I’m Noah Schoen, and I’m Aliza Becker, and this is October 27th, a podcast about the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. 

Aliza and I co-founded an oral history project that recorded over 100 interviews with local Jews and non-Jews about their life stories and reflections on the shooting. Our interviewees taught us so much, and we’ve created this podcast to share their insights with you. 

This is October 27th.

Noah Schoen: Wasi Mohamed was just 22 years old when he became the executive director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh. In his first few years on the job, he built relationships with Jews across the city, and on October 27th, 2018, he sprang into action to support his friends and colleagues. 

In the days and weeks that followed, it seemed like Wasi was everywhere: at the scene moments later, attending programs and vigils, fundraising from the Muslim community to cover funeral expenses. And there was something special about the way he spoke in public; you could feel his own personal sense of heartbreak at what had happened and his desire to let the Jewish community know that we were not alone. 

Perhaps that is why over the course of our oral history project, Jews mentioned Wasi’s response to the shooting more than any other non-Jewish person. 

In Wasi’s telling, everything he did flowed naturally from his pre-existing relationships with Jewish community members. For him, real solidarity means being involved in each other’s lives, not just in moments of tragedy but by breaking bread together and inviting each other to weddings and bar mitzvahs. When we go through times of sadness and of joy together, Wasi says that we gain a form of sacred knowledge about humanity. 

Wasi Mohamed: I’m Wasi, lifelong Pennsylvania resident, Came from you know Harrisburg, originally, capital of the Keystone State. Was born there. Moved to Pittsburgh in about 2011.

Schoen: Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Pittsburgh? 

Mohamed: Ah, yes. So, I didn't plan on ending up in Pittsburgh. Then I started looking at these guaranteed-admit medical programs that you can get into out of high school. So, Pittsburgh had the best one that I saw in my opinion. Came here on a visit, loved the city.

Very different, much more fit my personality, the city, size of the city, the vibe of the city. Definitely wanted to end up in Pittsburgh, you know, after the visit. Didn’t anticipate it, but now I hope I don't leave. You know, I hope nothing ever takes me out of Pittsburgh. So, yup, yah I love it here.

Schoen: I’m wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what growing up in Harrisburg, what that looked like for you?

Mohamed: Yeah, I mean Central PA, especially like when I grew up was interesting. Diversity wasn’t much of a thing. I was around nine years old post 9/11. It's one of those things that you remember the before and after—starkly different after 9/11. 

You know what's covered in the news, how people act, how people treat you. All that stuff changes a lot. So, there’s always Islamophobia and xenophobia before that date, right. It just becomes more violent and targeted for a stretch of time right after the tragedy.

Schoen: What was school like?

Mohamed: School was interesting. Pre-9/11 bullying was like “Brown kid,” or, “smell like curry” kind of thing. You know like kind of more cultural bullying, you know like Indian thing was more of a focus, the Apu era in The Simpsons, you know so like. that was kind of where a lot of the jokes came from. But, yah I mean it starkly changed post-9/11. You know like, then bullying became more specific. Then the terrorist jokes started and then these things would escalate. 

Our house was targeted a bunch of times, so vandalism. You know, I think mustard packets at first. And then it was paintballs and other things. It just kept escalating until eventually they put some kind of explosive thing into our mailbox.

There's a Muslim friend that we had from Ghana that lived down the street from us and then they had an older brother about five years older than us. So, you know he came over. And he was furious. 

He was like, “like don’t you understand what they did to you all? Don't you understand they did it to us, like collectively?”

And it started to dawn on us, like the larger understanding of us not being welcomed here. Right and tat's what they're trying to convey and under threat of violence, you should not be here anymore. It just like took that experience having to kind of sit there and then digest that and his anger and how this isn't just something that affects us personally. It isn't just our mailbox that is gone now and that's the only damage here, but it's something that the larger community can see. 
It is not something that made the news, not something that a lot of people cared a lot about. Not something the police did a ton about. Not something that you get support for with friends and other people in the school.

My friend’s response to that I mean was to get angry. You know mine was similarly unhealthy. It was more about excellence. You know, like trying to be better. You know show that I contribute to society.

