{"id":42745,"date":"2026-07-31T01:06:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/what-do-we-owe-the-victims-of-lindsey-grahams-wars\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T01:06:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T19:36:59","slug":"what-do-we-owe-the-victims-of-lindsey-grahams-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banitoday.com\/hi\/what-do-we-owe-the-victims-of-lindsey-grahams-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"What do we owe the victims of Lindsey Graham\u2019s wars?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

(RNS) — The last time I saw Lindsey Graham, I was sitting directly behind Hanan Shaheen.<\/p>\n

Hanan had come to testify before Congress in September 2024 about the murder of her 6-year-old son, Wadee Alfayoumi. Just days after Oct. 7, 2023, Wadee was stabbed 26 times<\/a> in his Illinois home by the man who had been his family’s landlord. Hanan herself barely survived the attack. She later asked me to accompany her as she appeared before Congress.<\/p>\n

From my seat behind her, I could see both of them.<\/p>\n

In front of me sat a grieving mother trying to describe the indescribable. Across the room sat Sen. Lindsey Graham.<\/p>\n

Throughout the hearing, I found myself looking toward him. I kept wondering whether he would acknowledge her presence. Whether he would look into the eyes of a grieving mother. Whether, if even for a moment, politics would give way to some semblance of humanity. I never saw that moment come. <\/p>\n

The same man who urged Israel<\/a> to “flatten Gaza,” who defended expanding the war even as the civilian death toll mounted, who championed military escalation not only in Gaza but in Lebanon and Iran, and who spent decades establishing himself as one of Washington’s most consistent advocates of American military intervention abroad, could not even acknowledge the Palestinian mother of a murdered Palestinian boy sitting only feet away. That’s why I found myself watching him so closely that day. I wanted to know whether a man who spoke so confidently about war would show even a fleeting moment of compassion to one of the victims connected to it. Instead, it was a reminder that our lives didn’t seem to exist to most members in Congress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n
RELATED:<\/strong> When the bombs fall on other people’s children<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

It was only the second time I had ever been invited to Congress.<\/p>\n

The first was years earlier, when the late Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson asked me to deliver the opening invocation before the House of Representatives. It was her invitation alone, not that of House Democrats, as it happened to be her turn to choose who would lead the invocation. She invited me because I had just returned from Christchurch, New Zealand, where I had spent days washing the bodies of Muslims murdered in their mosque and praying with their families. <\/p>\n

Johnson believed Congress should hear from someone who had witnessed what hatred looks like after the cameras leave, and she especially believed it was significant for a Palestinian American imam to have the floor at least once in a place where Palestinian and Muslim humanity is so often ignored. Johnson was also one of the early cosponsors of a house resolution,<\/a> introduced in 2019, that called attention to the treatment and detention of Palestinian children under Israeli military occupation. Long before the war made Palestinian suffering impossible to ignore, she believed those children’s humanity deserved recognition.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I realize both of my visits to Congress were connected by more than my presence. Both followed murders. Both were met with a familiar coldness and cruelty from several members of Congress. Both were reminders of how so many members of Congress sign bills of death and destruction and speak recklessly without accountability when it comes to my community.<\/p>\n

Since Sen. Graham’s death, the tension once again arises of what we owe the dead in terms of what some consider “decency” versus what we owe their victims.<\/p>\n

Of course, many conservatives who would condemn my refusal to honor my political opponent in the name of civility wouldn’t dare condemn President Donald Trump for celebrating the death of one of his opponents. For example, in March, he posted on Truth Social: “<\/span>Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.<\/a> He can no longer hurt innocent people!”<\/span><\/p>\n

But of course, as a Muslim leader, I recognize that I am being held to a different standard, which isn’t surprising.<\/p>\n

As an imam, I hold that remembering the dead truthfully is itself a moral obligation. So is remembering their victims. Forgetting the victims in order to preserve the reputations of the powerful in the name of decency is its own form of injustice.<\/p>\n

That is why I cannot think about Graham apart from Wadee Alfayoumi or the countless civilian casualties in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and beyond.<\/p>\n

It’s not because I rejoice in death, but because I grieve the dehumanization and hatred that make mass death possible. I grieve the children whose names never become conversations or national debates. I grieve the mother whose testimony goes unheard.<\/p>\n

In recent days, new footage has shown Graham saying he almost cried<\/a> out of joy when the war on Iran started. Well, the mothers of the 120 schoolchildren in Iran senselessly bombed surely cried too. The thousands of parents who lived to see their children killed in Gaza cried as well. And Graham has a lot to do with their tears.<\/p>\n

\n
RELATED:<\/strong> Bill Gothard abuse survivors still seek justice, healing as they reckon with his legacy<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

As he was laid to rest this week, Trump himself said that Graham had “never seen a war he didn’t like.”<\/a> Those of us who have washed the bodies of war’s victims, comforted their families and buried their children cannot be expected to remember those who championed those wars as though they bore no responsibility for their consequences. This is not irrational hatred. It’s important historical memory.<\/p>\n

Until we learn to mourn the victims of dehumanization with the same passion that we demand reverence for the powerful after they die, we will continue mistaking civility for conscience.<\/p>\n