Editor:

The recent vandalism in our community must be named with a word some find controversial, a word some want to deny — Islamophobia. In three separate locations — one of them the Islamic Center, or mosque, in town — vandals smeared Islam.

On the wall of the mosque, they wrote blasphemy. A blasphemy that, if it were written in Christian terms on the walls of a church, would shock, hurt and scare the Christian community.

Undoubtedly that is how our Muslim brothers and sisters felt — shocked, hurt and scared. Not to mention disrespected in a sacred, community space.

In Islam, the word for community is “ummah” — a beautiful word that encompasses both brotherhood and sisterhood. Embracing this word would break a barrier that racism, with its insistence on divide and conquer, does not want broken.

Let us commit to breaking that barrier together and to finding common ground across lines of faith, class, race and gender as our community grows into a stronger, brighter future.

Elizabeth Hall Magill

Farmville