So, like I would spend a couple of thousand hours volunteering in high school, you know class president, tried to be valedictorian, you know team captain, varsity letters in three sports a year and all of the things that are very stereotypical of a good kid.There's always this element of like needing to prove that there was value for us being here, because with my name on it, Wasiullah Mohammed, it’s like, you know he’s a Muslim kid. You know, like Brown dude. You know, not light-skinned, so like dark enough that people have to deal with it.

Schoen: I'm curious, were there any Jews in Harrisburg and what was your relationship with them? 

Mohamed: I think there's at least as many Jewish kids as Muslim kids you know in the school, which isn't saying a lot. But like there were some. I had close friends that were Jewish. 

But growing up, I did not understand the difference between like white people and Jewish people. Like you know you’d hear of Jewish through media, right, and like TV shows, and like stuff like that, but I could never distinguish people from each other. 

Been in my entire life to just like a handful of people's houses. Didn’t feel comfortable doing it. My parents hated that. You know they're always afraid of us getting influenced or whatever, like. So, they just never let us go anywhere. 

But one of the houses they were cool with was like this Jewish family's house, and they were like the most welcoming house I've ever been to. And that was super great, because it felt like home. You know, like the culture of welcoming and wanting somebody to be in your house, and ensuring that they're always fed or like taken care of in general. And actually being able to eat like the meat, you know because like I can eat kosher, right. So like that stuff is awesome. It was great. It was a very memorable experience. You know, like a non-Christian alternative. 

Right, like and I understood not being from the majority religion, and then what that meant, and how my culture was different. And then you had this other group that got it, right. But unless they expressed it or wore it openly and in some way, I just didn't realize it. 

So, then that's interesting because it's like not the case for me. Like you might not know that I'm Muslim, you know except my name is a giveaway. But after 9/11, if you're Brown, people assume that you're a Muslim terrorist. Right, like that's true. 

Like Sikhs and and Hindus and other people did experience violence and discrimination because of Islamophobia and ignorance in America that like anybody Brown is probably from one of those Muslim countries. You know, so being Muslim wasn't the only thing that got you attacked. You know “looking Muslim” quote unquote, you know, like would get you attacked as well. 

So it’s interesting, in hindsight, to reflect. I wonder like if the experiences I had in Central PA, where the anti-Muslim sentiment was so strong, was anti-Jewish sentiment also that strong, because typically, they tend to go hand-in-hand. And I wonder what that did to them, relative to what it did to me. 

Schoen: When you came to Pittsburgh, did you have any relationships with Jews then, and how did that evolve? 

Mohamed: Yeah, yeah. So like on my freshman floor I had a bunch of Jewish students that lived in the residence halls with me. So that was great. And one of the first clubs I was involved with was the Muslim Student Association and through a bunch of different collaborative efforts, like we worked with Hillel and other Jewish orgs. I worked with several Jewish friends in student government work: activism, community organizing kind of work. 

I ended up starting a fraternity with a bunch of friends. Several of them were Jewish. The identity that they wore was Jewish, right that they really embraced that. It wasn't like growing up, where like it wasn't ever mentioned. It was like, “No, no, no, this is who I am, and then this is how I grew up, this is my identity.” Right, so like, it was interesting.            
                          
So I had nominated a young member, Zach Schaefer, to be president, and he ended up winning, because like I had a whole block of people that would vote with me. It’s like, “The Muslim dude really made sure the Jewish guy won the presidency of our fraternity.”  It was something that—like it caught their eye. You know that there was this distinction between you all and that your Muslims and Jews are separate and infighting or feuding or whatever. So then it was very surprising to people that that happened.

And I didn't see it that way, because I just think Zach’s a tremendous leader, you know. Like and it wasn't about those identities that we held. We were just brothers within this fraternity.
My involvement with the Jewish community actually, took a huge turn when I started as executive director of the Islamic Center, which is the largest Islamic institution in you know in the region, when I was twenty-two—you know not very well equipped to do it. 

