'Hate will get us nowhere'

LONDON

A British man who watched over Muslim worshippers in Manchester during Friday prayers last week following the deadly terrorist attack in mosques in Christchurch says “hate will get us nowhere.”

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Andrew Graystone, 57, whose gesture received acclaim worldwide, said he believes friendship should be the response to fear.

Telling about the day he stood in front of the Madina mosque in the northwestern English city to show solidarity with Muslims, Graystone said he thought Muslims might be sad following the Christchurch terror attack.

He said he decided to go to the mosque, which he says is “10 minutes from my house,” to give people his condolences after 50 people were killed in the New Zealand terror attack.

“Then I grabbed a piece of cardboard… and wrote a little message to say ‘You are my friends, I keep watch while you pray’.”

“I stood outside the mosque in the gateway” and when they saw my message, some people who entered the mosque smiled.

“What I didn’t know was that the imam had seen me… and in his sermon he mentioned that I was there,” he said.

Graystone said as they left the mosque, everybody wanted to smile at him and shake his hand.

“It was a very happy and friendly atmosphere,” he said.

Graystone said he started to see a photo of him taken in front the mosque had gone viral on the Internet.

He said he started to get many messages from all over the globe, from “Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Kenya… from almost every country.”

“Many messages from Muslims, many messages from non-Muslims.”

Graystone said “these are very dark times; there are many bad things happening in the world,” adding that everybody, including Muslims in the U.K., are living with a sense of fear.

He said: “I believe that friendship is the right response. Friendship overcomes fear.”

Hate is a symptom

Greystone said “hate is not a cause” but it is a “symptom of fear” of people we do not know.

“If we turn strangers into friends, then the fear can disappear,” he added.

Underlining that he has many Muslim friends, he said we should “realize that we are human beings first.”

At least 50 Muslims were killed and as many injured when Australian-born Brenton Tarrant, 28, entered the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch and targeted those inside with deadly gunfire.

Tarrant has been charged over the massacre and is being held at a maximum-security prison in Auckland with no access to print or online media.

Four children under the age of 18 were shot dead in cold blood, and other children are still being treated at nearby hospitals.