The Nation - March 23, 2017
Even Muslim-American citizens have been
caught in the net of Trump’s travel ban
In the age of Trump, ever more Muslim travelers are being questioned about their religion and beliefs.
By Alex Kane
The stories have come fast and successive in the weeks since Donald Trump stepped into the Oval Office: tales of Muslim travelers being detained and then interrogated about their religious beliefs.
On January 29, at John F. Kennedy Airport, federal agents questioned a green-card holder about videos of Muslim religious leaders preaching that they found on his laptop, said Anisha Gupta, a staff attorney at the Bronx Defenders who volunteered at the airport after Trump’s first executive order on Muslim travelers went into effect.
On February 4, a Muslim-Canadian family said they were denied entry into the United States. Fadwa Alaoui, the mother, told CBC News that an agent asked her, “Do you practice? Which mosque do you go to? What is the name of the imam? How often do you go to the mosque? What kind of discussions do you hear in the mosque? Does the imam talk to you directly?”
And on February 7, in a case that captured headlines around the world, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the Fort Lauderdale Airport detained and interrogated Muhammad Ali Jr., the son of the legendary boxer. They pulled him aside, held him for nearly two hours, and asked him, “Where did you get your name?” and “Are you Muslim?”
“I haven’t been stopped like this when Bush was in office. I haven’t been stopped like this when Clinton was in office,” said Muhammad Ali Jr., in an interview with The Nation. “But it takes Trump getting in office to be treated like this. And I’m an American citizen.”
One month later, Transportation Security Agency officials at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, stopped and questioned Ali Jr. again, though they did not ask about his religion this time.
Civil-liberties advocates
Lawyers and civil-liberties advocates fear that the practice of detaining and interrogating Muslims about their religious beliefs at airports is increasing—a practice that echoes a history of US immigration laws and border-control policies that sought to keep out those who believed in communism, anarchism, and other radical left-wing ideologies. In this instance, the questioning of Muslims appears to reflect a theory within federal agencies that a person’s religious belief can indicate whether they have the propensity for violence. Border agents have weaponized that theory, and turned it into a basis for harsh questioning.
Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York and supervisor of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, told The Nation that religious questioning is “not a new phenomenon,” but that it has “intensified” with the executive orders on Muslim immigrants signed by Trump, which bar travelers from a handful of Muslim-majority countries and call for intensified vetting of visa-applicants.
“There’s been a noticeable uptick in reports from traveling clients [of] being questioned at US customs about Islam since Trump’s [first] executive order,” Kassem added. (Trump’s first executive order suspending travel from seven majority-Muslim countries was signed on January 27, but was effectively blocked on February 9 by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. More recently, a judge in Hawaii froze Trump’s second order, signed on March 6.)
In addition to airport interrogations, advocates fear that religious questioning will be used increasingly by officials overseeing the visa-application process, particularly if Trump manages to push through one of his travel bans. Both the first and second executive orders signed by President Trump directed federal agencies to implement new screening standards for immigrants that would evaluate whether an applicant for entry to the United States supports “violent extremism” or terrorism. That language appeared to institute the type of “extreme vetting” that President Trump promised on the campaign trail.
“What Trump’s administration makes clear is that this will be used sweepingly. I don’t think there are expectations that extreme vetting means an individualized process,” said Sahar Aziz, a law professor at Texas A&M University and a former adviser to the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the US Department of Homeland Security. “I think it’s interpreted as you all are presumed to be potential terrorists, unless something unusual in your record shows you are not, for example if you’re a secular Muslim, or you’re a Muslim who converted to Christianity.”
Questioning of Muslims beliefs
For all the outrages faced by travelers like Muhammad Ali Jr. and the four Muslim-Canadians, the questioning of Muslims about their religious practices is not brand new. The Trump team may have ramped up a bunch of nasty, religiously intolerant practices, but they didn’t invent them. That honor goes to the George W. Bush administration, during which the practice of questioning Muslim travelers about topics such as which mosque they go to, and whether they are Sunni or Shi’a, is well documented. Nor did the practice stop under the Obama administration. On January 18, two days before Obama left office, CAIR filed numerous complaints about religious-based questioning to the Department of Homeland Security and to CBP. The Muslim advocacy group alleged that the ten travelers initially represented in the complaints (the number has since expanded) were asked questions such as: “Are you a devout Muslim?” “Do you pray five times a day?” “What school of thought do you follow?” “What Muslim scholars do you listen to?” and “What are the views of other imams or other community members that give the Friday sermon at your mosque?”
