Amid Rising Islamophobia in Ireland, Leading Imam Takes to the Polls
DUBLIN — Nestled behind a South Asian restaurant, a hookah lounge and a tire repair shop is home to one of Ireland’s preeminent mosques: The Al-Mustafa Islamic Center. In March, on the first Jummah (Friday worship day) of Ramadan, hundreds of Muslim worshippers filed into the mosque, swapping their shoes for flip flops as they performed ablutions to purify themselves before prayers. Men whispered in Urdu, Arabic and English as they packed into the prayer hall, sitting in lines on the ground to listen to Sheikh Umar al-Qadri’s Khutbah, or weekly sermon.
Al-Qadri, the leader of the congregation, spoke of the importance of Ramadan as a gift and a pathway to the gates of paradise. However, he then posed a question that strayed away from the usual theological sermon.
“How many of you have registered to vote?” he asked.
In the packed prayer hall, only a handful of worshippers raised their hands.
It was an unusual but not unexpected turn. Just about everyone in the congregation knew that, just a few weeks earlier, al-Qadri had been the victim of a violent attack. But rather than dwell on his suffering, he reached for a solution.
“It is very important we participate in the elections in June. Right now there are some people that are spreading Islamophobia,” he said. “It is time we represent ourselves in public office. If you don’t register, it means you have no voice.”
Anti-immigrant sentiment persisted in Ireland this year. In November, hundreds of Irish rioted after an Algerian immigrant wielding a knife injured a woman and three young children in Dublin. Anti-migrant protests followed, becoming violent as demonstrators attacked public transport, looted private businesses, and ambushed police vehicles. On February 15th, al-Qadri was assaulted in what he said was a Muslim-hatred fueled attack.
On the day of the attack, al-Qadri said he received a call from a man who said he was looking for a sheikh to officiate a marriage. However, when Dr. al-Qadri arrived, he became suspicious when he didn’t see any cars outside the house that would be expected for a big occasion. When al-Qadri called the man, he told him to drive to the end of the block. There, al-Qadri stepped out of the car and greeted two men. Moments later he blacked out and woke up in the driver's seat of his car, with injuries to his jaw and a chipped tooth.
“I was confused,” al Qadri said. “I looked at my hand, my watch was still there. My phone was there. So then I realized it’s not a robbery, I was just attacked for who I am.”
Irish authorities continue to investigate the incident.
The sheikh is a prominent Sunni Pakistani cleric who moved to Ireland from the Netherlands in 2003. He first came to work as a content specialist in Ebay’s legal department, but soon Muslim immigrants turned to him to set up a mosque because of his past expertise in Islamic studies. Over time the modest mosque became a full Islamic center, with over 500 members.
Upon entering the Islamic Centre, the former commercial warehouse was clearly not built to house one of Ireland’s largest Muslim congregations. At the entrance, there is a narrow corridor, where worshippers cram through to enter the main hall. The main hall is spacious but relatively empty: a portable white qiblah, the structure that designates the direction of Mecca, stands in the front of the room. Most walls are empty, but one holds a bookcase with dozens of Quarans.
When I asked al-Qadri about relations between Muslim and Irish communities, his face brightened. “It’s tremendous.” He spoke of different bridge-building initiatives between Ireland’s faith communities. He holds an annual Iftar celebration to mark the end of the fast on nights of Ramadan that is attended by prominent Irish religious leaders, including the Catholic Archbishop and an Orthodox Rabbi. After the attack, Al-Qadri said countless Irish citizens reached out to him extending their prayers.
However, al-Qadri said that there has been a noticeable rise in anti-migrant rhetoric over the past couple years, especially reflected on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. Following the attack, dozens of Irish X users claimed the entire event was a hoax. Some users vilified his Muslim identity, saying he should go back to where he came from and mocking his traditional thobe.
Al-Qadri, 41, stands out from other middle-aged Irish citizens. He has a well-kept dark beard, glasses, and sports a traditional black thobe. While he may stand out, he speaks with a light Irish accent, signaling that he has been in Ireland for some time.
Some X users denied the attack happened. One prominent anti-migrant user, Irish Git, posted a video claiming the Sheikh’s account was fabricated.
“People started finding holes and inconsistencies in (al-Qadri’s) fairy tale,” he said. “The gig is up, it’s game over. I wonder when the next audition is.”
The video gained nearly 8 thousand views.
Dr. Eugenia Siapera, co-director for the University College of Dublin’s Centre for Digital Policy, said xenophobic rhetoric in Irish social media circles accelerated since the pandemic. She said that anti-migrant messaging was also exacerbated by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, and his purge of its trust and safety team. While she said the majority of Irish do not harbor far-right views, Siapera said this group is having an increasing impact on the national debate.
“The fact that they're vocal means that they're influencing policy, even if their views do not reflect the wider public opinion,” she said. “I think it's going to get worse before it gets any better.”
