Stephon Clark, the newest martyr.
Via Baltimore Sun:
Safa Daftani stood in a crowd Sunday at the Inner Harbor holding a sign with a flow chart on it. “Are you Black? Muslim? Human?” it read. “Then why aren’t you outraged?!!”
The 16-year-old high school junior from central New Jersey had traveled to Baltimore with more than 20,000 other Muslims to attend the annual Islamic Circle of North America conference over the weekend. Hundreds of them came to McKeldin Square Sunday to protest the fatal shooting of an unarmed black Muslim man, Stephon Clark, by police in Sacramento, Calif., on March 18.
“At the end of the day, it’s human dignity,” she said. “People are desensitized. They hear ‘unarmed black man,’ ‘unarmed black man.’ He was a father, he was a husband, he was a brother. It hits home.”[…]
Del. Bilal Ali, Baltimore’s sole Muslim delegate, took particular issue with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ characterization of Clark’s shooting as a “local matter” that “should be left up to local authorities.”
“It’s totally insane,” Ali said. “This has been a systemic issue since the beginning of people of color touching these shores. We have empirical data that clearly shows that these types of atrocities have been happening to people of color for years.”
Karim Amin and his wife brought their 9-year-old, Rania, and their 3-year-old, Karim Jr., to the rally. Rania, a fifth-grader, said the event made her feel “like I can do anything.”
Amin, the head organizer and president of the Muslim Social Services Agency, said Sunday’s protest was a chance to harness the power of the tens of thousands of Muslims in town for the conference.
“You have to take advantage of those moments,” he said. “A large potion of the conference was about social justice.”[…]
Linda Sarsour, executive director of the New York-based organization MPower Change and a board member of the Women’s March, reminded the group that Islam requires consistency and persistence in worship and in the pursuit of justice.
“Until we are consistent voices for justice, you are not living up to being a whole Muslim,” she said. “Activism is not a choice, sisters and brothers. It is your Muslim obligation to stand against injustice.”
She and others noted the number of young faces, who often understand better than their elders the interconnected nature of society’s injustices. Blacks have faced discrimination from within the Muslim community, several of the speakers acknowledged.