prayer. We must protect them from associating with faithless friends and evil influences.
Imam Elahi criticized
the double standards in the mainstream media who used words like gunman
or shooter instead of terrorist for the Connecticut murderer. He said,
if the killer carried an Islamic or
Arabic name they would mislabel his name, religion and cultural back ground, while in this case none of these were addressed.
At the end, the imam prayed for the innocent souls of this massacre and
the thousands of other children who die daily in Iraq, Bahrain,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Africa and other parts of the
world as a result of poverty, deadly disease, war, violence, extremism
and terrorism. The Imam concluded by praying for the Divine day in which
the Lord sends peace and justice to this planet through Imam
Mahdi and Jesus (pbut).