Bismillah.
I open with an intention. This story I offer with the humble hope that you might be nourished, that you might find even one more little gulp of strength or courage to keep fighting, if you are weary. If this story speaks to you, then take whatever you need from it.
The story is a lesson that I learned as a Muslim. It is a lesson I learned from being at Standing Rock in 2016 at the Indigenous-led camps resisting the DAPL pipeline. That’s not directly related to Palestine but of course all of these struggles are related. It’s all connected - Indigenous sovereignty, ending occupation, and just the basic principle that anyone who has a sacred relationship with the land doesn’t try to brutalize it, whether that’s by setting fire to olive groves or poisoning the Cannonball River with a pipeline.
I want to position myself in this story. As I tell it I am trying to bear witness, which I think is a responsibility that we have as Muslims. I’m here to testify to what I saw and what I learned - that’s all I am, a witness.
I was at Standing Rock in November 2016 during a particularly violent time in the struggle. Hundreds were injured; people lost limbs and eyes from concussion grenades and rubber bullets; people went into cardiac arrest and hypothermia from water cannons in the North Dakota winter; people got long-term lung damage from tear gas and the 40,000lb of Rozol (a prairie dog poison) that was illegally dumped on the camps. The Morton County Sheriff’s office started to include assault rifles with live ammo in their riot gear. This violence occurred during struggles over the pipeline site and equipment but also at the camps and the police barricade around the camps. This barricade prevented emergency vehicles from using any main roads, meaning that medical help took over 2 hours to arrive despite there being a hospital relatively nearby.
The lesson that I want to share with you comes from November 20th, 2016 when we tried to move a few concrete blocks on Backwater Bridge to allow emergency vehicle access right before a blizzard was set to arrive.
The militarized response to this attempt to move the barricade was just sadistic. There’s no other word for it. Hundreds of people were injured that night alone. Some ended up in critical condition. It’s truly a miracle that no one died.
Me and my partner at the time were standing by the pick-up truck that had been part of the attempt to pull a piece of the concrete barricade away. A cop threw a concussion grenade directly at us. It exploded, knocking me down from the force. But for my partner, it burned the skin off the back of her legs.
For a while I felt so guilty. Why her and not me? Why did she have to suffer and I had not a scratch? And why couldn’t I get over that sick feeling - in the context of hundreds and hundreds of years of colonial violence and lethal capitalism and the utter doom and destruction inflicted on so many, this is what I’m hung up on? This is what I can’t get out of my head? You start to feel guilty about feeling guilty. But this is what listening to the screams of a loved one will do to you. Like anyone who still has a soul, the burning and tearing of my beloved’s skin burned and tore my heart.
How do you not become paralyzed by this wound on the inside? How do you stop yourself from drowning in this feeling of powerlessness, this feeling of guilt that someone suffered and you were spared?
And this is how I learned my lesson - we later learned that that first concussion grenade that hit us was the start of a full-on onslaught of that truck, targeting it because we were using it to clear the barricade. If we hadn’t gotten out of there after the first grenade we would have suffered much worse. My partner was much smaller than me. I carried her out of there before the rest of the attack began. If I had been the one injured, she would not have been able to do the same. When I learned this, I remembered the ayah from Surah Al-Hajj:
“They are those who have been expelled from their homes for no reason other than proclaiming: ‘Our Lord is Allah.’ Had Allah not repelled the aggression of some people by means of others, destruction would have surely claimed monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which Allah’s name is often mentioned. Allah will certainly help those who stand up for Him. Allah is truly All-Powerful, All-Mighty.” (22:40)
God repels the destruction of some by means of others. This is the lesson I learned that cured the wound in my heart and saved me from drowning in that paralysis.
There is no shame in being put in a position where Allah can use you to repel the evil of others. God defends some by means of others. So if you are the means, don’t hang your head, just do whatever it is that you are in the position to do. Yes, you are not the one with the power. You may not have any idea how your action played a role in repelling the evil of others. This is not what you control. But if you have been put in a position to do something, anything, it means you have a chance of being that means.
Even if it is carrying one person away from a condemned truck. Even if it is one less bomb that Israel has in its arsenal. Even if it is one inch closer to ceasefire, or one inch closer to liberation.
The cries of our beloved ones will always burn our hearts. If you have been spared, be the means. Without shame, without fear. If you have been spared, you are the means.
Ameen.