One traveler caught up in the Obama administration’s dragnet targeting Muslims is an imam from California who spoke with The Nation. For the past nine years, the imam, an American citizen, has come to expect detention and interrogation when he flies internationally. The types of questions, which usually occur on his way back into the United States, have varied for the religious leader.
Sometimes, he said, federal agents want to know whom he visited overseas. Other times they question him about what he studies. CBP agents have ransacked his suitcase, asked for his social-media handles, confiscated his cell phone, and given him intensive pat-downs.
During detentions and interrogations in airports, the imam said, CBP officers have also asked him things like, “What kind of Muslim are you, actually?” “What role does religion play in your life?” “Did you grow up a household where people prayed?” (The imam requested anonymity for fear that increased attention will lead federal agents to scrutinize him once again.)
Religion as a basis for questioning
CBP is not barred from ever using religion as a basis for questioning, said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor and the former head of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security. An agent processing someone who is traveling to a faith conference, for example, could legitimately ask questions about their religious affiliation. But advocates, international travelers, and Americans citizens allege Muslims are being singled out solely because of their religion in a discriminatory fashion—and that CBP sees their religion as a sign of being a terrorist threat.
Targeting Muslims for interrogation about their religious beliefs reflects a view, particularly prevalent in law-enforcement circles since the September 11 attacks, that the depth of someone’s devotion to Islam can predict whether they are a security threat. In its crudest forms, “radicalization” theory, as it is known, posits that activities affiliated with a conservative practice of Islam—such as abstaining from alcohol, or wearing Islamic styles of clothing—are steps on a path that may end up leading to a terrorist attack.
ā “The only way that these kinds of questions make sense as a way of evaluating whether somebody is a security threat is if you assume that being a devout Muslim is a proxy for threat,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Those assumptions, however, have been “debunked by loads of empirical research that shows you can’t really look at religiosity as a proxy for a propensity towards terrorism,” Patel added.
Beyond the legal concerns, Muslim Americans and civil-liberties advocates are worried that the apparent increase in religious questioning and detention of Muslim travelers is just the opening salvo of a broader Trump-era campaign targeting Muslims.
Anti-Muslim ideologues
The Trump administration has brought anti-Muslim ideologues into the heart of power, and many Muslim Americans fear the executive order was the first step in a long campaign aimed at making discrimination against them official policy. Of particular concern is the role of Steve Bannon, the White House chief strategist and former head of the far-right website Breitbart News, which frequently traffics in anti-Muslim bigotry. News outlets reported that Bannon helped draft Trump’s first executive order, which banned refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries, and also suggested more vetting of Muslims.
And so, Muslim Americans and civil-liberties advocates are bracing for the worst. Naureen Shah, director of Amnesty International USA’s Security and Human Rights Program, told The Nation the Trump administration poses an unprecedented threat to the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.....
New America Media – March 27, 2017
Japanese-Americans Speak Up for Muslim-Americans
By Hasan Z. Rahim
SAN JOSE, Calif. - “A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories. Neither can they fully convey our nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals.” Tom Oshidari, co-president of the Japanese-American Citizens League, San Jose Chapter, was reading from the letter he had received from President George Bush in October 1990. “We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”
His parents – American Citizens – were shipped off from California to the Jerome internment camp in rural Arkansas in 1942 under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Tom was born in the camp. His parents died several years ago. An estimated 60,000 of the 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry interned during WWII are still alive and received redress payments of $20,000 and letters of apology from the 41st president.
About 200 of us gathered last weekend in front of City Hall for the solidarity day organized by the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee and the South Bay Islamic Association. Masao Suzuki, the architect of the rally, explained: “In the lessons learned from 75 years of resistance from 1942-2017, we say No to Concentration Camps and Islamophobia. President Trump’s Executive Order 13769, banning travel from 7 Muslim-majority countries, has brought back painful memories of internment, among the darkest chapters in American history. We will not let Muslim-Americans stand alone. We will stand by them. We will not allow history to repeat. Never again!”