Al-Qadri reiterated Dr. Siapera’s concerns. While he said that he believed Twitter previously had a troubling left-wing bias, its shift to the right presents a new danger to Ireland’s Muslim community.
“What has happened since Elon Musk took over, he has given a free hand to anyone to spread hatred,” he said. “That has led to the rise of anti Muslim sentiments in Ireland.”
In response to public criticism, X released a statement this past September reaffirming their commitment to combating prejudice. X said that it expanded its policies around hateful and violent speech.
“We are committed to combating hatred – particularly when they are directed at persecuted groups,” the statement said.
Dr. James Carr, a sociologist at the University of Limerick, said the “replacement theory,” a conspiracy that claims liberal elites are looking to replace domestic citizens with immigrants, influences far-right rhetoric targeting Ireland’s Muslims.
“The Irish context is not unusual,” Carr said. “It’s the same experience we see internationally.”
Carr noted that after the attack on al-Qadri, dozens of tweets circulated showing a sticker purporting to be an advertisement for the Islamic Centre calling for the implementation of Islamic “Sharia” law in Ireland. While the stickers were a hoax, the Journal said posts showing the sticker had been viewed over 100,000 times.
Increasing Muslim voter participation has been an issue for al-Qadri even before the February attack. He has encouraged the candidacy of Asad Ali, a 36-year-old immigrant from Pakistan who will be running for office in the village of Ongar, just outside of Dublin. Mr. Ali, who will be running with the conservative Irish party Fianna Fail, is looking to become the first Muslim on the Village Council. He has attended the Islamic Center for the past five years.
“I’ve been here a long time, we never had to face such issues: the attack on al-Qadri and the riots in the city center,” he said. “I’m a very proud Irish. We just need to build bridges, the vast majority of people in this country are very welcoming.”
Others in al-Qadri’s congregation reiterated that Ireland has been a welcoming place. Faisal Afridi, a computer science student at Dublin City University, immigrated to Ireland with his family from Pakistan. Always feeling welcomed by the native Irish in his community, Afridi said he was shocked by the riots that broke out in November.
“I actually never expected anything like that to happen that night,” he said. “It just happened out of nowhere.”
Carr said that it has been difficult to measure Islamaphobic hate crimes because Irish authorities do not have the most accurate data. He said many hate crimes are recorded as standard criminal offenses. However, Carr added that new hate crime legislation could be passed this year that will address this issue.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “One incident is one too many.”
Despite recent events, al-Qadri remains optimistic about the future prospects for Muslims in Ireland. He even wants to meet his attackers, and ask them what led them to commit this act.
“We're human beings,” he said. “We're normal human beings like everybody else.”
After al-Qadri finished the Khutbah, he took his place towards the front of the prayer hall, standing with his fellow worshippers as they prepared for prayers. They recited the Fatiha, the first verse of the Quran recited before prayers. The men looked down in reflection, interlocking their arms across their chests. Finally they fell to the ground facing the qiblah, whispering praises of God. While legitimate concerns remained, Ireland’s Muslim community remained steadfast in their faith.
Out with God: Serving the Queer Faithful in Ireland
BLACKROCK, Ireland — On a cold, damp March afternoon, a bright orange door sat open, welcoming passers-by to the Methodist church in suburban Dublin.
But Urban Junction, as the building is called, wasn’t being used for a Methodist service. A handful of people were filtering into the church, located at 42 Main St., Blackrock, County Dublin.
Inside and down a gentle ramp, roughly a dozen people had gathered around a lectern with a pride flag, a rainbow complete with intersectional black and brown stripes, trans colors and the distinctive purple circle over a yellow field marking intersex identity. It was the March meeting of Amach le Dia, an LGBTQ+ affirming Christian worship service.
Amach le Dia, Irish for “out with God,” bills itself as the only active queer-affirming Christian worship group in the Republic of Ireland. In a country that was once deeply religious but has seen a rapid decline in church attendance that has coincided with a fast-paced liberalization of society, Amach le Dia serves as something of a sanctuary for a small but devout cluster of queer Christians and their families.
Meeting in a well-lit church basement about the size of a tennis court, Amach le Dia’s worship space recalled the humble simplicity of some Protestant worship services. In the corner, a bearded man with long, brown hair and an acoustic guitar tuned his instrument.
Despite appearances, organizers said this was not a service restricted to any one faith or denomination — anyone was welcome, Protestant, Catholic, non-Christian, atheist, agnostic or curious.
Bustling about the basement, Alison Finch, a 46-year-old veterinary nurse with short hair and a kind smile, was overseeing the preparations. Seeming to recognize most people who entered, she offered tea and coffee with determination.
“Our aim really is to provide a space for Christians who are, you know, LGBT and maybe feel they don’t have anywhere they can be open and worship,” she said.
Finch, who is gay, was a founding member of Amach le Dia in 2019. Born to a Protestant Church of Ireland family, she said she first found queer Christian ministry around 2005.
