Omar Suleiman

I wish that it never happened as a whole, but I'm glad that the relationships that have been built over time came into being in that day.

We could call upon people that we knew, call upon each other, and as a community really come together.

Dallas has been through a lot, a lot of pain, but we've come together through a lot of pain as well.

It's kind of one of those things where we're united in our pain.

When you suffer together, you build certain bonds together.

So Dallas has been through a lot as a community, but we've come together through a lot as a community.

Well, that's the beauty that you don't just want to see, but you also want to be.

You know, we're living in a climate where there's a lot of that, right?

So how do you actually get through that and actually not allow yourself to succumb to that and be another voice in that polarization?

Listen, I think at the essence of it is always some sort of political instability that leaves behind a brutalized population and vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

As I said, in the 20th century, with the bloodiest century that we've had to date, where does religion fall in any of that?

Where does religion fall in the isms?

Where does religion fall in the world wars?

Where does religion fall in much of that?

Even when we talk about things like the Crusades, remove the Islamic framing, the Crusades.

The Crusades, were they really about religion?

The Mongols and the destruction of the Mongols, was it about religion?

Myanmar and the Rohingya today?

Is it about Buddhism?

So I think that these are essentially political issues, political causes, where you have people that rise up and that use religion to disguise things that are far, far, far from religion.