Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu peace activist in India who was assassinated 71 years ago, so why would a young Muslim a world and several generations away want to help commemorate the 150th birthday of such a distant figure?
“I have always been fond of Gandhi and in favor of nonviolent action,” explains Sergazy Nurbavliyev, a graduate student at the University of Utah. “I see a real similarity with our Prophet Muhammad.”
Lately, the Muslim world “seems violent and chaotic, which is not supposed to be,” says Nurbavliyev, who sits on the board of the state’s Gandhi Alliance for Peace.