After 9/11, there was a man named Mark Stroman who was so enraged by the attack on our nation that he went looking for revenge. He shot three men that he thought were Muslims before he was arrested. One of them survived. He is a man from Bangladesh named Rais Bhuiyan who was working at a mini-mart at the time. Stroman came into the shop, asked him where he was from, and before Rais could answer, he was shot in the face. When he was shot, he recalls thinking, “I was crying, and I was asking God – give me a second chance. I don’t want to die today. And I promise if you give me a second chance, I will dedicate my life for others.”1
Rais became blind in one eye. He didn’t have any health insurance so he got shuffled out of the hospital pretty quickly. He racked up a lot of medical debt and hustled to find work before getting back to school to do IT work, which is what he had wanted to do. Meanwhile, the shooter was sent to death row for his crimes. He spent time with pastors and journalists talking about who he was and what he had done. He regretted the hate that had consumed him. Then, ten years after the attacks, he found out that Rais had been fighting to save his life. Rais remembered the promise that he had made to God and wanted to work to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance. When Rais testified on Stroman’s behalf, he sobbed. On the day of the execution, he, “spoke with Stroman over the phone for the first time since the shooting. ‘I forgive you and I do not hate you,’ Rais said. Stroman responded ‘Thank you from my heart! I love you, bro. …You touched my heart. I would have never expected this.’ [Rais] replied: ‘You touched mine, too.’”2 After the execution occurred, Rais reached out to Amber, the oldest daughter of Stroman to see if he could help her. An ex-convict and an addict, he wanted her to have a second chance.
In surviving, Rais had felt God’s mercy and he wanted to extend that mercy as far and wide as he could – through love and care even where it seemed most impossible. He would not let the horror of that day remake him into another dark and twisted person. He survived someone else’s hate and he chose love. He understood the power of love and forgiveness and second chances. And he didn’t stop with Stroman and his family. He began a movement called World Without Hate to stop hate crimes through education about how forgiveness, compassion, and mercy can transform us.
[1] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=628622772
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rais_Bhuiyan