Photo © Bridge7 Pictures
Pain and Peace
Pain and Peace
In September 2001, just days after 911, a white supremacist went looking for “Muslim-looking” clerks at Dallas convenience stores. He killed two. One of his survivors, Rais Bhuiya, forgave the man who fired at him with a shotgun. Bhuiya’s face has been restored but he lost sight in one eye and shotgun pellets will always be embedded in his skull.
For Bhuiya, a Bangladeshi who moved to the U.S. “to pursue my dreams,” personal reconciliation with his would-be murderer wasn’t enough. Bhuiya became an activist not only against hate crimes but the psychology, the twisted emotional roots, behind those crimes. His documentary, Pain and Peace, is the opening night feature at this year’s Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival.
Working with Emmy-winning filmmaker Mark Feijo, Bhuiya traveled the U.S. and Canada, visiting the locations of notorious as well as less known hate crimes. He interviewed Rev. Al Sharpton, who reminded listeners of the progress against flagrant racism in his own lifetime. “What we have as normal now, people could not have imagined,” he said, adding that much still needs to be done. And it’s up to everyone. “The only thing that matters when you’re dead is what you’ve done. Whatever possessions you leave behind will not matter,” Sharpton continued. “We all have a duty and an obligation” to make the world a better place.
Victims and Perpetrators
For the most part, Bhuiya speaks with victims and perpetrators. A repentant neo-Nazi skinhead confesses the damage he suffered when, at age 10, he stumbled across his father with another woman. His grades sank and with them, his self-esteem. He “thrived on negativity because it’s better than feeling invisible,” he explained, and that negativity was directed against Jews. Eventually he turned his life around and had the courage to visit the synagogue he had defaced years earlier. Expecting to be judged harshly, he was received with compassion. They helped him overcome his feeling that he didn’t deserve compassion.
Breaking the cycle of hate and violence, the tit for tat, is the theme running through Bhuiya’s interviews. He spoke with a former Islamist extremist who explained his past beliefs as a wrong turn in the search for belonging to something greater than himself. “Radicalization is a process,” he said. People can grow increasingly extreme through the bad influence of others and the torrent of hatred and lies running through the sewers of social media.
Bhuiya visited Buffalo, NY, and Charleston, SC, where he spoke with survivors of the lone white gunmen who went to a grocery and a church to murder Blacks. Those survivors counseled relentless struggle against the racist attitudes that eventually erupted in violence. “Evil doesn’t shut off, but our goodness takes a breather,” one woman warned. A Buffalo man added, reflecting on his life experience with racism, “In my silence I was part of the problem.” He is now committed to working for change.
Among Bhuiya’s other stops was Oak Creek, Wis., site of the 2012 Sikh Temple massacre. He interviewed Pardeep Kaleka, who vividly recalled rushing to the Temple to find his mother safely hidden in a closet and his father dead. Kaleka was never able to reconcile with the killer who took his own life as police closed in. “We can’t let what happened that day be the lasting message,” Kaleka told Bhuiya. “Pain without purpose is pointless,” but that pain can spur us to look more deeply into the causes and effects of the frustration and rage that can turn our world into a toxic place.
Pain and Peace screens at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17 at the Oriental Theater. For more information on the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival, visit mkefilm.org.
