After the mass shooting that killed 14 people and rocked a community, a campaign started by a pair of American Muslim friends raised more than $100,000 from more than 1,000 different donors in order to "respond to evil with good, as our faith instructs us," according to The Huffington Post.
The San Bernardino shootings, which occurred Dec. 2, led to 14 deaths at the hands of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple who had pledged their allegiance to ISIS.
The campaign set up in the wake of their actions, called Muslims United for San Bernardino, was started by Faisal Qazi and Tarek El-Messidi with the aim of meeting the hate generated by the killings with love, according to The Huffington Post. They have called for influential members of the American Muslim community, including imams and other leaders, to help promote the initiative and raise funds.
Neither men are strangers to charitable foundations, with Qazi, who is a neurosurgeon, having co-founded the family-centered development organization MiNDS and El-Messidi having co-founded the Islamic nonprofit CelebrateMercy.
"We weren't sure what kind of backlash would come to our charitable work," Qazi told CNN, describing how the decision to set up funds to aid victims' families came before it was revealed that the shooters were Islamic extremists. While criticism and negative attention was certainly a risk, Qazi and El-Messidi continued regardless.
"The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society," Qazi said, according to The Los Angeles Times, adding that "what you're seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society."
The campaign, set up on Muslim-focused crowdfunding platform LaunchGood, was originally only intended to raise $10,000 but has snowballed thanks to widespread involvement and the encouragement of religious scholars, according to CNN. The new goal of $140,000 has until Dec. 30 to be met.
