(Yes, this is written on the day after Passover started. I didn’t want to wait a year to say this, and “was “ just didn’t seem right.)
When I was in college, and involved in movement work, we were trying to be taken seriously and be respected, the two of them being connected. King’s sense of pride and self-respect permeated the movement whose history we were trying to continue.
You couldn’t call us losers or say we shouldn’t be taken seriously because we “were just in college and had never seen the ‘real world’“. This wasn’t to appease the oppressors of society. It was to change hearts and minds, (not the least of which were ours), about loving all human beings, regardless of differences. We would gain their respect, and strengthen our own self-respect, by respecting them — and practicing non-violent love. We would appeal to their “better angels” by doing so and everyone would win.
Yesterday, there were protests on campuses around the country and encampments that were being broken up by police. It seemed like it was “Uprising Day” and I hadn’t gotten the memo. I support protest and encampment and I didn’t hear of any violence by the students involved anywhere, so kudos to them.
When I realized it was Passover, I was incensed because organizers missed the point. Absolutely, be pro-Gaza and pro-Palestine if that’s your viewpoint. But it’s hard to prove you’re not antisemitic when you disrupt and are suddenly louder about it on the Jewish holy day.
Now, before people start saying, “well, Israel did it during Ramadan, so we get to”, Netanyahu didn’t win anyone’s hearts or minds with his tactics either. Desecrating people during their religious expression is terrorism and ultimately, it is self-destructive to all involved. Because it originates in hate and anger, it will only continue the destructiveness until, as Gandhi put it, “the whole world is blind”.
More death and more anger among the living should not be goal of any movement. Israel has made its own life harder by killing people during Ramadan. It doesn’t work.
Interrupting people’s religion has always been disrespectful. American police have arrested Black pastors during worship for a long time just to prove they can. Has it worked to stop injustice or anger? No, and it won’t. Does it build trust within a community between police and the ones they say are “criminals”? It hasn’t yet.
Post 9/11, Muslims were interrupted at or near mosques. Did that make the world better? I would argue that it didn’t. Even if it temporarily increased people’s safety, the tactic created more animosity, which authorities then had to dig their way out of just to find peace.
In short, disrupting people’s expression of their most sacred beliefs is just a bad idea. Next Passover, next Ramadan, next Sunday, if you want to actually make some progress in your cause, don’t be a jerk. Leave worship alone. We humans need to see the sacred in our lives, just so we can see it in each other. Attacking the sacred dehumanizes us.
Resisting in Peace,
John
Like It Matters 
Thank you for this, John.