{"id":16479,"date":"2017-02-09T13:38:06","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T18:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16479"},"modified":"2019-03-18T14:04:12","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T18:04:12","slug":"vigil-shows-strength-in-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/vigil-shows-strength-in-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigil shows “strength in diversity”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amid the prayers on Saturday afternoon was a story.
\nOffered by Peter Ginsberg of Newmarket\u2019s Or Hadash, it involved two people walking along the street about to pass a Mosque. One, he said, was a \u201csocially isolated\u201d and not-very sophisticated person, and the other, a person very involved in their community.
\nThe second person greets his Muslim brothers and sisters, knowing them as the Imam who sat next to them at an Iftar dinner, a woman who volunteered with them at a homeless shelter a while back, or someone they knew from business.
\nThe first person, however, is key.
\n\u201cThey don\u2019t know anybody in the Muslim community; all they know about Muslims is what they read on the internet and what they see on Fox News,\u201d said Ginsberg. \u201cThey get all nervous, they get scared, they are dressed differently and the person crosses the street to avoid them. That individual is lost and wandering around in the dark. We need to find those people, we need to bring them out, we need to talk to them and engage them, because they are people who do things like what happened in Quebec.\u201d
\nIt was standing-room-only at the Aurora Cultural Centre\u2019s Brevik Hall on February 4, as Aurora\u2019s faith groups welcomed the public to a Community Vigil in Support of Our Muslim Neighbours in the wake of a Quebec City-area Mosque which left six men dead on Sunday, January 29.
\nOver 200 individuals were well removed from the dark as the names of the victims \u2013 Azzedine Soufiane, 57, Khaled Belkacemi, 60, Aboubaker Thabti, 44, Abdelkrim Hassane, 41, Mamadou Tanou Barry, 43, and Ibrahima Barry, 39 \u2013 were read out by Mae Khamissa, a member of Aurora\u2019s Alabrar Muslim Association, followed by prayers from Aurora United Church, Trinity Anglican Church, Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church, the Newmarket Islamic Centre, representatives of local Jewish and Hindu communities, and messages from all levels of government.
\nThe reflective crowd was led in a call to prayer by nine-year-old Omar Mohamed who, along with his brother, Bilal, helped their father, Imam Rafaat Mohamed of Alabrar Muslim Association share passages from the Qur\u2019an, all standing beside an altar of six candles, six white roses, and two Canadian flags, representing those who lost their lives.
\n\u201cWe have seen how Canada is a good example for the rest of the world,\u201d said Rafaat. \u201cAll the world is moving us and seeing this beautiful reaction of Canadians getting together against any aggression, against any attack, any ignorance, any bigotry [shows] they all stand together. People like yourselves, beautiful people of this country of Canada, come together united and putting their hands together, side by side, and that is what this is all about.
\n\u201cWe pray that we all work together, side by side, hand on hand, to remove ignorance and to always stand united as Canadians. I pray for our country to be a country of strength, a country of peace, and a country of tranquility.\u201d
\nThese were sentiments shared across the spectrum of faiths, denominations, and simple humanity represented in the room on Saturday afternoon.
\nSharing the parable of the Good Samaritan, representatives from Trinity said the concept of \u201cneighbour\u201d crosses all boundaries.
\n\u201cNeighbour is the other person, every single other person,\u201d said Rev. Dawn Davis. \u201cSometimes it is a very different other person who travels on the same road and sometimes falters and falls, is unjustly tricked, or even cruelly beaten down. Being in God\u2019s company is to know, and even show love and mercy. From our neighbours to your neighbours, our deepest condolences.\u201d
\nFilling the role as emcee for the community vigil, Rev. Paul Kang of St. Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian Church said their hearts go out to all the victims \u201cin the wake of this tragic act of hate.\u201d
\n\u201cHaving the freedom to worship in our country without fear or prejudice is a sacred trust that was broken last Sunday in Quebec,\u201d said Kang. \u201cAs people of faith, we hope to help begin the long process of repairing the trust that was broken by standing with you, Muslim sisters and brothers, in condemning this act perpetrated against a particular people, simply because of their faith.
\n\u201cThe Canada I know and the communities I have grown up in have always been secure and strong enough to both accommodate and honour differences: differences of opinions, beliefs, expressions and thoughts because, at our core, I believe what we share in common \u2013 our hopes, our dreams, and especially our vulnerabilities \u2013 can be used for a greater purpose and that is to bring us and bind us together in a spirit not of competition but of compassion.\u201d
\nSandra Fortini, Lay Pastoral Assistant at Our Lady of Grace, represented Fathers Francis McDevitt and Joshua Roldan at the vigil. In her message, she expressed her \u201cshock and dismay\u201d over last month\u2019s attack.
\n\u201cWe stand with our brothers and sisters of faiths in denouncing these senseless acts of violence and pry that our Muslim brothers and sisters continue to feel secure and safe to practice their faith in their sacred spaces,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to give thanks to god for the safety and security we enjoy in this country and for the freedom to live lives of faith. But, we appreciate what a violation this event has been to that sense of safety and security and pray for the Muslim community that it can, in time, be restored.
\n\u201cA hatred for diversity simply doesn\u2019t reflect a love for the one who created it. We should celebrate the differences we have because of their beauty but firstly because they are the work of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was standing-room-only at the Aurora Cultural Centre\u2019s Brevik Hall on February 4, as Aurora\u2019s faith groups welcomed the public to a Community Vigil in Support of Our Muslim Neighbours in the wake of a Quebec City-area Mosque which left six men dead on Sunday, January 29. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/2017-02-09-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4hN","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:55:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}