Muslims feel shared pain when other Muslims experience trauma: study
After the Christchurch terror attacks that barbarically left 51 worshipers dead, millions across the globe, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, shared their agony mourned together, a new study however shows that the terrible impact of the traumatic event is felt differently by the global Muslim community, or Ummah.
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On March 15, 2019, an Australian White nationalist killed 51 people, including women and children, and wounded 49 others at the Nur and Linwood mosques in the city of Christchurch.
According to British website Metro, Sussex University has put forward a new study that examined how Muslims feel in the aftermath of such tragic events. It found that Muslims “feel a strong connection to one another.”
“A deep sense of oneness and ‘shared suffering’ among people who even never met each other, as a trait that common to Muslims in particular and this phenomena was called by researcher as ‘vicarious trauma,’ experiencing the pain that other Muslims have faced.”
The study which focused on the impact of Islamaphobic hate crimes on British Muslims, found that “Muslims intermesh with the consciousness of ummah, a shared community. “
“We found that Muslim communities experience a strong moral bond that was based on a shared cultural and religious belief system. This was linked to the concept of brotherhood or ‘ummah’ which means community of believers,” Professor Mark Walters, lead author of the Sussex University study, told Metro.co.uk.
According to the study, if Muslims receive news about other Muslims suffering from violence or abuse where they might be in the world, they will most likely experience “vicarious trauma” or “shared suffering.”
Also of note was the fact that Muslims feel this way for other Muslims who were even maybe thousands of miles away and even in the case of the absence of any personal bond.
Amaliah, a Muslim platform in UK, held an event called Soul Sessions to help Muslim women deal with trauma after the Christchurch terrorist attack.
“After the New Zealand attacks happened, we felt like there was a sense of communal grieving, it had really disturbed and upset our community in a way we hadn’t necessarily seen before. The concept of one ummah showed in that moment. Even though it was in New Zealand, it felt like it could’ve just as easily been Finsbury Park,” a fellow named Nafisa told Metro.co.uk during event hosted by Amaliah.
