Qais Munhazim woke up early on Sunday at his home in Minneapolis for Suhoor—the prayer and pre-dawn meal that sustains fasting Muslims until sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Before heading back to bed, the 31-year-old Ph.D student checked his phone, and read that while he had been asleep, the worst shooting in U.S. history had occurred.
As he read the details of how a U.S. citizen of Afghan descent named Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay club in Orlando, ultimately killing 49 and injuring another 53 innocent people, Munhazin—who is gay and originally from Afghanistan—was enveloped in shock.
“It was so painful for me to see that this was happening in a community that is so close to me,” he tells CityLab. “This was so close to home … This [was an attack on] the LGBTQ family that I consider my family.”
He couldn’t go back to bed, so he followed the developments into the morning, hoping desperately that the killer wasn’t Muslim. When it turned out that he was, Munhazim teared up. He knew the incident would now become much messier and painful than it already was, he says.
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/politic...uslim-spaces/486842/]
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