That’s when she began attending services at Multyfarnham, where a Franciscan friary had begun a service for gay Christians. Then, there was the “All are Welcome” Mass, a Catholic service in Dublin which ran during the 2010s.
With little institutional support, both of these services fizzled out over time. By 2019, Finch realized there was no active worship service left.
“I sort of realized there was nothing going on in Ireland at the minute for LGBT Christians,” she said. “I thought, ‘well, there’s nothing going on. Maybe it’s my turn to, you know, start something.’”
After getting in touch with some of her fellow LGBT Christians, she helped found Amach le Dia by December 2019.
Since then, the group has been hosting monthly meetings and Bible studies, often with guest speakers and songs. Now, she says the organization is meant “to provide a safe space for LGBT people who have felt, you know, they don’t want to go to church.” The space provides her and others like her a place to blend these two parts of their identities.
“Many people believe it's a surprising mix, they believe people would have to choose between the two,” she said. “For me this has never crossed my mind. I have always known God made me the way I am [and] loves me the way He created me.”
In the corner of the room, the man strummed his guitar with feeling and led the congregation in song. Many joined him in the gentle hymns, the lyrics projected on the wall.
Looking around to her fellow worshippers in the basement, Finch wasn’t sure what had brought each of them there. She said that, of course, the organization catered to gay and trans people, and to people from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds, but did not make it her business to know people’s personal history.
“The honest truth is, I don’t know because I never ask,” she said. “I don’t really know what people are. Anybody can come and we don’t ask you when you come in the door, ‘why are you here?’”
Teagan MacAodhagáin, a father, chatted by his family of young children, sprawled on a couch that had been pulled around to make a more comfortable pew than the metal folding chairs that lined the room.
MacAodhagáin, who chairs Amach le Dia and holds a master’s degree in theology, frequently leads the group’s services.
“In mainstream churches… you were allowed to do certain things like, move furniture and make tea,” he said. “Depending on the church, maybe Sunday school, maybe some worship, be in the worship band somewhere, and, you know, not everyone is gifted at tea or music.”
As a practicing Methodist, MacAodhagáin said Amach le Dia reflected the ideas of his religion more closely than his mainstream Protestant church. Citing John Wesley, the English cleric who founded Methodism, he said the Church was “handicapping itself” by limiting LGBT participation in services.
“Wesley had the same idea,” he said. “His criteria for people belonging to the church is that they all had to use their gifts, and there was no limitations.”
Institutionally, the Methodist Church holds the view that marriage is inherently meaningful only between a man and a woman. “Practicing homosexuals” are barred from ordination, though transgender people are able to be ordained.
The lights dimmed and a projector displayed more soft Christian rock lyrics over a stock image of a galaxy. MacAodhagáin made his way to the front of the room. The service started late, which Finch said was typical.
He introduced Jude Lal Fernando, one of his professors from Trinity College’s theology school, as the guest speaker for the service. Fernando spoke on how power and powerlessness feed conflict everywhere from his native Sri Lanka, to Ireland, to Israel and Palestine. The toddlers on the sofa struggled to sit quietly, just like millions of Christian children before them, as the service proceeded in a warm, orange light.
Following the speech, the guitarist struck passionate, saccharine chords, belting out slow tunes of modern worship. Sitting on the basement floor, Finch joined in song with closed eyes.
‘Religion and Comedy’s Symbiotic Relationship’: Processing Trauma Through Comedy in Ireland
DUBLIN – James Cadden, who runs a comedy show at Ha'penny Bridge Inn in Dublin, was an altar boy in his childhood Catholic church in County Monaghan. Now, he spends a good chunk of his time on stage telling jokes about religion.
“What do you call someone who doesn’t believe in God?” he asked at one recent set.
An audience member replied, “Atheist.”
Cadden corrected them with this retort, “Adult, correct, because I don’t believe in imaginary things.”
Cadden’s comeback is somewhat characteristic of Irish comedy. This is a divided island that has seen more than its fair share of scandal and conflict. The sex abuse scandals of the Catholic Church have played a role in many people abandoning their faith. And the Troubles, even 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, continue to haunt everything from education to commerce to comedy.
“A lot of us comedians and Irish people overall have similar backgrounds when it comes to religion,” Cadden said in an interview, reflecting on his set. “Moving away from religion and finding an identity outside of it.”
Danny O’Brien, the host of another Dublin club, the Comedy Crunch show, said that religion and comedy have a “symbiotic relationship” in Ireland.
Like Cadden, O’Brien is a former Catholic altar boy. But he remembers his mom pulling him out of the program after noticing a priest acting “creepy,” putting his hands on his shoulders. He later found out that the priest was molesting his friends.
“She saved me,” O’Brien said in an interview, “and not many of my friends have been that lucky.” He thinks making light of the trauma while still talking about it is important because it calls out “what the Catholic Church has done and is still doing.”
