Muslim Offers Forgiveness for White Supremacist Who Shot Him in the Face http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/muslim-offers-forgiveness-for-white-supremacist-who-shot-him-in-the-face/#more-11974

Rais Bhuiyan saw Mark Stroman and his gun in the reflection of the window.Then came the question a robber wouldn’t ask, Bhuiyan thought.“Where are you from?”“Excuse me?”Within seconds, Bhuiyan, a store clerk, fell to the floor of the convenience store on Buckner Boulevard, bleeding profusely from a head wound from the gun blast. It blinded his right eye but miraculously didn’t damage his brain.Stroman, a white supremacist, would later confess he was out for revenge against those of Middle Eastern descent in Mesquite and Dallas days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Already, Stroman had killed one Pakistani immigrant; two weeks later, he’d kill an Indian immigrant.Now, Bhuiyan wants to forgive.He’ll be asking for a stay of the July 20 evening scheduled execution of Stroman, and a stop to the “cycle of violence,” as he calls it.“Sometimes, we human beings make mistakes out of anger,” said Bhuiyan, 37, in an interview Monday with The Dallas Morning News. Stroman, a former stonecutter, was convicted of the Oct. 4 killing of Vasudev Patel, an Indian of the Hindu faith who owned a gas station and convenience store in Mesquite.

Stroman also confessed to the Sept. 15 Dallas killing of Waqar Hasan, an immigrant from Pakistan and a Muslim, in what is believed to be the first hate crime in the U.S. after the attacks. He was charged in the shooting of Bhuiyan, a Bangledesh immigrant, on Sept. 21.Bhuiyan said his Islamic faith led him to realize “hate doesn’t bring any good solution to people. At some point we have to break the cycle of violence. It brings more disaster.”