The Prophet Muhammad once spoke of a man who asked God why he was being punished. God answered, “You passed by an oppressed person but did not help him.”
Today, too many of us are in danger of being punished because we fail to embrace the struggle that humanity is called upon to perform – to help, to advocate for, speak for and embrace the oppressed.
To remember we were once all sojourners in foreign lands.
Yesterday, today, this weekend, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, are observing Eid Al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice – which comes at the time of Hajj, the Pilgrimage to Mecca – in memory of the time when Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Ishmael and when, at the last moment, through God’s Grace and intercession, a ram was instead offered.
Believing that “the earth is made a place for our prayers, and its soil is made for our purification” I not only give thanks to God and join my Sisters and Brothers to celebrate Eid Al-Adha but recommit myself not to pass the oppressed without stopping to offer my hand.
Today, there are too many who need a hand.
Donald Trump took over a presidency where, after the Great Recession, the stock market had rebounded, where the number of foreclosures had plummeted, where millions-more-than-ever Americans had health insurance and where more Americans were working than at any time since Barack Obama became president.
Yet, sadly, it’s also since Obama’s election that America entered into a xenophobic state more toxic, more violent, than that immediately after 9/11.
Attacks on President Obama as Black Man – Foreign, Muslim, Other – attacks that fed a nativist uprising that contributed to Trump’s election – today threaten us more than any recession, any flood, any nuclear power, any terrorist.
They threaten our humanity, our innate goodness.
These ongoing attacks – designed to marginalize communities of color, immigrants, LGBTQIA peoples and others – are intolerable and jeopardizes our security, our ideals, and our children.
Yet, they continue.
They continue and – in spite of the momentary coming-together over Hurricane Harvey – we witness from Charlottesville to Bloomington, Minn., to the taxpayer-subsidized playing fields of the NFL that our innate goodness is constantly being challenged.
Colin Kaepernick spoke for the oppressed.
Recently, there’s been discussion about whether NFL owners and management are conspiring to keep free-agent Kaepernick from being signed to a new contract, a man with better stats than many quarterbacks currently on NFL rosters.
A man of talent who’s being denied a contract, I believe, because he kneeled to acknowledge the oppressed and marginalized.
Kaepernick who, by kneeling, honored the many who died to protect our freedoms and those who struggled for racial equality, is being punished, it appears, because he believes in America’s promise.
Not only did Kaepernick honor those who fought to protect this nation he honored, too, the 7,000 African Americans lynched in this country after the Civil War until the 1950s.
He honored, too, Pat Tillman’s sacrifice, Tillman who gave up his NFL career after 9/11 and enlisted in the United States Army, Tillman who was killed by friendly fire in 2004.
Not only has Kaepernick honored America and the First Amendment, he has honored, even if he never kneels again, those who daily resist oppression.
While there may be privileged white people who believe that “America is still the beacon of freedom and equality” they appear to be incapable of recognizing that for many Americans true “freedom and equality” are illusory values.
Such privilege keeps many people from recognizing that Kaepernick risked more and displayed more courage and patriotism – more understanding of what it means to be American – than most armchair spectators will ever risk.
Today’s NFL is a modern-day confederacy of plantation owners and those owners are well within their rights not to sign Kaepernick – I understand that we’re a free-market nation, not a fair-market nation.
I understand that they prefer employees to be submissive – we have a long history of that in America.
I believe, too, that they are wrong.
I believe that those owners and fans who feel that Kaepernick has insulted everything they believe in exhibit a frightening ignorance of what it means to be American, what it still means to be a person of color, what it means to be a vulnerable alien.
Those fans should listen to Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who recently said he believed it would be “ignorant” to believe Kaepernick’s contract situation wasn’t affected by his protest.
“I think he should be on a roster right now,” he told ESPN. “I think because of his protests, he’s not.”
“I’m gonna stand (for the anthem) because that’s the way I feel about the flag – but I’m also 100 percent supportive of my teammates or any fellow players who are choosing not to,” Rodgers said. “They have a battle for racial equality. That’s what they’re trying to get a conversation started around.”
“I think the best way I can say this is: I don’t understand what it’s like to be in that situation,” he continued. “What it is to be pulled over, or profiled, or any number of issues that have happened, that Colin was referencing – or any of my teammates have talked to me about.”
Today such conflicts, large and small, rage across America. They’re neither our first nor our last. They’ve been fought by Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and Mahmoud Abdul Rauf.
Today it’s Colin Kaepernick.
Tomorrow it’ll be another of our children who will make the sacrifice.
Such conflict comes at a critical time when, I believe, too many Americans are tempted to sacrifice morality and virtue rather than struggle to embrace knowledge, goodness, equity and justice.
Temptation we must resist.
“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us,” Annie Dillard writes. “But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
Let us be humble, take a knee, and accept what is given.
(Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. He can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com and his columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com.)