Another topic that continues to surface during some Irish comedy shows is the conflict between Israel and Palestine. O’Brien tends to keep away from the topic in comedy sets, however, he has strong personal feelings about the conflict.
“It’s boiling over in Ireland at the moment,” O’Brien said. “because Ireland has always seen itself as an invaded nation. If you went up to Derry, up in the north, there are Palestinian flags everywhere — they feel sympathy because they were oppressed.”
This is especially true for Northern Ireland, ground zero for the Troubles. In Derry, flags plaster the streets and often correspond to each religious communities’ majority areas.
In Derry on March 14, comedian Clayton J. Morrow took to the microphone at the Chicken Box Comedy show. Morrow He minced no words.
“Loyalists are pathetic retards,” Morrow said during one of Chicken Box comedy’s pandemic broadcasts. “And you know they’re pathetic retards when it’s 2020 and they’re still parading over 1690.” That date comes up often in Loyalist history. It was the year of the Battle of the Boyne — a win for the Republic of Ireland.
Sectarian and religious jokes make some uncomfortable, but they almost always get a laugh.
“There’s an urge to say that we’ve moved on,” said Luke McGibbon, who runs Belfast’s Best of Three comedy club, a show that gives comics three minutes to elicit laughter from the crowd, “but the fact of the matter is that people still give [religious jokes] big laughs and they're laughing because they're relating and they're relating because it's still part of people's lives.”
He said that comedy, even if uncomfortable, is a way to work through difficult conversations, whether it’s sectarianism, Catholic Church sex abuse or Israel/Palestine.
One recent night at the Chicken Box, Morrow took on the Israel-Gaza war. He passionately ranted about the media’s biased coverage of Israel’s attack on Gaza. “Why [is] Hamas the only nefarious party in this shit?” Morrow asked to an eerily still room punctuated only by uncomfortable chuckles.
In Derry, Rory McSwiggins started Chicken Box Comedy show in 2018, and its weekly Thursday night shows at Bennigan’s Bar has been Derry’s hub for humor ever since. McSwiggins grabbed the microphone: “I don’t know if youse know much about sectarianism?” The audience laughed knowingly.
Bennigan’s Bar sits close to the River Foyle, the water that once divided Derry into distinct Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods. The bar is just a 12-minute walk south from the Peace Bridge, built in 2011, more than 10 years after the 1998 Good Friday Agreements, to connect the two communities. Just as the bridge physically closes the distance, the Chicken Box Comedy show allows people from various backgrounds to surface tensions through comedy — working through discomfort on an uneven road to healing.
“The whole Catholic-Protestant thing, the whole Catholic-Protestant thing,” McSwiggins repeated drolly. Sectarianism has been top of mind for the past half a century since the violence of the Troubles started in the 1960s. Even as physical violence between Catholics and Protestants simmered since 1998, there still lay embedded stereotypes and hostilities.
And the humor is not limited to comedy clubs. The British sitcom “Derry Girls” has turned international attention to understanding the Troubles through a humorous lens ever since it first aired in 2018. One scene particularly exemplifies the tensions: the main characters attend an educational integration program that attempted to point out similarities between Protestants and Catholics — but only found differences.
Although coping with trauma through humor often takes more cognitive effort than other serious methods, humor can be more effective in regulating negative emotions, according to a 2013 Stanford Psychological study.
McSwiggins continued to tell a story: one of his friends started school at 9 a.m. and another started an hour earlier at 8:30 a.m. He asked the audience which student was Protestant and which was Catholic. Almost immediately, audience members guessed that the Protestant student had started school earlier.
“Woo! You win a prize,” McSwiggins lauded. “Big cheer for sectarianism!”
Another comic, Justin Cass, also performed that night in Derry. Cass grew up in County Monaghan, just six miles outside the Northern Ireland border. Monaghan is a part of Ulster County and was supposed to be a part of the United Kingdom, but because of its high Catholic population, it was relegated to the Republic. In his set, Cass described his hometown as somewhere between “Disneyland and the Troubles.”
While Cass’ shtick relies on his long pauses – which he pokes fun at, asking the crowd if he looks like an off-duty priest, to which an audience member from the Belfast “Best of Three” show on March 16 yelled out, “No, but you talk like one!” – he appreciates the lack of “woke culture” in the north.
Although he is not a religious person himself, Cass admitted that there is no getting around the fact that Ireland is a religious country. He said he tries to avoid religion, it always finds a way into the comedy, admitting that his best jokes make fun of Protestants.
“I’m conscious that there might be some Protestants in the room,” he said, reflecting on his performances. Cass’ observation leans into one of the three philosophical theories of humor, the theory of superiority, or eliciting amusement based on pointing out someone else’s inferiority.
“Everybody thinks that their religion is the better one,” Cass said. “The most common thing is to make fun of people from the minority religion in the room.” He said he’s working on trying to learn humor that everybody understands. “The aim is to make everybody laugh and not feel excluded.”
