Despite the peace and solace that houses of worship are meant to offer their practitioners, at least six of them have been struck by acts of hate-inspired violence in the past seven years. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston is just the latest to be struck by this violence. 

Several leaders of houses of worship who saw historical massacres spoke to Huffington Post to offer their thoughts, advice, and prayers for those mourning the nine black civilians murdered in Charleston. 

Said Amardeep Kaleka, whose father founded the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek and was murdered alongside five others when a white supremacist attacked the temple in 2012: 

"In the immediate aftermath you are feeling grief, shock and trauma with major concerns of well-being. Normality is out the window, and nothing is ever going to be the same. We had a lot of soul searching, cried, and came together in vigils," 

Added Reverend Aurthur Price, the current reverend of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls were killed in a bomb attack in 1963:

"People thought the deaths of those young girls should not be in vain. Those in the civil rights movement pressed even harder for civil rights and voter rights because the loss of innocent life was crying out for justice,"

Click here for the full article from Huffington Post, which includes more quotes from those whose houses of worship were affected by violence.