(CINCINNATI, OHIO, 10/12/22) – CAIR-Ohio Staff Attorney Maryam Abidi was recently a panelist during the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) Annual Gathering. This year’s theme was “Radical Compassion: From Individual Mercy to Systemic Change.”
The Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center educates and advocates for peace, challenges unjust local, national, and global systems, and promotes the creation of a nonviolent society.
Abidi was joined by Harold D’Souza and Sr. Alice Gerdeman on the panel to answer questions pertaining to compassion in their work and connecting it to broader structures of power.
“To move from compassion into radical compassion is to recognize solidarity, and to recognize that there are material and historical connections for all of us to get free. If we are talking about liberation, it is not enough to bear witness to one another or recognize our own experiences. It is imperative that we actively recognize the history that binds us together,” said Abidi.
“It is a fact that post-9/11, the Islamophobia and hyper-policing of Muslims that we see is only possible because of centuries of anti-Black policing. When we talk about what happened in New York City after 9/11, and the hyper-policing of Muslim neighborhoods and communities, the infiltration of mosques—that happened because of the NYPD and FBI had mapped Black communities of New York for decades before that. We will not be free unless everyone else is free. I believe in solidarity and that is what empowers my work and why I show up every day.”