He said that Northern Ireland is his favorite place to gig because they’re more appreciative of “dark and edgy” entertainment. He caters his shows differently in the North than when he performs in the South. With fewer tourists in the North, the comedy gets more specific, and less catered toward an international audience — allowing an opening for uncomfortable conversations about sectarianism.
Graeme Watson is another comedian from Northern Ireland and has performed and hosted in the comedy scene since 2008. Watson grew up during the Troubles in Larne, a small seaside village about 25 miles north of Belfast.
“I remember growing up in that area and the atmosphere was thick with tension with the Troubles, the violence, the bombs going on,” Watson said. “So, comedians like Patrick Kielty [current host of Ireland’s Late Late Show] pierced through that, kind of making fun of that and opened the door for the possibility of what would happen later on: peace, the Good Friday Agreement.”
Watson, spurred by his Protestant upbringing and deep-rooted interest in comedy, initially pursued a Ph.D. at Belfast’s Queen's University focused on a custom topic: the politics of happiness. While he did not meet a Catholic person before attending university, Watson was surrounded by people focused on Catholic stereotypes. He later left the program to pursue comedy full-time.
Watson said that comedy allows people to laugh and break down the Protestant-Catholic barriers and become friends. “Humor is what bonds people.”
“I think people from that era naturally have a sense of humor, because it’s quite hard,” Watson said. “You’d probably be very depressed otherwise.”
Watson also helped run a comedy workshop for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival every December, helping train human rights leaders to perform comedy. He spent four weeks helping human rights workers turn about their difficult experiences involving causes like homelessness into comedy.
Another comedian, Adam Laughlin, who was born two years after the Good Friday Agreement and performed at both the Chicken Box comedy and the Best of Three set in Belfast, said that all comics, even if they’re younger, still talk about the Troubles because it still impacts where they’re from.
If you don’t want to deal with the troubles, he suggested, just don’t do comedy in Northern Ireland.
Remembering a First Love: A Story 26 Years in the Making
LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland — Christine Cowley still remembers what it felt like to lose her first love. She was just 19 when the young man she loved, Colm Keenan, was killed by a British army patrol in this divided city. But for more than 50 years, she’s kept that part of her life secret.
“One of the hardest things in my life was coming to terms with this,” she said, tears filling her bright blue eyes.
It didn’t happen all at once. As Cowley got married and raised a family, she kept her secret buried deep inside. It wasn’t until after her children were grown that she began considering sharing her story. In 2020, she shared a short poem she’d written about Keenan anonymously in a stage presentation at the local Playhouse Theatre. Then, in a recent conversation over a scone and tea in a Derry café, Cowley revealed herself as the author and opened up about her pain for the first time.
Cowley grew up in a Catholic family in Derry during The Troubles, a 30-year period of violent sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland between Protestant unionists who wanted the province to remain part of the United Kingdom and Roman Catholic nationalists who wanted to be part of the republic of Ireland.
She met Keenan when they were both 16. She was studying at Thornhill Grammar School, an all-girls school in Derry, and he was at St. Columb’s College, a nearby all-boys school, she said. Over the next three years, Cowley would come to know Keenan as studious, creative and gentle.
Both Cowley and Keenan were Catholic, but the Keenans were far more active in Republican politics. While Cowley’s parents loved Keenan, they knew about his family’s radical politics and worried about her safety, she said. Keenan’s dad, Seán, was chairman of the Derry Citizens Defence Association in 1969, and would play a pivotal role in the events that led to the creation of Free Derry.
“They believed so much in a united country,” said Cowley. “My family weren’t really like that.”
While her family too hoped to see a united Ireland, they didn’t believe in going so far as to take up arms, she said.
On Sunday, January 30, 1972, violence peaked in D
erry as British paratroopers opened fire on civilians in the Catholic part of town, killing 13 and injuring 14 others. The day came to be known as Bloody Sunday, and ushered in the darkest year of the conflict — with over 450 people killed and nearly 5,000 people injured throughout Northern Ireland.
“The whole ethos of the city changed that day,” said Cowley, adding that the event led many men and women in the community to join the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
On March 14, Keenan and his best friend, Eugene McGillan, were shot by British Army patrol in the Bogside area of Derry. According to Irish news sources, both men were unarmed.
Cowley was heartbroken. The following days were hazy, but what she does remember is the tri-colored flag that was displayed at his funeral and the pain she felt piercing her heart and stomach when she saw his body, she said.
Over the coming months, her grief would lead her through some major life decisions, like applying to finish her nurse training in County Armagh, just to get out of Derry.
“I wasn’t conscious, but when I think back on it, that was the way that I survived,” she said.
As a melancholic smile stretched across her face, Cowley said life has a way of continuing. And it did for her — she became a successful nurse, married her husband Pat, moved back to Derry and raised her four children.
When Cowley mentioned Keenan in passing to her family, she said they were supportive. But she never truly revealed the impact he had on her. “I just got on with life,” she said.
