The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, through its executive director Sharon Nichols and its president Ragnhild Baade and its board of directors, condemns the desecration of religious prayers at the Islamic mosque in Lewiston.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, the United States has long been safe from major religious-based conflict. September 11, 2001 has changed all that. Since then, and with the widening of the conflicts in the Middle East, ignorance, fear and hostility have become part of the American religious scene.

Now, Muslims in Lewiston have experienced religious hostility and fear for the second time in three years. In 2003, a vicious anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant group, the World Church of the Creator, sought to spread its message of hate to the Lewiston community.

The citizens of the state of Maine said no to that message in a message of solidarity that was loud and clear. That message needs to have a voice once again.

The Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine asks the people of Maine to listen to our plea: the people who you may be tempted to strike out against because they are different, because they express religious piety by a piece of clothing or a belief in a different revealed scripture – don’t let this blind you to the realization that they are human beings who, as Americans, have the right to pursue their beliefs in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.

We ask the people of Maine: if you see an act of violence, in whatever manner, speak out against it. The consequences of not doing so can be devastating. The German Protestant theologian Martin Niemoller, who spent seven years in the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau and Sachsenhausen, knew what the failure to speak out against evil and injustice would produce.

In reflecting on his failure to speak out until it was too late he wrote: “In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they came for me – and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

We ask you to speak out. We ask the people of Maine to discover their common humanity and to live peacefully and constructively with the profound differences that define the religious and ethnic pluralism of our state and our nation.

We ask the people of Maine not to commit the sin of silence. We must consider any form of violence against any one of our religious or minority communities as a form of violence against us all. We must speak up for the rights and freedoms that we celebrated on July 4 as Americans just hours after the disgraceful act that was committed against the Muslim community of Lewiston and against all of us.

Sharon Nichols is executive director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine.