“I’m Mohsen,” he said, extending his hand. “Like Moses, but with an ‘n.’ ”

This is how the young Palestinian man introduced himself to me. Never mind that I was an ochre-robed, shaven-headed monk at the time. He connected with me through my uncle’s name (and the name of many other Jewish-American Buddhists’ uncles): Moishe. Morrie. Moe. Moses. A patriarch of my people. And a patriarch of his people.

We shook hands warmly. Mohsen was welcoming me to a meditation session I’d been invited to lead for the Columbia University Buddhist Association, also known as CUBA. Mohsen served for two years as president of this large active club for students interested in Buddhism and meditation. He remains listed on their website as “Visionary Advisor.” His leadership of this group is just one of many expressions of the engaged, community-oriented, metta-suffused Buddhist practice of a person who thereafter always addressed me, as he does many others, as “my friend.”

When ICE seized Mohsen Mahdawi and took him away last Monday, the initial coverage in the New York Times made only passing mention of his Buddhist identity. But this is no minor detail in the story of who he is. We need to understand Mohsen’s dharma path if we are to understand what they are trying to do to him and to all of us now. It’s at the heart of the truth that Mohsen Mahdawi is the opposite of the caricature our government is broadcasting to justify abducting and incarcerating him (I won’t sanitize it with the officialese term “detention”). And it’s a potent source of insight and inspiration on how to respond to this terrible injustice.