OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — A call for healing at the Islamic Center of Greater Oklahoma City on Sunday. Faith leaders gathered for a prayer vigil to remember victims of an attack at mosques in New Zealand.
“An interfaith prayer vigil like this is needed,” the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Oklahoma chapter, Adam Soltani, said. “It’s a necessity in terms of healing. For the Muslim community, it helps us realize we’re not alone.”
In addition to remembering the victims of Friday’s attack, the vigil is meant to call for safety at places of worship. Some of the leaders said this is happening too often.
“An attack like this is like your worst nightmare come true, really,” Soltani said. “When you go to a mosque or a church or a synagogue, you go there to connect with your creator.”
Rabbi Abby Jacobson with Emmanuel Synagogue said she came in support of her Muslim colleagues.
She said events like this won’t be tolerated.
“There is a sense of determination that if I can’t do anything else in my world, I can’t let this kind of hate and fear and intolerance come out of our little corner of the world,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said she doesn’t expect this from a place that should provide comfort.
She said there is a positive by the community gathering.
“I’m taught by my religion, when we have nothing else to do, when we can no longer pray with our feet by going or our hands by reaching, then we pray with our words,” Jacobson said. “This is the best we can do.”
A few hundred people crowded the room for this service.
Some said it’s even harder to accept following the deadly shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue last October.