The Campaign for Love and Forgiveness promotes compassion in society, shining a light on those profoundly changed by it.
Reconciliation: Ples Felix (l.) and Azim Khamisa take part in a tree-planting ceremony with school kids in memory of Khamisa’s son, Tariq, who was killed by Mr. Felix’s then-14-year-old grandson.
TARIQ KHAMISA FOUNDATION
The world of investment banker Azim Khamisa shattered into pieces in 1995. His only son, a student at San Diego State University, was shot and killed by a 14-year-old gang member as Tariq was delivering pizzas for a part-time job.
“When I learned of Tariq’s death, it felt like a nuclear bomb detonated inside of me,” Mr. Khamisa says. “The pain was so excruciating that I had an out-of-body experience. I believe I went into the loving arms of God. Held there for a long time until the explosion subsided, I returned … with the vision that there were victims at both ends of the gun.”
That vision enabled Khamisa to make a crucial choice: forgiveness. Choosing forgiveness has not only transformed his life and that of the murderer and his family, it also led him to create an antiviolence program that has measurably altered attitudes among youths in San Diego and other cities.
This power of forgiveness to reshape the lives of individuals and communities is behind a new national Campaign for Love and Forgiveness initiated by the Michigan-based Fetzer Institute, a private nonprofit research and education foundation. Recently the institute launched a collaboration with public television and community organizations across the United States to stimulate greater consideration of how love and forgiveness can effect healing in difficult circumstances.
….
Excerpt :
A second event focusing on forgiveness and reconciliation will involve a Holocaust survivor who has been in contact with a perpetrator at one of the World War II concentration camps.
Ben Frymer, assistant professor of sociology at the university, is also conducting a seminar on “Love and Desire” that encourages students to study love in action in the broader community.
“It’s a great opportunity to expand the ideas and beliefs that young people have about love,” Professor Frymer says, “especially in this society where they’re bombarded with the media message that romantic love is most important.”
Khamisa, called upon to forgive in the most challenging of circumstances, was able to do so, he explains, because of the strong spiritual element of his upbringing.
“I’m a Sufi Muslim,” he says, “like the poet Rumi, and one of the gifts of the Ismaili order than I belong to is the equal emphasis on spiritual and material aspects of life. It’s important to develop core values early on, so if tragedy comes, you can respond without retaliation.
“The tendency in our culture is if we are sad or depressed to go get some Prozac,” he adds, “but forgiveness is much better than Prozac because it heals.”
Ismailimail 