_____
From: Ricken Patel - Avaaz [mailto:avaaz@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 8:09 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: ISIS' worst nightmare
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab&v=69332&cl=8
973427995>
ISIS attacks seek to spread hate and fear to divide the world's 1.5 billion
Muslims from everyone else. Let's answer their hate with wisdom. By fiercely
welcoming each other into our one human family like never before. Sign the
global "Undivided" message now, add your own message and when 500,000 join
we'll run ads in key newspapers:
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab&v=69332&cl=8
973427995> Sign the message
Dear amazing Avaazers,
History is made in moments, often of crisis and uncertainty, and the wisdom
with which we meet them. This is one of those moments.
ISIS's goal is to split the human family. To divide the world's 1.5 billion
Muslims from everyone else. Those in our societies who sow fear, suspicion
and hatred of Muslims - the Rupert Murdochs and Donald Trumps - are the best
allies the extremists who attacked Paris and Beirut could ask for.
Muslims are almost one quarter of humanity, and 99% are as horrified by the
ISIS attacks as everyone else. They have been the greatest victims of ISIS,
and have the greatest power to help defeat it. So let's answer hate with
humanity, and seize this chance for transformative change. For all of us -
Muslims and Non-Muslims everywhere - to fiercely welcome each other into our
one human family like never before.
Sign the global "Undivided" message, add your own, and share the page with
everyone - If enough us join now, we can start a global wave of solidarity,
and make the pain of these attacks the birth pangs of a more beautiful
world. When we get to 500,000 signatures Avaaz will run ads in Muslim
community papers and online, as well as key right wing papers that spread
fear and division:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab&v=69332&cl=8
973427995> &v=69332&cl=8973427995
The real front line of this war is not just in the dusty towns of Syria and
Iraq, but in the media and social media forums where the stories we tell
ourselves compete. There is a fraternity of ignorance and hatred and it
stretches across borders, in which extremists on all sides work together to
drag the rest of us down into their backward world of spiralling brutality.
Our governments will need to increase their vigilance in preventing attacks,
and support military efforts to defeat ISIS. But our job as people, and our
leaders' jobs as moral leaders, is to ensure that love, the transformational
antidote to ISIS' hate, blooms between Muslims and everyone else everywhere.
THAT would be ISIS' worst nightmare - it might even give some of the angry
young men they recruit cause to hesitate - a chance to see an alternative as
inspiring to them as the backward brand of faith that ISIS markets.
At the darkest times, our light as humanity can shine brightest. Human
rights were not recognized until after the second world war. The world got
it wrong after 9/11, when leaders like George Bush played into Al Qaeda's
hands by stoking Islamaphobia. This time, let's be wiser, come together as
Muslims and non-Muslims more closely than ever before, and brightly shine
the light of the world we're building:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab
<https://secure.avaaz.org/en/loving_transformation_loc/?bnHqnab&v=69332&cl=8
973427995> &v=69332&cl=8973427995
From a place of love, we might begin to listen to our brothers and sisters
among Muslims that have lent ISIS some support. First and foremost those
Sunnis from Syria and Iraq, who have been treated unjustly by Iraq's
government, and incredibly brutally oppressed by Syria's dictator Al Assad.
We might begin to understand that when we failed to offer their families
protection and relief from the horrors they faced, ISIS offered that
protection, and some accepted it. We might focus on learning from this, and
offering them a better deal.
With that lesson, we might see the stories of the peoples around the world
that ISIS fighters come from. From Chechnya, where generations of Muslim
families were horrifically murdered by Russian military while the world
looked away. Or from Egypt, or Algeria, or dozens of other countries, where
sickeningly brutal state security police have tortured and murdered
countless Muslims who dared to stand up to their venal corruption -
something that is a religious responsibility for Muslims.
And maybe then we will understand that while ISIS is a monster that we must
defeat, the monster is more than just the group itself. It's the desperation
of millions of people suffering under horrific conditions, and looking for a
way out. And the rest of us in the human family, Muslims and non-Muslims,
have either looked away, failed to effectively address, or often, backed and
supported these horrors.
So let's seize this moment with wisdom, to bring down the monster we face,
the one we all have lines of responsibility for. Let's see the human family
united like never before to defeat ISIS - not just on the battlefield, but
in our own societies, in the media and social media, and most of all in the
thousands of Muslim communities that live today around the world in fear.
Let's encourage Muslim and Non-Muslim communities everywhere to embrace each
other, welcome refugees with compassion, escalate our pressure on Egypt and
other brutal governments to stop brutalizing opponents and creating the
ISIS' of the future, redouble our efforts to achieve a peace deal in Syria,
protect at-risk communities like the Rohingya, stop the US' constant
terrifying drone attacks on communities, and ensure that the military
actions we support are scrupulously careful to avoid traumatizing the
civilians who are suffering enough already under ISIS' boot. If we do these
things, we'll do far more than defeat ISIS, we'll defeat the misery that has
given rise to them, and in a way that takes the human family one wiser step
further on our journey together.
With love and gratitude for this amazing community,
Ricken, Luis, Ben, Alice, Rewan, Elana, Mohammed, Steve, Emma and the whole
Avaaz team.
<http://open.avaaz.org/act/open/8973427995.gif>
Avaaz.org is a 41-million-person global campaign network that works to
ensure that the views and values of the world's people shape global
decision-making. ("Avaaz" means "voice" or "song" in many languages.) Avaaz
members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 18
countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some of
Avaaz's biggest campaigns here
<http://www.avaaz.org/en/highlights.php/?footer> , or follow us on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/Avaaz> or Twitter <http://twitter.com/Avaaz> .
You became a member of the Avaaz movement and started receiving these emails
when you signed "Stand <http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma> with the
Burmese Protesters" on 2007-10-01 using the email address
miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To ensure that Avaaz messages reach your inbox, please add avaaz@xxxxxxxxx
to your address book. To change your email address, language settings, or
other personal information, contact
<http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact/?footer> us, or simply go
<https://secure.avaaz.org/act/?r=unsub&cl=8973427995&email=miriamvieni@opton
line.net&v=69332&lang=en> here to unsubscribe.
To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to us at
www.avaaz.org/en/contact <http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact?footer> or call
us at +1-888-922-8229 (US).