City Hall is about a mile away from San Jose’s Japan Town but when we walked the distance on solidarity day, the weight of history was heavy upon us. The minutes spanned a lifetime of grief and sorrow.
Naoko Fujii, a lawyer in Silicon Valley, never misses such rallies. “It’s a matter of principle,” she said. Her father, only a high-school student in 1942, was moved between Internment camps in Arkansas, Utah and Wyoming, along with his three siblings and parents. To this day she has difficulty imagining the physical and the emotional trauma they suffered in the bitterly cold and unbearably hot camps.
Fumi Tosu, affiliated with Casa De Clara Catholic Worker of San Jose, exhorted the gathering not to repeat the mistakes of the past. “When Nazi Germany was sending Jews to the gas chamber, the supposedly ‘good Germans’ looked the other way. When Japanese-Americans were being hustled off to camps, ‘good Americans’ looked the other way too. Americans right here in San Jose looked the other way. But not all Americans. Quakers protested the internment and helped the interned. Let’s be the Quakers of 2017. Let’s make sure Muslim-Americans don’t suffer the same injustice that our parents and grandparents suffered. Let’s fight for radical equality.”
I looked around: a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon, a perfect spring day for the outdoors, for picnic, for hiking, for taking in the beauty of wildflowers after the profusion of rain in the valley. Yet here they were, my fellow-Americans, sacrificing their time for a cause they believed in, whites, blacks, Latinos, African-Americans, families with infants in strollers, the kaleidoscope that’s America. An elderly white man next to me held up a poster that read “No to Religious or National Exclusion.” Another read “Steve Jobs Was a Syrian.” The man in front of me wore a white T-shirt that listed all the 10 internment camps in America under bold red letters: “Never Again.”
But something was troubling me, although I couldn’t figure out what it was.
The event was being co-emceed by Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), San Francisco Bay Area, and Lisa Washio-Collette, whose father, Kintaro Washio, and brother Zentaro, both spent years in internment camps at Tule Lake and Gila River. Zahra and Lisa reinforced the message of the solidarity day, that every act of injustice must be fought in the court of law as well as in the court of public opinion. A Civil Rights attorney, Zahra was among the first to sue Donald Trump over the “Muslim Exclusion Order” in January, following Trump’s infamous Executive Order 13769.
It was only when Billoo was thanking the rally on behalf of Muslims that I suddenly realized what was troubling me:There were disappointingly few Muslims!
At a mosque later in the day, I lamented to a few of my fellow-Muslims how disappointed I was. So few of us showed up when other Americans had come together to voice their unconditional support for us. There were the usual excuses of “didn’t know about it,” “very busy” and “family obligations” (as if those of us at the rally were not busy or had no family obligations!) which I politely rejected. But then one Muslim said: “Do you really think this rally changed anything?”
I could not let this go unanswered. “I don’t know whether this rally by itself changed anything or will change anything. But I know one thing for sure: It changed me. I met Japanese-Americans whose parents and grandparents were sent to Internment camps, concentration camps, really, even though they were loyal citizens. I no longer think of injustice and racism as abstract ideas. I see them with human faces, and I know that I am of them, and they are of me. If we can change this way, it compels us to act. And when enough of us change and act, mountains move and tyrants fall.”
http://newamericamedia.org/2017/03/japanese-americans-speak-up-for-muslim-americans.php
Washington Times – March 27, 2017
Trump backs off Muslim Brotherhood's designation as terrorist organization
Legitimate political activity complicates designation
By Guy Taylor
President Trump has — for the time being — put on the back burner an executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, according to U.S. officials close to a heated debate inside the administration over the status of the global Islamist movement.
While the White House has declined to comment publicly, officials speaking on condition of anonymity say the administration backed down from a plan to designate the Brotherhood last month after an internal State Department memo advised against it because of the movement’s loose-knit structure and far-flung political ties across the Middle East.