The first communities that reached out to us you know were different synagogue communities that always had a longstanding relationship with the Islamic Center. So it was great. 
And then we started doing all these joint Shabbat dinners, or peace things, or justice-related things. So, like community organizing and social justice through faith communities with the Muslim and Jewish community with Christian congregations as well.

And then JFCS, Jewish Family and Community Services, ISAC, the Immigrant Services and Connections and lots of things within the immigrant refugee support system is Jewish-run or funded or has Jewish in the name. You know, like because there's such a history here of the Jewish community caring about refugees. And a lot of the refugees now, unfortunately, are Muslim community members, you know, so then we just have a lot of connections there. 
So, Pittsburgh has a much larger concentration of the Jewish community. So, it’s probably why I've seen, in every aspect of my life, Jewish community members all over. 

Schoen: I think I'd turn now just to thinking about October 27th, 2018. 

Mohamed: Yeah, yeah I was on the way to the Islamic Center for an early meeting with our board of directors, and I was getting these messages from people, like asking if you know what was going on in Squirrel Hill, because there’s like police cars everywhere and sirens and all these things. 

Then it’s like, alright, there’s a shooting in Squirrel Hill. They say it might be at a synagogue. And then you try to contact leaders whose like in the Jewish community. So we were already friends at this point. This is years into my time at the Center. We've been through a lot together. They've been through difficult times with us, we've been through difficult times with them. I had everybody's number already, like I could just text and call people to figure out what's going on. 
And I got a ton of messages from community members saying “What can we do, what do we do, where should we go, should we do something? Like what's going on?”

So, when we get to the Center, talk to the board, tell them about the situation, update them. And just take them all, and say, “We just have to go to to Tree of Life.” 

In hindsight, it was just kind of like, “Can we just be there for them?” So we just kind of went to kind of be of support, and then hoping that our presence could bring some kind of peace. 
While we were standing there outside Tree of Life waiting, police everywhere, community leaders and politicians kind of gathering. And we just like couldn't believe the reality of what was going on. Like you're outside a building where a mass shooting happens in your own city to people you love in a community, in a sanctuary, in a place of worship. Like  none of it seemed particularly real. 
The only thing we could think of is “All right, what do we do?” And we’re like, well our burial practices as Muslims are very similar to that of the Jewish community. Right, you know the process is similar, the timelines are similar. We know you bury very quickly, and then you just need a bunch of money very quickly. So then we were like, “All right. We're just going to raise the money.”

You know like so, as soon as I left, I started fundraising. And then we found that there's some national Muslim organizations that are also very interested in fundraising. So we all collaborated and did one large fundraiser. 

And called, as soon as I could get anybody on the phone— the Ralph Schugar funeral home, because they know how to handle those kinds of funerals. Like and called them, and said, “Make sure nobody pays anything. You know the Muslim community will pay for all of it. We raised the money.” 

We didn't actually raise the money at the time, we just were confident that our community would be generous. And we were like, “All right. We'll try to calculate how much it will take for everybody to be covered and then extra for medical costs if anybody, you know, like is injured, or whatever.” So we just tried to raise as much as we could at the time. 

So, it's interesting like as somebody who is a person of faith, somebody who leads a community and understands that feeling of powerlessness, you know, like that pain that I can understand from community members when you lose a loved one or somebody in your community. Because like we still had a fundraiser open for a community member of ours that was shot and killed in East Liberty right before this happened, like a week before. He had seven kids and a wife that he left behind and all these things that we're trying to support and figure out what to do. And that was just fresh.

So, we made the calls we could and told everybody like, “Hey, We want to cover the funeral costs. This is what we raise money for.” And that's all we could think to do. You know, like a sense of powerlessness that you've never really understood and felt until you're right there. You can't turn back time, you can't save anybody, you can't even provide any medical attention. There's like literally not much you can do at all. 

And then we decided to be present at as many events as possible. The money was important, I just think, to our community to be able to give that. And even if there's millions of dollars over all these different Muslim-led fundraisers. You know our one, in particular, ended up over $250,000. We closed it to make sure that it was around the funeral cost level plus some and then we handed that over. 

The feedback I got a lot was showing up and being there and the meaningfulness of our presence was more important than whatever the money was. 

