Singing Kumbaya?

 As many of you know I am on the Governor’s Hate Crime Advisory Council, at one meeting we had two guests.

Ted Hakey Jr. and mosque leader Zahir Mannan were our guests for that meeting.

What brought them together was mister Hakey fired 30 shots into the Ahmadiyya Baitul Aman Mosque on Main Street in Meriden with a high-powered rifle.

It could have been disastrous and made notional headlines instead it made two friends.

We were discussing at the meeting Restorative Justice which is something conservatives dislike with a passion to say the least. VOX reported,

Far-left Democrats in our school district made this shooting possible, because they implemented something they called “restorative justice.” This policy — which really just blames teachers for students’ failures — puts kids and teachers at risk, and makes shootings more likely. But it was billed as a pioneering approach to discipline and safety.

I was just fine with the old approach to discipline and safety — it was called discipline and safety. But the Obama-Biden administration took Parkland’s bad policies and forced them into schools across America.

Wikipedia (Yeah, I know it is Wikipedia but they have the best non rambling definition) defines Restorative Justice as,

Restorative justice is an approach to justice where one of the responses to a crime is to organize a meeting between the victim and the offender, sometimes with representatives of the wider community. The goal is for them to share their experience of what happened, to discuss who was harmed by the crime and how, and to create a consensus for what the offender can do to repair the harm from the offense. This may include a payment of money given from the offender to the victim, apologies and other amends, and other actions to compensate those affected and to prevent the offender from causing future harm.

This is not the first time I have heard about Restorative Justice, about ten years ago on was on the Safe School Coalition Committee run by the CT Department of Education and we were talking about ways to stop bullying in schools, what worked and what didn’t.

A couple of school districts down in southwestern Connecticut used Restorative Justice approach. At a neutral school if both parties agreed they sat down together to discuss the incident, and they had excellent results.

Despite Republican propaganda both parties must agree to the talks, instead of the Republican philosophy of “lock them up and throw away the key.”

Mosque leader Zahir Mannan agreed to Restorative Justice and sat down with Ted Hakey Jr. and now they go around talking about overcoming hate. NBC Connecticut reported,

Zahir Mannan, one of the leaders of the mosque, said those bullets didn't just pierce walls. They also shot fear through the heart of the Ahmadiyya community. This sect of Islam is made up by the only group of Muslims who share one particular belief.

"That belief in itself, believing that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the Messiah, has made us the subject of persecution all over the world, but not here in America," Mannan said.

Hakey said his former understanding of Islam came from what he read online. He said Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms not only led to his hatred of Islam but also fueled it.

"What you see on social media sites," Hakey said. "That was my education of Islam."

Hakey's life would change forever when he requested to sit down with the mosque leaders to apologize before his sentencing.

"This huge bodybuilder-type guy comes in and to see tears coming down his face and red cheeks, it humbled us as well," Mannan said. "It was a genuine connection that you can't fabricate."

Hakey said the conversation changed his attitude.

"If they handed this in any other way," he said, "I would've went to prison angry. I would've came out and I would've been just as angry."

That is the thing with “lock them up and throw away the key.” all it does is to radicalize and they would be just as angry or even more angry when they come out. While Restorative Justice has a chance of changing their behavior, it is not perfect and it is not for everyone but for many it works Hakey and Mannan go around the state to talk to anyone that will listen.

In an article on News Sincerity they write,

Before his sentencing, he asked to meet the mosque leaders to apologize. Their willingness to meet him without negative judgment and their willingness to listen completely shifted Hakey’s perspective on this community he, up until then, knew almost nothing about.

Mannan visited Hakey every other week in prison and even gifted Hakey his grandfather’s Quran. Now released, Hakey enjoys reading about Islam and having discussions with Mannan about it.

And this leads me to why I wrote this.

This morning on CBS Sunday Morning they had this segment…

The bottom line… the recidivism rate or the percentage of convicted felons returning to jail have been showing a slight improvement over the years. We might not be singing kumbaya together but we are heading towards it.