The memo “explained that there’s not one monolithic Muslim Brotherhood,” according to one of the officials, who told The Washington Times that while the movement may well be tied to such bona fide terrorist groups as Hamas, its more legitimate political activities would complicate the terrorist designation process.
The Brotherhood has prominent political factions engaged — at least perfunctorily — in democracy in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and several other Muslim-majority nations, and the State Department memo coincided with high-level pressure placed on the Trump administration from at least one of them.
Senior diplomats from Jordan — a close U.S. ally — are believed to have weighed in heavily against the idea of adding the Brotherhood to the State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list, said the official, because the movement’s political arm in Amman currently holds 16 Jordanian parliament seats.
Sen. Ted Cruz’s bill
A small but vocal group of Republicans on Capitol Hill is pushing legislation that would direct the State Department to either designate the Brotherhood, as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as terrorist organizations or justify why they are being kept off the list.
Sen. Ted Cruz, who reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood portion of the legislation last month with a House version backed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, says listing the movement would “codify needed reforms in America’s war against radical Islamic terrorism.”
“This potent threat to our civilization has intensified under the Obama administration due to the willful blindness of politically-correct policies that hamper our safety and security,” the Texas Republican said in a statement at the time.
“This bill would impose tough sanctions on a hateful group that has spread violence and spawned extremist movements throughout the Middle East,” added Mr. Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican.
While several Gulf Arab monarchies view the Brotherhood as an internal political threat, the movement’s factions are seen as part of the democratic landscape in other places, including Turkey, where many see the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a distant Brotherhood affiliate.
Creating problems
“If you’re talking about just broadly listing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, you’re going to run quickly into a serious definitional problem,” says P.J. Crowley, who served as an assistant secretary of state for public affairs under President Obama.
“Certainly, if you look at Hamas, it’s part of the Muslim Brotherhood family,” Mr. Crowley told The Times.
“But the Brotherhood is also a distant cousin of the AKP in Turkey, so once you start down that road, you get into an immediate problem that could create significant diplomatic issues. And what about Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia?
“The one thing that distinguishes the Muslim Brotherhood from groups like al Qaeda is that al Qaeda wants to blow up any democratic process, while the Brotherhood is theoretically prepared to participate in the democratic process,” he said.
One prominent U.S. Muslim organization says the push to get the Brotherhood listed as a terrorist organization today is a ruse. “We believe it is just a smokescreen for a witch hunt targeting the civil rights and civic participation of American Muslims,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Sponsors and supporters of the designation have for many years falsely linked the majority of mainstream American Muslim organizations and leaders to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mr. Hooper told The Times. “[This] will inevitably be used in a political campaign to attack those same groups and individuals, to marginalize the American Muslim community and to demonize Islam.”…….
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/27/muslim-brotherhood-listing-as-terror-group-delayed/
The Muslim Vibe - March 30, 2017
The 4 main sources of Islamophobia in America
Zainab Arain
It’s barely the end of March. Yet since the year began, Muslims in the United States have been beat up, spit on, harassed, and threatened. Their places of worship have been burnt to the ground and vandalized. In these few months of 2017, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has preliminarily recorded 33 anti-mosque incidents.
The impetus behind these attacks can be attributed to Islamophobia, a closed-minded hatred, fear, or prejudice towards Islam and Muslims which results in discrimination, marginalization, and oppression. It creates a distorted understanding of Islam and Muslims and transforms diversity in name, language, culture, ethnicity, and race into a set of stereotyped characteristics. Thus, Sikhs, Christian Arabs, and Hindu Indians are targeted because they share characteristics which have been racialized as “Muslim” – whether it be language, clothing, or skin color. As such, Islamophobia is also a system of both religious and racial animosity.
Before discussing four interconnected institutional sources of contemporary Islamophobia in the United States, it is important to recognize that the actions of violent extremists also contribute to Islamophobia. Many Americans were unfortunately introduced to Islam and Muslims through the images of planes crashing into towers on 9/11. Although violent groups like ISIS target and murder more Muslims than others, these groups continue to color American perceptions of Islam and all Muslims with the dangerous shade of prejudice.
1. The U.S. News Media
MediaTenor, an international media research institute, examined nearly three million news stories and found that the U.S. news media’s coverage of Muslims and Islam is overwhelmingly negative in both content and tone. Coverage has almost exclusively focused on portraying Islam as a national security risk and Muslims as a threat to liberty and life, and this has grown worse over time.
A Washington Post article published last week looked at a study examining the coverage of acts of terrorism in the United States between 2011 and 2015. The research found that of the 89 terrorist attacks, only 12.4 percent were committed by Muslims. And yet, controlling for various factors including fatalities and arrest, attacks by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449% more coverage than other attacks.
It is indisputable that the U.S. media disproportionately overemphasizes negative coverage and news pertaining to Muslims and Islam. Unsurprisingly, this leads the American public to possess an exaggerated sense of threat, and consequently fear, of Muslims and Islam which plays neatly into Islamophobia.
The media rarely shows talented, exemplary, or even ordinary Muslim life, like that of the foster father Mohamed Bzeek who takes care of terminally ill foster children, or film director and hip hop artist Alia Sharrief. Rather, it paints an image of Muslims and Islam as threats within the frame of national security.
2. America’s Foreign Policy
This Islamophobic categorization of Islam as inherently violent is rooted in European colonization, and has been transplanted and utilized by the U.S. to justify its foreign policy in Muslim-majority regions of the world. In orienting American political antagonism onto the sphere of racialized religion, Islamophobia serves as a convenient ideology to obfuscate and dismiss the U.S. government’s own role in fostering violence against Muslims around the world. This advances a worldview of “us vs. them,” which otherizes Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim.
Consider President George W. Bush’s failed War on Terror, which can be summed up by his infamous phrase, “you are either with us or against us.” The government decimated Iraq, an act that in part created the power vacuum from which ISIS emerged. This serves as an excellent example of policies which were presented to the American public as essential for freedom and safety. More recently, President Barack Obama permitted an ongoing drone war that has killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. The continuation of war in Muslim-majority regions thus perpetuates the ideas and structures of Islamophobia. Effectively dismantling Islamophobia in the American society is countered by this constantly reinforced prejudice.
3. U.S. Political Rhetoric
Interwoven with the media and the government’s foreign policy, the irresponsible rhetoric of elected officials and those in positions of political influence augments Islamophobia in the United States. Politicians play on people’s emotions and exploit their fear to actively instigate Islamophobia when it serves their own political interests.
Then presidential candidate Trump’s dangerous proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States offers a prime example. Far from being a spontaneous proposition, the proposal was crafted on December 2, and then held to be announced on December 7, National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, for “symbolic impact.”
A study by a former Gallup researcher has demonstrated that spikes in anti-Muslim sentiment are correlated with election cycles. The statements and actions of leaders shape Islamophobia more so than international events. This can be evidenced by the last year, an election year, in which politicians and those with political influence sought to gain greater power. In an upcoming report, CAIR recorded an alarming 50 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents in 2016 as compared to 2015. Moreover, the increase in the number of incidents has been accompanied by an increase in their severity and violence as well. A larger percentage of cases involve physical violence or property destruction and vandalism.
4. The U.S. Islamophobia Network
Within the U.S. there exists an influential network of groups and individuals who falsely cast Islam and Muslims as a malevolent existential threat, and work actively to promote prejudice, discrimination, and oppression towards the faith and its practitioners. This Islamophobia Network operates on the basis of misinformation, hostility, and lies to sway public opinion and influence policy and law at a local and national level.
CAIR has identified 74 groups in the U.S. that are a part of this network, and divides them into the inner and outer core. Those who are a part of the inner core, which consists of 33 groups and individuals, exist primarily and exclusively to vilify, demonize, and promote hatred and fear towards Islam and Muslims. The outer core, consisting of 41 groups and individuals, while regularly demonstrating Islamophobic themes in their work, does not exist solely for this purpose. An example of a group in the outer core is Fox News Channel. Fox repeatedly hosts individuals who make claims such as, “terrorists are Muslims,” Muslims “hate Jews and Christians,” and Islam “is the worst, most deadliest idea in the history of the world.”