I received that message over and over and over again. And then still I'm trying to kind of digest what that means. 

You know, like the collective voice I was representing as the Muslim community trying to give a message to our Jewish brothers and sisters like, “You know, we're with you, we understand.  We're hurt with you, and we're a family.”

I was trying to convey those messages. It was just something that we spend every day doing since, you know like and hopefully tried to do before, because that's how we saw each other. Like we've made efforts in the past and, but now it's just more. 

A lot of it was just us responding to any needs of the Jewish community at the time. You know, some of it was like me taking leftover food from a shiva and trying to get it somewhere, because like people were so generous.

Like I actually had a bunch of people ready to cook and just like had, “We’ll figure out the kosher thing.” This whole thing was set up. You know food was the last thing people needed. And they actually just needed help taking the food elsewhere, So I was like, “All right, well, we have a food pantry, we have like a soup kitchen stuff. I can take it to people.

It's interesting because like you keep reminding each other of like one of the most painful things that any of us can remember. It was like a horrible time for the city of Pittsburgh, obviously, and I know the larger world as well. A lot of people were hurting with Pittsburgh. 

And there’s just this moment of solidarity afterwards that we're trying to continue. You know we want to feel that feeling of, “We came together. Can we keep that?” Right. Because like the pain exists, you can't remove that. But that feeling. Can we persist? Can we maintain it?  

To actually figure out how we talk and move on, you know, from something like this, or in a way that we're growing from it and not just trying to forget it or bury it, you know like I think requires us to be able to talk a lot about it. And then it allowed us to be comfortable talking about this with more than just ourselves within our own respective communities. 

Schoen: What was the impact of the synagogue shooting on you? 

Mohamed: Umm—ah still processing, to be honest, I’ll just say. 

I mean I was the leader of a congregation, you know like so I could understand, because we think about that a lot. We've had a lot of threats at the Center. 

You know, like and thinking about what if it actually happened. What if somebody came in and just attacked us. It would be very easy to do. And all the security in the world can be helpful, but like if somebody wants your community harmed, like it can happen. And then if that happens, like how powerless I am as a leader to do anything about that?

And then people look for people to save them in these times or protect them in these times and leaders are leaned upon. So I felt you know the pain for the families, the pain for the victims and then what they went through.

Schoen: I'm curious what you've learned about what kind of support leaders need in the moments when these things happen, when they have to be supporting so many other people. 

Mohamed: Yeah. I think people, for whatever reason, we're just built this way, that like we really look for these leaders, you know, in difficult times. So, it’s kind of like, you know like the darker the time it is, the closer people cluster, and the more people clamor for that one flame that exists. Right, so if you're the leader, and then they feel you are that flame, you give out light, you give out warmth. You know, it's very easy for people to smother that flame, you know, if you don't protect it. Right, ensure that it's like going to stay lit. Right, or else they just, you know, fall into the darkness themselves, because they can't sustain it.

So, it's not just being demanding of the leaders, it's kind of like you know helping them to understand the direction, because leaders will always need that guidance. And then walking with them and helping them lift, right. Like not just demanding more like light and more heat from the flame, it's like being lit yourselves, picking up some of those tasks of leadership. 

We understand that these situations will be hard and just being very cognizant of that, and very, very understanding of that—or else, we're just going to keep burning through these candles and burning through these leaders. You know like get burnt out that just can't do it anymore. 
I know a lot of people who wanted to leave their positions after one year of trying to do all of the follow-up after the aftermath. And it's very fair, because of how much expectation is put on people. And we don't want that for our leaders. 

Schoen: I'm curious what you would want more Pittsburghers to know about the Muslim community here in Pittsburgh and how people can be more supportive to some of the struggles that the Muslim community faces here?

Mohamed: Yah, I mean information like I always like to tell about the Muslim communities is the diversity of it. Like we have the whole socioeconomic range. 

We have, you know, like over fifty nationalities, speak over thirty-some languages. So when you talk about the Muslim community, so different, you know like depending on which part of it you're talking about. 

