No terrorists

That Tuesday afternoon began innocuously enough. I found myself enjoying a wonderful meal with a new friend and colleague in a popular restaurant on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. What we both originally anticipated would be a brief nosh quickly turned into a nearly-four-hour exchange, full of deep sharing about life, love, faith, and the delicate task of preserving our spiritual vocations as believing Muslims amidst the toxicity that often pervades the world of academic scholarship. We left the encounter with more questions than answers, but ultimately concluded that spiritual toxicity in the academy can only be dealt with through a solemn commitment to public service (khidma, in Arabic) in our own scholarly endeavors. Dedicated service to humanity and to the success of our colleagues and comrades, even in the face of the opportunism and mudslinging that too often characterizes our profession, remained the ultimate antidote to the spiritual disease otherwise plaguing the academic enterprise.

Yet our epiphany during that meeting was not the most memorable moment of  Tuesday 10 February 2015, for barely two hours later, three beautiful souls – all pillars of the North Carolina Muslim community – would be gunned down execution-style less than a mile away from our luncheon spot.

That triple homicide ruptured our community. Granted, I am still a relatively new North Carolinian, but even those who have no connections to this area have felt our pain in ways that transcend spatial proximity. Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, or her sister Razan Abu-Salha, were not in my circle of friends, and yet the past two weeks of tributes, testimonies, and vigils have made painstakingly clear that they embodied an ethic of grace, moral rectitude, and spiritual refinement that most of us can only dream of in our lifetimes. But above all else, these three remarkable souls were a living embodiment of that very ethic of khidma that had been so central to my discussion earlier that day as the liberating force against academic chauvinism and opportunism.

Drawing on the best of the Islamic spiritual tradition, Deah, his wife, and her sister were ultimately motivated by an unbridled commitment to khidma

Videos and testaments on social media helped inform my perceptions in this respect, in bringing to light their deep involvement in public service projects – by offering dental assistance and care to indigent patients here in Durham, NC, to offering similar treatment to Palestinians, and to Syrian refugees in Turkey. But through deep conversations with members of this community who had been close with the departed, it became altogether clear that these three beautiful souls were motivated by something deeper than the immediate content of their relief projects. Drawing on the best of the Islamic spiritual tradition, Deah, his wife, and her sister were ultimately motivated by an unbridled commitment to khidma  – a service to humanity without any attachment to outcome, and without any expectation of reward. Each tear-filled discussion I have had over the past fortnight with community members whose lives were indelibly transformed by these three remarkable human beings further testified to their selflessness, and to their desire to fundamentally transform the world with their hands and hearts as their ultimate act of religious devotion.

Indeed, what makes this case especially tragic is not simply the fact that these three beautiful souls were targeted by their killer for their Muslim faith, but the fact that in their ethical commitment to khidma, they represented the very spiritual and moral pinnacle of that faith’s tradition. Their dedication to serving voiceless victims, both here in the US and abroad, was motivated precisely by their spiritual vocation as Muslims, and their ethical convictions to khidma were no less markers of their Muslim-ness than the headscarves the two women wore, or their Arab ethnicity.  Accordingly, in seeking out these three fallen angels in particular, Craig Steven Hicks did not simply target three Arabs bearing traditional Islamic garb; his heinous hate crime equally targeted Deah, Yusor, and Razan for their ethical garb – outward and inward – of khidma (public service), which was no less central to their status as believing Muslims.

In the deeply moving encomia following the tragic events, the global public has been dutifully informed that Deah, Yusor, and Razan were deeply exceptional human beings. For that we in the North Carolina community they left behind are deeply grateful. But what has thus far been missed from this discussion is that their moral convictions were not necessarily exceptional as such, but were simply a profoundly intense living embodiment of their religious tradition as Muslims. Yes, the very religious tradition agents of intolerance in the United States and abroad have systematically demonized as diametrically opposed to ideas of service and charity, ultimately planted precisely the seeds of moral rectitude we saw manifest in these beautiful servants of humanity, as embodied by their commitment to khidma. These three heroes were indeed exceptional, but within the context of their ethical convictions as Muslims, it might just be that they were not as ‘exceptional’ as their mourners are presently giving credit for.

It might, then, behoove us to consider that Islamophobia, in thought and deed is a fundamental obstacle to cultivating enduring values of service and charity. Our global communion as brothers and sisters in humanity will remain forever incomplete so long as our Muslim brothers and sisters among us continue to be denied full access to that covenant. Defeating Islamophobia, then, is the price we must pay for fully restoring our own humanity.

Daanish Faruqi is a doctoral candidate in History and Islamic Studies at Duke University. Formerly a Fulbright scholar in Morocco, he has spent several years as a researcher and journalist in the Arab Middle East. He is the author, most recently, of From Camp David to Cast Lead: Essays on Israel, Palestine, and the Future of the Peace Process