On April 14th, Mohsen Mahdawi, a student at Columbia University, was detained by federal officials during a visit to an immigration office in Vermont because of his activist efforts on behalf of Palestinians. On April 30th, a judge ordered his immediate release. Below you will find the UUA’s Director of Communication and Public Ministry – Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd – offering a reflection on the courage Unitarian Universalists can take from his example.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a lawful permanent US resident, was detained in March when he arrived for his regularly scheduled immigration interview. The United States Secretary of State claimed that his student activism opposing the most brazen injustices in Gaza stood as a threat to the Trump administration’s alleged attempts to combat antisemitism.

Mohsen, who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, served as President of the Columbia University Buddhist Students Association and is an active participant in his local Unitarian Universalist congregation. Speaking from an ICE detention facility on April 29th, he articulated his own experience of faith when he said, “I am centered internally. I am at peace. While I still know deeply that this is a level of injustice that I am facing, I have faith. I have faith that justice will prevail.”

On April 30th, after dedicated organizing from leaders and activists around the country, Mohsen was released from ICE detention to the applause of the crowd gathered to welcome him. Just steps away from imprisonment, he looked out at those people committed to building peace and declared himself to be both unafraid and grateful. In his words, “I’ve always learned that home is where you feel safe and loved and those who surround you there are my people and you are my people… In Vermont we have the people and the representatives – Democrats and Republicans, spiritual people and intellectual people all come together to say that the people united, will never be defeated.”

Moments later, Mohsen asked the crowd to join in singing one of his favorite hymns, “Spirit of Life.” That’s right – Sprit of Life – the hymn that drifts its way across the piano keys on many a Sunday morning in our congregations was the song of his own heart just moments after his release.

Our faith matters. Coalitional organizing matters. Unitarian Universalism matters, especially when it is leveraged in partnership with allies across the spectrum of faith in America and beyond. Now more than ever, we know that hard work lies ahead and that people of good faith cannot stop while war rages on and until all those who have been unjustly denied their rights have them restored.

As a progressive faith, we were there at the founding of this country 250 years ago. We helped shape the protections now enshrined in the constitution that give us the fundamental right to freely practice our faith and raise our voices in the face of mounting injustice. Our power and our prerogative as a religious community has always been to speak our truth with conviction and clarity. This does not mean that we believe our faith alone is right or ascendent. It does mean that the source of our message lies in our progressive theology. That theology – which speaks to the universality of the holy, the fundamental sacredness of all souls, and the profound interplay between the sacred and the everyday — is more powerful than the aims of any one political leader or party.

Today, oppressive structures of Christian nationalism and the deployment of authoritarian state power continue to silence free speech and faithful resistance. And yet, we find inspiration and power in Mohsen Mahdawi’s faith, holding on to the conviction of his values even as the unjust powers of the state sought to silence him. In these times, even from the relative safety of some of our congregational or institutional homes, Unitarian Universalists are called to follow his courageous example.

Now is a time to root ourselves in the historic and lasting power of our Unitarian Universalist faith tradition. We are a religion, progressive in spirit and possessed of symbols, language, song and history that cannot be taken from us and must be leveraged for mutual liberation. Our power comes from this identity. Progressive religion exists. We embody it. We proclaim it, and in doing so, take hold of our power to resist the criminalization of immigration and dissent.

Let’s honor the courageous faith of Mohsen Mahdawi by exercising our own faithful resistance in public. Let’s claim the voice that is uniquely ours – a progressive religious message that has long served as a balm for the weary and a foil against those who would twist religion into a tool of empire.