In her loss and in her silence, Cowley is not alone. Although this month marks 26 years of relative peace in Northern Ireland, with the Good Friday Agreement putting an end to much of the violence in 1998, hundreds of survivors are only in recent years opening up about what they lived through during The Troubles.
Intimately involved with this process is Norma Patterson, a therapist at WAVE Trauma Center, one of the few places in Northern Ireland working specifically with survivors of The Troubles. She explained that many people keep living as if they’re still in the war because of the impact trauma has on the nervous system. But now that many survivors are older and the busyness of life has started to slow down, people have room to process.
“They can begin to think ‘okay, maybe I don't have to just survive anymore,’” she said.
In Derry, community members have started looking to the arts as a means of healing, said Kieran Smyth, community relations officer at The Playhouse Derry.
Smyth heads a program called Leaders for Peace, designed to encourage self-care and peacebuilding strategies through storytelling. He said that while it seems counter intuitive that healing can come through reliving a traumatic experience, the opportunity to do so as means of creating art often empowers people.
In 2020, when the Irish playwright Damien Gorman came to town, several survivors had the opportunity to share their story publicly. Working with Leaders for Peace, Gorman invited anyone with an association to the year 1972 to join his new production, called “Anything Can Happen 1972: Voices from the Heart of the Troubles.”
Getting people to open up about their experiences was no easy feat; many chose to include their stories on the condition of anonymity. Actor Pat Lynch played the role of The Caretaker, a narrator-type character who showed up multiple times throughout the play to perform anonymous stories.
At that time, Christine Cowley was one of the people who chose to have her poem performed by Lynch. Her poem was about a moment when she thought she saw her lost love, Keenan, and even though she had spoken about it to her family before, she still felt strange sharing about it publicly, even under the cloak of anonymity. At one point, Cowley almost pulled her submission entirely.
“After this length of time of being married to my husband, I felt it was disloyal,” she said.
Cowley said that Gorman encouraged her to tell the story, and her husband thought it was a nice story. In September, the production opened. It was broadcast to the public because of the pandemic. Cowley only saw it once, surrounded by a group of her closest girlfriends.
“Most of the words I didn’t hear. It was weird to hear someone else read my words,” she said.
Nearly four years after the production, Cowley’s feelings about sharing her story have changed. In recent months, it had been on her mind to own those words, she said.
She said she’d encountered angels throughout her life in different people, and some of her more recent supernatural-feeling encounters emboldened her to tell her story as her own.
“I love the concept of angels,” Cowley said from her table at the café. “For me, they’re guides.”
With steady hands, Cowley flipped to a page in a bright yellow notebook where she’d written the poem four years ago. At first, she was timid, realizing that in the busy café in a town as small as Derry, she could run into anyone she knew. She put one hand over the side of her face and began reading with a tension in her voice:
“Did you just walk by me then
In the daylight
Or was that a dream
My heart surged with sadness
Tears ran down my cheeks
At the vision I had just seen.
Please, oh please, look over here.
This yearning is unreal
Your hair, your body
Your clothes the same!
My mouth wide open, to call your name”
Cowley moved her hand away from her face and continued, but this time, with a softened voice:
“You turned my love
Your loving eyes met mine
They melted like snow
Through my body
To stay with me for all time”
At the end of her poem, she lifted her teary eyes from the page, coming out of her trance.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she concluded. “It’s actually something to be very proud of, but it’s taken a long time to come out.”
When Walls Break Barriers: How an Artist’s Murals in Ireland Forged a Life-Saving Friendship From Dublin to Gaza
DUBLIN — Kneeling down on the ground, Palestinian journalist Samia Alatrash wrapped her arms around the lifeless body of her two-year-old niece Masa. Israel’s bombing of Rafah in southern Gaza had killed Masa, her four-year-old sister Lina, and both their parents — in one day. October 21, 2023.
As images of Samia hugging the tiny shroud were beamed across the world, more than 4,000 kilometers away in Dublin, it prompted Irish artist Emmalene Blake to pick up her colors and paint murals of Samia and Masa.
What followed was the forging of a friendship between two strangers halfway across the world, from Dublin to Gaza. Now, more than five months later, that unlikely connection is what has proved instrumental in helping 26-year-old Samia finally evacuate Gaza and escape the war that has killed so many members of her family.
This is the story of their friendship, from Ireland to Palestine, and how it helped save Samia’s life.
______
The Night Samia Prayed Endlessly
Samia remembers the night of October 20, 2023, all too well, and painfully.
It was almost a fortnight into the war, and Israeli forces were bombing Samia’s hometown of Rafah. Samia says she couldn’t get in touch with her sister, Samar, after 11 p.m., when the bombing intensified.
“They were bombing everywhere, so no one could get to my sister’s house,” she recalls in an interview over the phone.
