After the Taliban attacked a military school in Peshawar, Pakistan last week, AbidaFarooqui and her friends looked for a vigil to attend in St. Louis. When they didn’t find one, they organized one.
About 150 people turned up at Shaw Park in Clayton Sunday afternoon for the vigil, where they lined up on the sidewalk along S. Brentwood Blvd. to display their homemade signs. “St. Louis Mourns Peshawar,” read one. “Wake Up Pakistan,” said another. A third said simply “Enough.”
“A lot of my peers, we are first generation American, and so our parents still have a strong connection to their country, and so we want to stand for these children and we don’t want their deaths to be in vain,” explained Farooqui.
“This rise in terrorism and extremism has got to stop. We’ve got to put pressure on the government of Pakistan and say ‘Enough. Enough is enough,” she added.
“This is the last straw,” said Sarah Ali, who also helped organize the vigil. “We’ve seen many terrorist attacks in the past, but at a school—children—it hit home for a lot of us, especially because this is our home country.”
The Taliban killed at least 132 children and 9 staff members when they attacked the school.
When asked whether she thought the attack would make the government of Pakistan take a stronger stance against the Taliban, Farooqui said she and her friends had discussed the topic and agreed:
“If this does not begin the dismantling of the Taliban, I don’t know what will. Because it was the worse attack the Taliban committed against its own people in Pakistan.”
Farooqui, who is a teacher, also said providing education to children in rural Pakistan is fundamental to ending the reach of the Taliban.
“We can help the dismantling (of the Taliban) if we help to educate the children there and take them away from those extremist thoughts,” Farooqui said. “A lot of these children are growing up in impoverished and rural areas of Pakistan. So either the Taliban take them in and educate them or we give them the resource to educate them.”
Farooqui is also part of The Citizens Foundation, which builds and runs schools in Pakistan.
Two professors also spoke at the vigil: Saint Louis University Neurology Professor Ghazala Hayat and Purchase College Professor Shemeen Abbas.
Hayat asked the crowd to raise their hands in silent memory of those who died before asking them as fellow Muslims to speak out against terrorism.
“These terrorists all over the world have created havoc. Unfortunately most of them belong to our faith and have hijacked our faith,” Hayat said. “They do not represent 1.5 billion Muslims so please stand up and speak up.”
Hayat said that terrorists have taken to social media to spread their way of thinking, and so too must Muslims who stand against extremism.
“How are we going to fight the terrorists? One is the military action. That is not our area. But the ideas-the ideas are going to kill their ideas. Please speak up, please write to your governments,” Hayat added.
Abbas noted that terrorism has been a problem in Pakistan for 40 years, and like Hayat, said it was time to speak out. She said she was going to write a letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and hoped that everyone there would sign it.
Follow Camille Phillips on Twitter: @cmpcamille.
