One year on from Kuwait mosque attack, Continuing to Give
The blast that rocked the Imam al-Sadiq mosque was so strong that Hisham al-Failli’s first thought was that the roof had caved in on them. For 20 minutes he desperately searched for his father in the midst of the chaos. “I couldn’t believe what was happening, there was smoke and people bleeding and shouting”.
Mr Failli had brought his father to Friday prayers as he did every week. He had settled him as usual into one of the dozen or so chairs set out to the side of the main congregation for the elderly who were unable to bow in prayer, before taking his place with the other worshippers towards the front.
In a twist of fate, he and his close friend Dawood al-Naser had been in Saudi Arabia the previous month to pay their condolences to the families of those who died when Islamic State (IS) targeted a Shia mosque in the village of Al-Qadeeh in Qatif governorate. On 29 May, they had just arrived for Friday prayers at the Al-Anood mosque in Dammam when a car bomb exploded at the entrance, killing four.
On 26 June 2015, the 9th day of Ramadan, it was Kuwait that came under attack. As the country sought to make sense of its collective shock and grief in the days and weeks that followed, slogans calling for national unity and rejecting sectarianism began to give way in some quarters to heated accusations and questioned loyalties.
Mr Naser says that he was unswayed by the rhetoric: “We were brought up together [Sunnis and Shias], we ate together, we travelled together. We don’t have a sense of sectarianism.” Mr Failli adds that although Kuwaiti society did not suffer from overt sectarian tensions, developments in the region have begun to have an impact. “It wasn’t like this before but now we feel that sectarianism has started to seep in, it’s coming from outside.”
When the two friends decided to collect money for the newborn baby of 25-year-old Sayed Radhwan, an Indian national who had worked as a guard at the mosque, they were heartened by the outpouring of generosity from across Kuwait and abroad. “They were Shias and Sunnis, and people from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, even Canada. Even children wanted to give us their pocket money,” said Mr Naser.
Mr Failli and Mr Naser found a similar sense of community when they arrived in Mr Radhwan’s village in the district of Sultanpur in northern India. In a video documenting their second visit to oversee the projects funded by the “Continuing to Give” initiative, Mr Naser points out that the villagers working on building the schools, sanitary facilities and other projects are Indian Sunnis, Shias and Hindus. “They’re all working with us” he said, adding “here, people work together, there are no differences. It makes you want to be part of it”.
From the initial idea of collecting money as a gift for the newborn, the initiative has now grown to become a large part of both of their lives, taking up much of their spare time while they work in full-time government jobs. Mr Failli lost his father and uncle in the attack, while Mr Naser lost four of his cousins. But by reaching out to the family of Mr Radhwan in the midst of their own grief, they found that it helped them too. “Somehow we got the inspiration and it helped us to forget a little bit, we hoped that by trying to do something charitable it could maybe be a source of healing for us,” Mr Failli recalls.
On the 9th day of Ramadan this year, the Imam al-Sadiq mosque opened its doors to the families of the victims, for a memorial ceremony to mark the first anniversary. Entering the building for the first time since the attack was difficult says Mr Failli: “Seeing the place brought back the sadness and painful memories.” Now that the walls and entrances have been newly renovated, the mosque looks almost as it had before, but not quite. Shrapnel marks on some of the pillars have been preserved, bearing witness to those wounds that the passing of years will not erase.
