A worthy son of Bangladesh

On July 20, barring a pardon from the Governor of Texas, killer Mark Anthony Stroman will get the death penalty. I say, "Good riddance!" After all, the man seemed unrepentant, and even made obscene gestures at the victims' families as he was being sentenced to death.

In the transformational journeys which are our lives, most of our days are spent flying on a sort of autopilot mode that the seasons of our lives help establish, and vary only those days relate to holidays, special occasions. If we are lucky enough to have jobs, we go to these jobs each day, live the routine stresses, deposit our pay-checks and return home. We impart our values to our children, usually by the example we set in the course of our everyday lives, and hope they will do us proud. Children imitate example more than they follow our lectures. Eventually, barring tragedies like the horrific bus accident in Mirsarai, Chittagong last week, our children grow up, go to work, and the cycle continues. For most of us, we never raise monsters, and we are not victims of tragedies.

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This summer is the first one wherein all my children are employed. My youngest son, thirteen years old, just found his first job. He is working on the beach at the Jersey Shore, fetching and carrying for an entrepreneur on the boardwalk, and making popcorn for the nightly movies on the beach. He has only been working for a week, but the experience has already changed him. He walks a little taller. He has already acquired a cell phone.

On his day off, when I was driving him and a friend to a water park, he rolled down the back window of the car, peeled off some dollar bills and passed them to the gas station attendant to help fill the tank. I know that his motivations were twofold: He felt it correct to contribute to the gas money, since he and his friend were being transported, and also he wanted to impress his companion. She was duly impressed. My son gives me many reasons to smile with pride.

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Religion, school, friends on the street, jobs, they all influence the development of character. Just last week, I wrote about some of the characteristics I considered defining qualities of the Bangladeshi people. This week, I was made aware of a particular hero from your homeland whose conduct exemplifies those qualities. We can all live our lives, and as long as things are going well, as long as our character has not been tested, we can only hope that our values will carry us through the difficult times, when our routine lives are interrupted by tragedy.

So I imagine a young Bangladeshi student, Rais Bhuiyan, recent immigrant to the United States, going to work at a gas station each day, hoping to gain the funds to establish a good life for himself and his fiancée, so he could fly back to Bangladesh, marry her and take her with him back to Texas. I imagine his life in Bangladesh, his Air Force training, the lessons taught to him by his parents, their values, and the values of their Muslim faith. I imagine what he must have thought upon winning the immigration lottery and gaining the right to follow a path to permanent residency.

Ten years ago, Mr. Bhuiyan was on top of the world. Partnering with a friend to run a gas station, he lived his everyday life and dreamed his dreams.

Then, on September 11, 2001, a white supremacist in Texas watched as the Twin Towers fell. His half-sister, who was working in New York, died as a result. The man, Mark Anthony Stroman, motivated by thirst for revenge and ignorance, went on a rampage. He entered Bhuiyan's gas station, asked him his nation of origin and consequently shot him in the face, leaving him for dead. He killed two other people as well, both Southeast Asians, one from Pakistan, one from India.

God saw fit to spare Bhuiyan's life from this random act of domestic terrorism, and that is where the remarkable story begins.

The ignorant racist, this frustrated criminal was caught, and he proudly confessed to his crimes, claiming he was a "True American and had done what every True American wanted to do but was too afraid to pull off".

So there was no doubt. Mark Stroman, 32, confessed to the murder. And one thing as sure as High School Football on a Friday night in Autumn, cowboy hats and the Alamo, if you kill someone in Texas, you will be executed.

So, it is interesting to note how different individuals, Stroman and Bhuiyan, each reacted to an injustice done to them. Stronman lashed out, acting like a cornered animal, and attacked innocent people. He ruined many lives, including those of his victims' and victims' families, but also his own life and that of his family. Stroman has three daughters and a son.

Bhuiyan convinced the families of the victims to forgive Stroman and work to change his sentence from death to life imprisonment. I don't know how I would feel if I were the victim. The Governor of Texas does not want the execution stayed, so if all appeals fail, Stroman will indeed be execute this week. Whether or not he dies, the incident speaks volumes about the nature of forgiveness.

Revenge necessitates a backward-looking mindset. Our national thirst for revenge after 9/11 cost us dearly. We squandered our peace dividend, we curtailed individual freedom, and sacrificed the lives of many soldiers. Had George Bush been more like Bhuiyan, or Jesus, for that matter, perhaps he never would have been re-elected, but perhaps we wouldn't be in the economic situation we are in now. We would have been forward-looking, and we would never have spent so much time looking back over our paranoid shoulders.

Buhiyan had the right, literally, to demand an eye for an eye. The assault not only left him blind in one eye, disfigured and swimming in medical debt, but the stress that it subjected his family to caused his father suffer a stroke. But Rais didn't waste his time thirsting for revenge. Instead, Buhiyan decided to view the tragedy as an anointing from God to teach Americans about the nature of Islam. By embracing forgiveness as a tenant of Islam, he belied the very prejudice and ignorance that had caused the hate crime in the first place. If forgiveness is truly a fundamental pillar of Christianity, (and we are taught that it is) then this Muslim is a better Christian than most of us.

A man goes to work each day and returns home. He dreams his dreams and faces the future, driven by his forward-looking motivations, or fuelled by his wish to redress past wrongs. Our politicians, and yours as well, hold onto to power, often by manipulating our fears and suspicions. They become hard liners because they are afraid of what could happen to them if they compromise. They hold personal grudges and want to exact their vendettas. But imagine a world in which we could forgive the wrongdoings of the past, no matter how horrendous, and allow ourselves to be motivated by the promise of a better future.

This week, in Texas, people will go to work, to school, to their daily lives. And an angry man, who allowed himself to be motivated by a blind thirst for revenge, will die, as people often do in Texas, of a lethal injection. He will have paid for his misdeeds, and I, for one will not mourn his passing. Another man will go to work with a clean conscience and a forward-looking vision. God will smile upon him and the Texas rednecks will have a deeper understanding of Islam because of him.

Rais himself says, "Once the prophet Mohammed went to Tayef to teach Islam to the people, who treated him so brutally that he was near death. The angel Gabriel appeared and told him if he wanted, God would destroy these people. Mohammed asked, "But if there are no people to whom will I spread God's message?"

Consider the words of the killer himself (he's actually blogging his last days, of all the weird things the internet allows!) "Fate has joined us together in a very strange way and I am honoured and touched by your (speaking to Bhuiyan) strength and forgiveness. There is one man who has every right to hate me for what I did. This one man, Rais… shows… how compassion overrules the human nature of hate… He is an example that the human race should follow."

Understanding and forgiveness, not drones and wiretaps; these are the true terrorism counter-measures. These are weapons best wielded by peaceful men and women of all nations. Rais Bhuyan has proven that opening one's heart can open even the narrowest of minds, and can make even a mad killer see the light of reason.

I pray that God will spare us the tragic tests of character that were inflicted upon those whose lives have been defined by suffering, including Bhuiyan and Strohman, but also your own leaders, who had to see their dear ones die.

But if God decree that such suffering is necessary for my own children, I hope I have taught them the necessary wisdom that will help them to choose forgiveness and forward progress. If they are tested, I hope they will have the faith to be able to recognize blessing in adversity and to echo the words of your countryman:

"Perhaps God kept me alive so I can pass this message onto others. I feel more love and compassion for human beings than I ever did before this accident. Sight is gone from one eye, but my vision has never been clearer."

Bangladesh, such a son gives you a reason to feel proud.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", is scheduled to be released by Findhorn Press in May of 2011.