![Sebastian Robins and Mona Haydar at their \"Ask A Muslim\" booth - photo courtesy of Mona Haydar](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/27\/2016\/02\/Ask-A-Muslim_Mona-and-Sebastian.jpg\")
<\/a>By Sebastian Robins<\/strong><\/p>\n Mid-winter in New England sees about seven hours of daylight, and that\u2019s only when the sun is shining. More often than not the skies are grey or spitting rain, and it feels like everyone and everything is contracting into itself, pulling up collars against the onslaught of winter, and keeping eyes down. It was into this darkness several weeks ago that my family and I arrived at my mom\u2019s house south of Boston to help her recover from hip surgery.<\/p>\n We were between jobs and between homes. So we drove east and hunkered down in her seaside town, helped her get back on her feet and figure out what to do next with our lives.<\/p>\n At the time the news of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and the equally horrific responses and backlash, seemed to magnify the bleakness of the season. In the days and weeks that followed, we felt a collective darkness fall over ourselves and our country. As the solstice approached and the days shrank even more, we were paralyzed with fear, and we didn\u2019t even know it.<\/p>\n We\u2019d stay in the house for days at a time, not exactly deciding not to go out, but not making any plans either. We stopped reading the news, and my wife, Mona, shut down her Facebook page. She then re-opened it, vowing to avoid current events. I canceled my Times<\/em> digital subscription and replaced the New Yorkers<\/em> by my bed with a book of Rumi poems. We helped my mom, we played with our son and we let the small and mundane be the stuff of our days.<\/p>\n A few weeks later, we were bumping down the highway in our old Subaru, a rare excursion out of the house, leaving the quiet and conservatism of my mom\u2019s town and heading into Cambridge. I could feel the inertia and calcification start to slough off and could taste some of the buzz of the city, when I remembered the story of Haider Hamza who, in the run up to the second Gulf War, traveled through the red states of rural America with a simple white booth and a sign reading \u201cAsk an Iraqi\u201d hand painted on top.<\/p>\n It had stuck with me: the simplicity and innocence of the Lucy-like lemonade stand, the vulnerability of the lone man in the booth, the timeliness of the whole thing. This nice guy, living in New York, who earnestly wanted to understand why \u201cwe\u201d were invading \u201chis\u201d country. None of his friends were supportive of the war, and this just confused him more, so they told him to go south and talk to folks there. And he did.<\/p>\n I had drunk a lot of tea that morning, and Ali Farka Toure was coming clean through the car stereo. The sky was clear and our son was asleep in the backseat \u2014 reason alone to celebrate. \u201cLet\u2019s do it!\u201d I told my wife. \u201cI\u2019ll build a booth. We\u2019ll have a sign: \u2018Confused about World Events? Ask a Muslim.\u2019 And then next to us we\u2019ll find someone to sit under a sign reading, \u2018Ask A Responsible Gun Owner.\u2019 We\u2019ll just get to the heart of it, and give away donuts and coffee and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, we didn\u2019t know any gun owners, responsible or otherwise, and we nixed \u201cConfused About World Events,\u201d because it sounded too pretentious. Besides, we didn\u2019t want to talk about world events. We didn\u2019t even want to talk about being Muslim, necessarily. I should have made a sign reading, \u201cAsk a Human Being Who Happens to be Muslim,\u201d but I only got that great suggestion a few weeks later.<\/p>\n Amazingly, my wife agreed. I found some white closet doors a neighbor had discarded and painted the lettering. On the first day we were planning to set up, it was pouring rain. Then I got sick, and then it rained some more. Out of a purely stubborn sense of desperation, I made us drive into Cambridge on a cold, drizzling day, praying the forecast for clearing up would be accurate. Even if we just set up for five minutes and go home<\/em>, I thought, I\u2019ll be happy. We have to do something. If it\u2019s a failure, fine. We fail. But at least we will have tried.<\/em><\/p>\n Maybe I was even hoping for a failure, like the library shutting us down, or some heckler unnerving us, or everyone walking by, coldly ignoring our offerings.<\/p>\n We stopped at Dunkin Donuts and bought a Box o\u2019 Joe and two dozen donuts. The man behind the counter was named Abdelrahim, which I decided was a good sign. We drove to the Cambridge Public Library, unloaded, set up the signs, and with hearts racing, stood there and waited.<\/p>\n In the first five minutes, we had two interactions which made the whole effort worth it. First, a student walked up to us, having just gotten out of classes for the day at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, adjacent to the library, the same school the Boston Marathon bombers had attended. He wore a backpack and held his phone nervously. He didn\u2019t want a donut or a cup of coffee. He stood there for a moment, approached us and said, \u201cI just wanted to say I\u2019m Muslim, and I think what you\u2019re doing is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Next, a woman walked up. She, too, stayed back, as if she was composing herself. She approached us tentatively and was choked up with emotion, stuttering between tears and jubilation. \u201cI just want to say thank you,\u201d she said. \u201cThank you for doing this. I\u2019m so sorry for what\u2019s happening right now. I don\u2019t know what to do. This is so great\u2026 Thank you.\u201d And in that moment, I realized a few things.<\/p>\n First, we were going to stay out here until it got too dark or cold to stand it any longer. And second, I knew then we weren\u2019t doing this to convince anyone that Muslims are good people, that Islam is really about peace, that we unequivocally condemn acts of terror, that we\u2019re more terrified of ISIS than anyone else.<\/p>\n We weren\u2019t trying to \u201cconvert\u201d the intolerant. Instead, we were there to give a small morsel of hope to people who were also trying to come out of a dark place, who were also affected by world events, who, like us, were feeling depressed and hungry for some sense of sanity. We were doing it because sadness creates a need to mourn and connect. But our collective fear had kept us indoors and silent, heads down, surviving instead of grieving and sharing.<\/p>\n By now, I had helped myself to several cups of our own coffee, and the caffeine was mixing with the adrenaline. I wanted to jump up and hug both of these people, cry in the sense of shared humanity that is our birthright, that is always within grasp, and which gets so close after a tragedy.<\/p>\n I restrained myself, and more people arrived. They took a donut and coffee and apologized for not having a question. Others talked to us and apologized for refusing a treat (\u201cgluten free,\u201d \u201cNew Year\u2019s Resolution,\u201d). Maybe we should have brought fruit, I thought. Or chai. Or baklava.<\/p>\n More people came. More students, Muslim and non, from the school. More thank you\u2019s and hugs. Debates about donuts versus crullers. Coffee versus tea. Handshakes and business cards. Stories of interfaith dialogue and interracial and inter-religious marriages. Jokes about Trump. Our son snuck donuts out of the box, and we let go of our feeble \u201cno sugar\u201d rule for the day.<\/p>\n We were baffled by the \u201csuccess\u201d our booth found online. At first it was thrilling, and then confounding, and then it was almost tragic. Like, are things really so bad out there that Muslims are afraid to be Muslim? Is dialogue so needed that free donuts, coffee and conversation makes the news? I was happy with the press, pleased to see the story in the papers<\/a> and equally terrified when we were \u201ccovered\u201d by Jihad Watch<\/em>.<\/p>\n But somehow the success only underscored the gravity of the moment we were living in.<\/p>\n