I was stunned. If anyone knew the horrors this country had put black people through, it would be him. I had expected him to be on my side. But the more I studied with him, the more I understood that rather than sit around complaining about what the country wasn’t doing, he wanted us to work hard to help the country do what it should be doing. He talked about the many white Americans who wanted to make things better for everyone and suffered personal sacrifices to make it happen. We owed it to them to show compassion and kindness. That was the Muslim way; that was the American way.
