Amin Abdullah<\/a>, one of the three people who died from the attackers\u2019 bullets, was a security guard at San Diego County\u2019s largest mosque. The city\u2019s police commissioner has since described him as a hero whose actions in trying to stop the gunmen likely saved many lives, including children.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s fair to say his actions were heroic,\u201d San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said at a news conference. \u201cUndoubtedly, he saved lives today.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not surprised. For I knew Amin \u2013 as a colleague, a man who wanted to protect others, and as someone who made me smile on one of the most difficult days of my life.<\/p>\n
Last December, with a thousand thoughts in my mind, I had walked up to the Islamic Center of San Diego to attend my father\u2019s funeral prayers. My family migrated to the US from India in 1995. I was educated in the US, have worked here and am the father of an American-born daughter.<\/p>\n
By burying my father in this land that day, I was tying my past, present and future to the land where I have now spent the majority of my life.<\/p>\n
Being a Muslim, I have also had a front-row seat to the growth of Muslims in the US \u2013 socially, culturally, economically and politically. Equally, I have seen the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence in the US since the 1990s.<\/p>\n
It had been a few years since I had been to the Islamic Center of San Diego, the biggest mosque in San Diego County. I noticed that not much had changed in the building itself. A beautiful minaret and a dome, a modern take on traditional Islamic architecture, clearly visible from the freeway, announced the presence of the Muslims.<\/p>\n
What was strange, though, was the presence of a heavily armed security guard at the door. That was something new, I thought. Even with all the hate messages in the answering machines of various mosques that I frequented in the San Diego area, I never thought we were in any danger. \u201cDo we really need this high-level of security?\u201d I thought.<\/p>\n
The face of the security guard looked familiar. Then, as I got closer, the guard yelled \u201cKASHIF BHAI!!!\u201d, and then I saw the familiar big smile of Amin.<\/p>\n
We used to work together when I was working at a dental office. I was his manager, and he was not very good at his dental job. But it\u2019s hard to fire someone who always greets you warmly with a big smile. So he continued working.<\/p>\n
He was always fascinated by men in uniform. He would bolt out of the dental office as soon as he heard the siren of the police cars whizzing by.<\/p>\n
I finished my education and moved out of San Diego to pursue a career in biotech, while my parents and siblings stayed put. I kept going back but never ran into Amin until that day.<\/p>\n
It was such a delight to see him fulfil his lifelong dream of being a security officer. That difficult day when I was to bury my father, we shared laughs and a quick catch-up on life updates. I was probably seeing him after 20 years. That was to be our last meeting.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, he was martyred defending the mosque. Amin, which means \u201ctrustworthy\u201d, lived up to his name and died doing what he loved.<\/p>\n
Amin was born a Muslim to an African American mother. He was as American as one can get. He was also as Muslim as one can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESSAY It doesn\u2019t surprise me at all that he gave his life shielding others from gunfire. He was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3071,3378,7922,32313,3,2229,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":["post-652858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-crime","tag-features","tag-gun-violence","tag-islamophobia","tag-news","tag-religion","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}