It is the inner core, however, that is the more noxious of the two. It is a source of much of the common Islamophobic rhetoric which is disseminated through the public space, including false ideas such as, Shari’a is a totalitarian political ideology and the Muslim Brotherhood, a loosely connected global movement, is taking over the United States government. CAIR’s 2016 Islamophobia report, Confronting Fear, found that this inner core had access to at least 205 million dollars in total revenue over a five year period.
ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy are the two most powerful groups in the Islamophobia Network. ACT was founded by Brigitte Gabriel, whom BuzzFeed reporter David Noriega has labeled, “the most influential leader in America’s increasingly influential anti-Islam lobby.” Gabriel has claimed that Arabs “have no soul,” and that “every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.” On March 21, Gabriel posted a photo of herself in the White House, meeting with a member of Trump’s administration.
Under her, ACT has worked to advance anti-Muslim and anti-Islam policy and legislation at a local and federal level. It simultaneously floods the American public with false accusations and hate speech demonizing Muslims.
Like ACT, the Center for Security Policy works actively in promoting anti-Muslim policy and legislation. Its founder, Frank Gaffney, has been referred to as “one of the country’s leading anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists.” An example of CSP’s influence can be gleaned from the following example.
In 2016 CSP commissioned the polling company of Kellyanne Conway, who is now Counselor to the President, to conduct a poll on American Muslims. The resulting statistically flawed poll falsely portrayed American Muslims as increasingly radical, and was cited by then-Presidential candidate Trump in his original proposal for the Muslim ban. That groups within the Islamophobia Network have such direct access to the current White House administration is deeply concerning.
Other individuals who are intimately connected to the Network and are now part of the White House administration include Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist, who has described Islam as “a political ideology,” and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, who has said profiling Muslims is a “synonym for common sense.”, Frank Gaffney, has been referred to as “one of the country’s leading anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists.” An example of CSP’s influence can be gleaned from the following example.
In 2016 CSP commissioned the polling company of Kellyanne Conway, who is now Counselor to the President, to conduct a poll on American Muslims. The resulting statistically flawed poll falsely portrayed American Muslims as increasingly radical, and was cited by then-Presidential candidate Trump in his original proposal for the Muslim ban. That groups within the Islamophobia Network have such direct access to the current White House administration is deeply concerning.
Other individuals who are intimately connected to the Network and are now part of the White House administration include Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist, who has described Islam as “a political ideology,” and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, who has said profiling Muslims is a “synonym for common sense.”
Beyond the executive branch of government, the Network has also had an impact on legislation. As of 2016, ten states have passed anti-Islam legislation in the United States, modeled on framework legislation created by David Yerushalmi through the American Freedom Law Center,
Beyond the executive branch of government, the Network has also had an impact on legislation. As of 2016, ten states have passed anti-Islam legislation in the United States, modeled on framework legislation created by David Yerushalmi through the American Freedom Law Center, another inner core Islamophobic group. Substantively empty, the anti-Islam legislation simply aims to demonize Islam and promote fear of Muslims.
Countering Institutional Islamophobia
It is critical to support organizations who conduct research, engage in advocacy, and use legal methods to counter institutional Islamophobia. Such organizations include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Center for New Community, the Georgetown Bridge Initiative, the People for the American Way, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Like other systems of discrimination and oppression, Islamophobia is structurally embedded within American society, and like those systems, the fight against Islamophobia requires extensive resources, commitment, and perseverance.
It requires a recommitment from Muslims to advance the fundamental Islamic principle of benefitting humanity and averting harm from humanity. It requires compassionate Muslim engagement with issues affecting other communities and a joint effort to demand equal protection and participation in society. It requires enhanced Muslim involvement in U.S. public and political life, and it requires the empowerment of a diverse range of legitimate Muslim voices to contribute views and perspectives on Islam and Muslims in the public sphere. Most importantly, however, it requires you. Your conscious commitment to build a better America is the most effective tool to counter Islamophobia.
https://themuslimvibe.com/general/the-4-main-sources-of-islamophobia-in-america
Executive Editor: Abdus Sattar Ghazali
www.amperspective.com Online Magazine
