By Jeff Brumley
Baylor University made clear to its roughly 150 Muslim students during finals week that, whatever rhetoric they hear around the nation, they are welcome and safe at the Baptist institution.
More than 400 students, faculty, staff, plus a few Waco, Texas, residents, participated on campus Friday afternoon for a time of prayer and support for Muslims students.
With print, radio and television media looking on, participants gathered at the Judge Baylor statue. Words of support and love were read aloud and prayers were offered for victims of violence and for Muslims at Baylor. They then sang the hymn For the Healing of the Nations.
“People sang out,” said University Chaplain Burt Burleson, who helped organize the 25-minute event. “It was very powerful.”
Also moving, he said, was seeing people write positive messages on strips of cloth that were then tied to a board.
Those messages included “No more injustice,” “We are all children of God” and “We stand with you,” as seen in photos on Baylor’s Facebook page.
“We are going to gather them so our Muslims can see” the love and support they enjoy at Baylor, Burleson said.
Burelson said he’s seen very little pushback to the event and the sentiments behind it.
One person commented on Facebook that the victims of terrorism should have been the focus of Friday’s prayers. Burleson noted that one of the Muslim students replied “we did do that.”
And someone from Dallas sent an email expressing hope that participants in the prayer gathering didn’t mean it when they referred to Muslims as brothers and sisters.
But the vast majority of responses, even from some conservative evangelicals, reached out to say “this is what we should be about,” Burleson said.
The event got its start a week or so earlier when a friend asked Burleson how — in the midst of anti-Muslim rhetoric swirling through the meda — the university’s Muslim students were handling the pressure.
“I said, ‘I’m glad you asked me. I will find out,” he said.
It isn’t an unusual step, he added. When natural disasters strike other parts of the country, Baylor students from those regions will be contacted and offered support.
Burleson said he has been touched by Muslim students who report feeling respected and welcomed at Baylor.
“We’ve invited them here, so it’s about hospitality in the biblical understanding of that word,” he said.