To understand diversity, 1.7 billion people reflected upon the community in Pittsburgh. It is as diverse as you can get. So, we're not at all monolithic. You know the homogeneity is not to the extent that people expect it to be. So, it's important to know.And I think our issues are largely those issues of America. 

So we care about the social justice issues that exist. Like obviously, we want people to care about the Muslim ban. We want people to care about discrimination and prisons. We want people to care about closing these practices of monitoring and entrapping Muslims, you know like post-9/11 kind of tactics, like we want that to stop. Those are community-specific issues.

Ah, but also when we gathered over a hundred Muslims in the capitol to do advocacy—we had the first bill ever introduced in the State House, in the State Senate by Muslims. It was about ending death by incarceration. It was criminal justice reform. You know, like it’s nonviolent offenders sentenced to life in prison without parole is what we were fighting against. You know, like largely weren't Muslim. You know, it was about justice, because our Islamic values push us to fight for justice, not justice for Muslims, justice in general. 

Because we believe in the Islamic tradition that people at birth are pure, like they're seeds. If they do something that's negative, or end up people that we're not proud of as humanity, it's the soil that is tainted, not the seeds and cursing the seed I don't think is productive.

It's a community that you just need to know to know. Like you have to put that effort in. You won't know based on anything else than actually engaging with that community, and then even when you engage with that community, you know a subset. You know, like it's very diverse. 

So, like when you have the Muslim community collectively calling out an issue of an injustice, you should probably listen, because those people are very different from each other. You know, like so then what would collectively make them say that this is not okay? Right, it's important.

Schoen: You've talked a lot about the importance of relationships. And I'm curious if you learned anything in particular from the way that these relationships between Muslims and Jews and all kinds of other Pittsburghers were activated after October 27th, 2018. 

Mohamed: Yeah, I think before that, we had relationships. And I think after they were deepened in a lot of ways, because traumatic experiences do that to relationships. Through relationships and through trauma and through difficult times and through great times and through weddings, you can learn things about the world, about people, about life, about like social change even, that you couldn't elsewhere.

There’s an Islamic tradition, there's this concept of like information versus like sacred knowledge. Like information is easy to get, like especially these days in modern technology. But sacred knowledge is, you know, like you bleed for that. It is just hard-earned, and it's not easy to come by. And relationships to me is one of those pathways into this concept of like this sacred knowledge that is just so much deeper than information. 

Until I'm with people and understand them and sit with them in their pain and sit with them in their joy whenever great things happen and be with them and have relationships that are real, you just cannot learn about humanity. 

I think those are crucial, and they deepened here between the Muslim and Jewish community, as they've always existed between them. 

All of us have to take more ownership. And to like what is your part in maintaining this bridge. Don't just let this one faith leader or these handful of faith leaders or a handful of community leaders do this. Right, like make your own relationships. 

And not everything has to be a big public show. Like just go get food sometimes. You know, like go hang out. Make sure your kids are friends. Like, you know just do things that like are normal. And then that's how you really build these relationships. 

Not these like, "All right, we're going to have press at this big event and we have all this food, and we're going to spend forty-five minutes talking about how similar our religions are and the last hour and fifteen minutes talking about how we can do this again next year. You know, like that's not the depth of relationship that I'm looking for. 

Invite people to your weddings. Like, you know, invite people to like your celebrations and bar mitzvahs, and like things that are important to you. Understand them, talk to them. You know, those are people that are actually in your life. 

Moving away from the grand romantic gestures to these more of like consistent efforts, I think is the direction that we're going, which is the best possible direction, because those are now real, real, meaningful relationships. 

Schoen: October 27th is written and hosted by Aliza Becker and Noah Schoen, and it’s produced and edited by Carly Rubin. We get administrative support from Tina Stanton Gonzalez of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and our closing theme is Tree of Life by Nefesh Mountain. If you want to support our work and the creation of more episodes like this one, you can make a donation at October27podcast.org where you’ll also find episode transcripts, a link to this full unedited interview, and more. That’s October27podcast.org.

And lastly, thank you to all of the amazing Pittsburghers who shared their stories for the Meanings of October 27th Oral History Project. We’re so grateful for your trust and your generosity.