Terrified, Samia began to pray. “From 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., I was praying to Allah, can this bombing stop?” She couldn’t sleep. All she did was think about her sister Samar and her nieces Masa and Lina. “It was so difficult, it’s not fair. I was waiting for the morning, to go and hug them.”
But the morning would only confirm Samia’s worst fears. “Around 7 o’clock, I found out that I have lost all of them — my sister, Samar; my beautiful nieces, Masa and Lina; and my sister’s husband, Dr. Loay Khader. I felt that I had lost a part of my heart, my soul.”
Samar had helped raise Samia and their brother, Mohammad, after their mother died when Samia was only six years old. Even months after Samar’s passing, Samia struggles to speak of her sister in the past tense.
“Samar is not only my sister, she is my mother and my friend. With her death, I felt for the first time that I am orphaned. I cannot imagine that I have lost them forever. I want to hug them, and go on a picnic with them.”
As Samia embraced Masa, unwilling to let her go, photographers nearby clicked what has become one of the defining images of the ongoing war.
When Irish artist Emmalene Blake saw the photograph, it moved her deeply. “I keep crying the last couple of weeks. It’s all I can think about,” she told a friend.
Emmalene, who teaches art, design and mathematics to early school leavers, was so moved by the image that it made her want to paint Samia and Masa on a wall in Dublin. And so, the 36-year-old artist picked up her spray paints, reimagined the photograph, and recreated it as a mural in the city’s Harold Cross neighborhood.
The only change she had made to the photo: The shroud covering Masa was painted as a Palestinian flag.
News of the mural in Dublin traveled far and wide, and a picture of Emmalene's artwork reached Samia. In early November, on an Instagram video of Emmalene painting the mural, Samia wrote in memory of her niece, “My heart is broken without you.”
Touched by her artwork, Samia also reached out to Emmalene. "You painted me and my sweet niece Masa," she told her.
Emmalene recalls, “I told her I’ll sell t-shirts and sweatshirts and try and raise funds for her.”
Samia was beyond grateful. She says Emmalene was the first person to connect with her during the war and offer to help her.
In the face of unspeakable tragedy, Samia had found what felt like a personal solidarity across borders. And so, in those most unfortunate of circumstances, the Palestinian journalist and the Irish artist forged a friendship.
“I talk to her pretty much everyday now,” says Emmalene.
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Mission Evacuation
Emmalene and Samia would keep in touch regularly, and Samia would update her friend about the situation in Rafah. It was rarely good news, but one day, Emmalene noticed that Samia seemed especially fearful.
“She got in touch with me and said there was a family 10 meters from where she was staying that was bombed and killed. And she was getting really scared.”
Upon getting that SOS from Samia, Emmalene sent over the funds she had raised till then by selling copies of her artwork on Palestine. They hoped that the amount would be enough for Samia to evacuate Gaza.
By then, Samia’s other surviving relatives had decided they wanted to escape from Gaza, too. That would need more funds.
Emmalene was ready to double down on her efforts, and she wasn’t alone.
She says, “I was getting messages from a few different people on Instagram about how they could help Samia. So we set up a WhatsApp group with everyone who wanted to help with evacuations of Samia and her family.”
Soon, there were around 10 people in the group, from Ireland and Palestine, all involved in planning and coordinating the efforts to relocate Samia and her family out of Gaza.
Emmalene said, “At the moment, we’re trying to raise funds for her brother and her cousin and her cousin’s family and her uncle to evacuate as well.”
“What's the WhatsApp group called?” I asked Emmalene.
“Evacuations,” she replied.
At the time of writing this, ‘Help The Alatrash Family Evacuate’, the fundraiser organized by Emmalene, has received more than 370 donations, and raised over $33,000 for Samia's family.
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Leaving Home Behind
When I met Emmalene in Dublin in mid-March, she had said that Samia was “just waiting now for her name to be called at the border.”
She was waiting to flee the war. And as she waited, she would often break into tears. “I was crying, crying, crying… all the time.”
After waiting for weeks on end, hoping against hope that her name would be next, Samia’s name was finally called earlier this week.
On Sunday, April 7, at around half past seven in the morning, she got on a bus in Rafah and began the journey away from the place she had always called home — Gaza.
Almost 24 hours later, at around 5 am on Monday, she reached Nasr City in Egypt.
“I am so confused… I don’t know how I feel,” she tells me hours after her arrival in Nasr City.
She says, “I am feeling sad because I am leaving Rafah, because I am leaving my family, my only brother, my grandmother…I am so, so sad.”
She hopes that her 20-year-old brother Mohammad will also be able to evacuate to Egypt. Emmalene and the others are working on it, but none of them know how long the process could take.
Nasr City is a little over 300 kilometers away from Rafah. But the distance feels much longer for Samia. She mourns the loss of leaving where she belongs, “I don’t have a home now because it was destroyed.”
She says she hopes this is her chance for a life “without bombing, without genocide, without killing.” And she looks forward to getting back to working as a freelance journalist.
