On September 21, 2001, life irrevocably changed for Rais Bhuiyan. A young Bangladeshi student exploring the American dream, Rais recently moved from New York to Dallas, when he became the victim of a brutal post 9/11 hate crime. Narrowly surviving being gunned down by a white supremacist on a revenge shooting spree, Rais’ American dream turned nightmare.
After hitting rock bottom, Rais used that bottom as a solid foundation to rebuild his life and keep his deathbed promise to help make a difference for others. It will soon be 23 years since the shooting and 14 since Rais led an international campaign to try and save his attacker from death row. Over the last 14 years, through the non-profit, he founded, Rais has dedicated his life to ending the cycle of hate and violence by sharing his story and empathy education programming. To date, through World Without Hate, Rais has visited and worked with hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. From classrooms and college campuses, to maximum security prisons, refugee camps, religious institutions, to town halls and conferences.
This work is difficult. With such divisiveness, intolerance, and fear dividing our communities and our nation this work is harder than ever before. It is vitally important, however. Fear can fuel hate and if left unchecked, can lead to violence, and even death. No one should be the victim of hate, violence, or senseless loss of life.
Watch this brief video to learn more about our beginning.
Before 9/11, Rais didn’t stand out as “other” but immediately after the attacks was labeled a terrorist and a threat to society because of his race and perceived faith. Years later, when his attacker came to know Rais, he called him brother. Rais believes and shares that “Once you get to know the other, it’s hard for you hate them.”
With so much misinformation, ignorance, and the lack of empathy in American society which creates an environment for spreading fear, lies, intolerance and hate, pinning humans against humans. Hate crime in America, including vandalism, intimidation, assault, and murder has risen to levels not seen in over a decade, according to federal data. Hate crime, defined by the FBI, is “a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”
In 2020, the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 838 hate groups across the U.S. The FBI recorded 8,052 single-bias incidents involving 11,126 victims in 2020. Of these, 61.8% of victims were targeted because of race and ethnicity, 20% because of perceived sexual-orientation, and 13.3% religion. Experts agree that this data remains severely undercounted because many victims of hate crime fail to report and unfortunately, local agencies are not yet required to report hate crime data to the FBI.
These statistics point to the overwhelmingly stark reality of growing hate in America. This saying nothing about the implicit bias and microaggression permeating our communities. This is our call to action. Each of us has the capacity to turn negatives into positives, ignorance into wisdom, fear into courage, and hate into love. Together, we can increase empathy for “the other,” paving the way for a world without violence, a world without victims, and a world without hate.
