Imran Siddiqui: Just days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 2001, a masked man stormed into the Dallas convenience store where Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh, worked as a cashier. He asked where Bhuiyan was from -then shot him in the face at point-blank range even before he could reply.
His attacker was Mark Stroman, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who was caught and confessed to the shooting as well as two other attacks on South Asian convenience store workers, out of which one, was not even a Muslim. Those men died, while Bhuiyan survived, although he was blinded in one eye and still carries 35 shotgun pellets inside his face.
This is a story of two ordinary people, living their everyday ordinary lives, but soon circumstances will bring them to a cross road where one will end up forgiving the other. This is exactly what Rais did, after recovering from his multiple years of surgeries, his only objective was to save the life of his own would-be killer from death row. Rais says the Quran teaches him that if you save one life, it's like saving the entire humanity.