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The Irish Bond With Palestine
In Ireland, Emmalene isn’t an exception when it comes to expressing a strong solidarity with Palestine. The country has had a deep history of support for the Palestinian cause.
Ahead of St. Patrick’s Day last month, at a meeting between then-Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar and US President Joe Biden, the Irish leader said, “As you know, the Irish people are deeply troubled about the catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes in Gaza.”
He added, “When I travel the world, leaders often ask me why the Irish have such empathy for the Palestinian people. And the answer is simple — we see our history in their eyes. A story of displacement, of dispossession, and national identity questioned and denied, forced immigration, discrimination, and now hunger.”
“We were occupied by Britain for 400 years, so we definitely have a kinship or solidarity with Palestine,” says Emmalene. She compares the Great Famine of the 1840s, when Ireland faced years of hunger during British rule, to the current widespread starvation in Gaza.
Speaking of the Irish famine, she says, “The potato crops failed, but there was plenty of other food. But Britain was shipping all of the meat and all of the other food out of Ireland into Britain. So the famine wasn't a famine, it was a genocide.” Around a million Irish people are estimated to have died during the famine, and millions more emigrated from the island.
Comparing it to the situation unfolding in Gaza, Emmalene says, “Hunger is being used as a weapon of war at the moment. They're not letting the aid in. It's a man-made famine.”
“They can feel my pain,” says Samia. “I have received so many messages from people in Ireland, they send me voice notes in support. That makes me feel stronger. I love them because they are supporting me and the people in Gaza. The people in Ireland are with the people in Gaza, every day, every night.”
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What the Two Friends Hope For
Upon reaching Nasr, Samia reunited with her cousin Soha, who had managed to evacuate a couple of days earlier. The two of them recorded a video for Emmalene and the others who had helped them flee Gaza. Soha began, “Hi Emma, Ciara and everyone, this is the hotel we are staying in…” Samia looked on and smiled.
Emmalene shared the video on Instagram and wrote, “Samia is out! We have them booked into this hotel in Nasr City in Egypt for a few more nights until we can get an apartment sorted where they can wait for the rest of their family.” She added, “We still need to raise more funds to get the others out.”
Now in Nasr, Samia hopes to get back to working as a journalist. And she hopes for an end to the war. “Stop the war. Stop killing. Stop destroying houses and dreams,” she says.
And Emmalene, in addition to selling her artwork to raise funds for Samia’s family, plans to keep painting for Palestine. She says, “It’s the biggest atrocity over a lifetime. So, I’m going to continue painting for as long as it goes on.”
The two of them have never met. Samia hopes she can change that someday. “I hope I meet Emma face to face and all the people in Ireland as soon as possible.”
Her gratitude for Emma, as she calls her, knows no bounds. “Emma is a kind and beautiful woman,” she says. “Emma is now my best friend. Because everyday, she calls me and asks about me.”
And like she does every so often, Samia recalls the mural of Masa that Emmalene had painted. “She painted my sweet niece Masa.” She says it gives her strength to think that people in the world remember Masa through that painting.
Samia is referring to another mural in Dublin that Emmalene had created — a massive mural of Masa on a wall painted pink.
Emmalene had also written a poem for Masa to go along with the mural, titled ‘Second Time Painting You’. Here’s an excerpt of the poem.
“Two year olds don’t worry about time.
I didn’t know this about you,
when I painted you before.
Didn’t see it.
Didn’t see your smile.
Didn’t see the feather in your hair.
Didn’t see your flowery runners,
that match your flowery jeans.
Didn’t see the baby hairs
all along your forehead
you had yet to grow out.
See when I painted you before,
You were shrouded in cloth,
Your auntie clutching your lifeless body,
Rocking back and forth,
Whispering words meant only for you.”
For this mural, Emmalene chose to not paint a Palestinian flag or anything on the mural to denote that Masa was a Palestinian. “The reaction I had been getting while painting it was people going like, “Oh my God, such a gorgeous child!” So, I want people to have that reaction and then see the plaque with information about the mural — for them to read the poem and then for it to hit them.”
Emmalene adds, “I think there’s a creche down the road from where I painted it. And once it was nearly finished, a good few mothers who had kids around the same age would go by and would tell their kids, “Oh look at that lovely little girl, isn’t she just like you!””
“That’s the reaction I wanted,” says Emmalene. “It’s just a child, it could be any child.”
Next to her first mural of Samia and Masa too, Emmalene had painted three children, one of whom was wearing a Jewish kippah and another a keffiyeh. “What I was thinking was — kids are kids. It doesn't matter where they're from, what religion they are. All any kid really wants is to be safe and be happy. So, whether it's Palestinian kids, whether it's Israeli kids or Jewish kids, whether it's any other kids in the world, that's all they want.”
The mural of the three children showed them playing with letter blocks. The children had built two towers with the blocks. They read, “Peace please.”
