“We come on the day of jumah to gather as a human family.”
Rami Nashashibi paused to let the cosmic nature of the moment set in.
He continued: “We gather in the way that the human family was gathered in the heavens by the Creator before he sent us, his highest creation, to Earth, to steward his creation.”
So began Rami’s beautiful khutba, a sermon that accompanies Muslim congregational prayers, in a most remarkable place: a Wrigley Field conference room on the first day of this summer’s crosstown series against the White Sox.
“The prophetic mission,” Rami continued, “is to heal the brokenness of the human family. To unite us as we were united with the divine, and will be again one day.”
Rami made the requisite joke about how the bitter rivalry between the North Siders and the South Siders represents the brokenness of the human family before moving on to more serious topics, including the reason that jumah was taking place at Wrigley.
Two years earlier, a series of racist emails by Joe Ricketts, patriarch of the family that owns the Cubs, were published online, including some particularly offensive statements such as this gem: “Islam is a cult and not a religion. Christianity and Judaism are … based on love whereas Islam is based on ‘kill the infidel’ a thing of evil.”
The Cubs organization went into damage control mode. It wasn’t surprising that Rami got the phone call and the invitation: Would he like to throw out the opening pitch at a high-profile game?
Rami is the most inspiring Muslim leader of my generation. He’s a remarkable speaker, a University of Chicago doctorate holder, a MacArthur “genius” grant winner and the founder of the Inner City Muslim Action Network, or IMAN, an organization that runs social uplift programs on the South Side.
As such, he’s nobody’s fool. Rami knew exactly why the Cubs were calling. There’s a case to be made in this situation for what might be called the “turn the heat up” approach. Rami could have called a news conference, demanded a groveling public apology from the Ricketts family and ratcheted up the stakes.
Rami chose a different approach, one that I believe is more in keeping with the Muslim tradition.
He agreed to the Cubs’ request, but challenged them to move beyond quick-fix symbolism. He wanted the Cubs to engage substantively with IMAN’s work, not just ceremonially. The Chicago Tribune covered that challenge, in which Rami emphasized the importance of showing up even when you disagree in order to bridge divides.
To their credit, the Cubs kept their word. It wasn’t just Rami who was out on the mound at that crosstown series; it was a whole crew of Black and brown people from IMAN. Rami and IMAN were profiled in a campaign with Nike and a beautiful video played on Wrigley’s Jumbotron.
And one more thing: A Friday afternoon game happens to coincide with the time of Muslim congregational prayer. Given that the Cubs organization was proactively embracing the diversity of its city and fan base, would they be so kind as to provide a space for the Muslims to have their religious service?
In his khutba that afternoon, Rami made only an oblique reference to Ricketts’ Islamophobic emails, just enough to be able to set up his core message: When someone does something wrong and appropriately seeks forgiveness, a Muslim doesn’t seek to further humiliate him; a Muslim helps them to right the wrong. When a Muslim encounters bigotry, she meets it with beauty. When people try to marginalize you, Muslims should respond with magnanimity.
As Rami emphasized in his khutba, the Islamic tradition says that even the one who wrongs you is a container of the human soul. If your enemy inclines toward peace, you are required to meet their overture in a spirit of generosity.
Terrible things will still happen, Rami emphasized. He named some of the people involved in the IMAN program killed by gun violence in recent months. But we are not allowed to despair. Despair is against the tradition. We trust in God, and we build.
As I prayed with Rami that day, it occurred to me that all of this was taking place on the cusp of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a moment that symbolizes the worst expression of religion and that led to ugly and racist reprisals against Muslims. This moment, jumah at Wrigley, represented the best of religion and the possibility of America.
America is great when it is a potluck nation, one that welcomes the contributions of its remarkable multitudes. We Muslims are great when we act in the spirit of mercy, service and generosity that is the essence of Islam.
America is an interfaith nation — Muslims belong to it, and it belongs to us. We are stewards of its legacy; we take responsibility for its future.
We heal people in America’s hospitals. We build up this country’s towns and cities. We are rooted in the soil of this nation. We gather for prayer in her baseball stadiums.
Eboo Patel is a Chicagoan and founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, or IFYC, the largest group of students and educators dedicated to religious pluralism.
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