LYNNWOOD
Saying “we have to get to peace by putting into practice the principles of non-violence,” Azim Khamisa urged about 180 people gathered for the 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Jan. 16 at the Lynnwood Convention Center to open their hearts.
“If one can live with an open heart, gentle trust can take place,” said Khamisa, founder of an organization dedicated to ending violence between children.
Khamisa was a San Diego-area investment banker when his son, Tariq, then 20, was murdered while delivering pizzas in 1995. A street gang ordered pizzas and had them delivered to a phony address. When the gang confronted Tariq, he threw his pizzas in his truck but was shot to death by a 14-year-old gang member named Tony Hicks, who was later convicted of the crime and sent to prison.
After agonizing over his son’s death, Khamisa reached out to the assailant’s grandfather (and ward), Ples Felix, in forgiveness.
The two went on speaking tours together to advocate forgiveness and non-violence, and Khamisa founded the Tariq Khamisa Foundation in honor of his late son.
“After Tariq died, it took literally all of my will power just to climb out of bed,” Khamisa said, “all because of the senseless death of a 20-year-old man over a lousy pizza.”
Khamisa said the shooting death of his son was made all the more ironic because he’d left a violent country — Uganda under the late dictator Idi Amin Dada — for refuge in the west.
“I remember my first reaction after he died was ‘maybe I should have gone to England,’” Khamisa recalled.
Today, Khamisa tours the United States and his foundation offers educational programs geared toward reducing conflict and increasing trust.
“Why is it important to have an open heart? Khamisa asked. “Because an open heart can give and receive love.”
Shirley Sutton, executive director of diversity affairs for Edmonds Community College, the lead organizer of the event, said she invited Khamisa to speak to students at the college Jan. 15 and to the MLK event, now in its second year.
She’d attended a conflict resolution conference last May where Khamisa was a guest speaker.
“The more I listened to what he was saying, I was mesmerized by it,” she said. “I thought, ‘gosh, any family that could undergo that kind of disaster and take that stand of forgiveness, I thought I have got to get him to Edmonds Community College.’”
The event kicked off with a peace invocation by Arlie Neskahi, multi-cultural coordinator for the Edmonds School District, who told the audience “beauty is all around us.”
Lynnwood Mayor Don Gough said the celebration “is an offer to ourselves, to learn that we can find common ground…”
Edmonds School District’s Social and Jazz Combo and the Sherwood Elementary School student marimba band performed.
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