Female mourners gather for the funerals of of the three murder victims Thursday on the North Carolina State campus in Raleigh. (AP Photo/The News & Observer, Corey Lowenstein)
The leader of Muslims in Gainesville attended a candlelight vigil in Atlanta Thursday night for the three Muslims who were murdered in North Carolina earlier this week.<br />
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"What I talked about was the concept of love and (how) we all share a common bond (no) matter what religion, no matter what race," Imam Bilal Ali of the Gainesville Community Mosque said. "We all come from our father and mother, Adam and Eve. How would Moses, Jesus and Muhammad deal with the mistreatment against each other? They would stand together and speak out against it."<br />
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So, he added, "we do the same."<br />
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Ali said it's an honor, as Imam in Gainesville for the past 22 years, "to live in a community were we all have a mutual love and respect for each other and strive to do the work of those who came before us."<br />
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The interfaith vigil was held at Centennial Olympic Park. Organizers are also dedicating already-planned food drives in memory of the victims.<br />
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Organizers said they wanted to demonstrate that "a hate crime against one community is a crime not against just that one community, but against all of humanity."<br />
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The Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta and numerous local mosques were already in the midst of hosting "Being Your Neighbors' Keeper," an annual food drive for Georgia residents - Muslims and non-Muslim - when the shootings occurred. Now that drive is being held in memory of the three victims.<br />
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The victims - a husband and wife and the wife's sister - were shot and killed in their apartment in Chapel Hill in an apparent dispute over parking spaces at the apartment complex. However, some Muslims and their supporters are calling their murders a hate crime. (See related story. Link below.)
