Politics

Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press 

WASHINGTON — If Donald Trump is elected president, there are lots of things he has promised to do that would require an act of Congress. Barring immigration from Muslim nations — as a way to keep Muslims out of the U.S. — is probably not among them.

The nation’s immigration laws give enormous power to the president to determine who and how many immigrants to allow into the U.S. And experts largely agree that if Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, wanted to ban immigration from certain nations to keep out Muslim newcomers as he has proposed, he could probably do so.

“I think there is good reason to believe he has ample authority to exclude, for at least some period of time, anyone he wants,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University law school. “There is an operational aspect to this that makes it absolutely clear that the president has the authority to do what Mr. Trump suggests.”

That doesn’t mean it would be easy: Political backlash, pressure from American allies, legal battles and more could make such a program untenable. Congress could curtail, block or shut down any such effort, if it could muster the votes. And there are clear limits on any attempt to keep Muslims who already have legal residency status in the U.S. from re-entering the country if they travel abroad, as Trump also has suggested in the past that he might be interested in doing.

It would also be virtually impossible to implement under the current system — if he only wanted to keep Muslims out and not people of other faiths from those countries, that is — because immigrants aren’t screened by religion and such information isn’t supplied on a person’s passport. And, of course, Islam is one of the world’s largest religions: If he truly wanted to keep all Muslims from entering the country, he’d probably have to shut down immigration from practically everywhere.

To employ a phrase Trump likes to use, not gonna happen.

The last word

But that’s different from saying Trump couldn’t do what has never been done before — effectively barring immigrants from specific countries, based on the major religion in those countries, as a way to keep potential terrorists out of the U.S. The standing jurisprudence is that when it comes to deciding who comes in and who doesn’t, the president and his administration gets the last word.

In fact, Trump last week — as he reiterated his immigration plans in the wake of the shootings of 49 people in Orlando, despite the fact that the 29-year-old shooter was born in the U.S. — started laying the legal groundwork for such a proposal, saying he would “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies.”

While that sounds nondenominational, Trump made it clear in a speech in which he spoke at length about the threat posed by “radical Islamic terrorism” that he wasn’t talking about Christians, Jews or followers of other faiths. He was talking about the “more than 100,000 immigrants from the Middle East, and many more from Muslim countries outside the Middle East,” who come into the U.S. each year, saying they threaten our security.

President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, as well as many others, lambasted Trump for such an idea. They said any effort to treat all Muslims as potential terrorists because of their religion would not only weaken our standing abroad, it would likely create more homegrown radicals out of people feeling like they were being targeted by the federal government.

“We don’t have religious tests here,” Obama said, rebuking Trump’s proposal. “Our founders, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights are clear about that. And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect.”

But, again, that’s not to say Trump couldn’t do it.

The statute at hand

The key statute is found in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and it says, that “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States” he can keep them out for “such period as he shall deem necessary.”

It’s a statute that gets used somewhat regularly, too: In 1993, President Bill Clinton used it to bar the entry of Haitian nationals interested in impeding negotiations to restore a constitutional government there after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown; in 2011, Obama used it to keep out anyone who had committed war crimes or otherwise violated recognized human rights and humanitarian laws.

President George Bush i used it in 1992 to block Haitian refugees attempting to reach the U.S. by boat and returned them to Haiti. In a case that went to the U.S.  Supreme Court, critics said Bush’s order violated other statutes not to deport or return any immigrant to a country where his or her life could be threatened; the court ruled that only applied to people who made it into the U.S — not those found at sea.

There is already a statute that allows the U.S. to bar potential immigrants suspected of terrorist activity, which can include even raising money or acting as a spokesman for a terrorist group. But the Supreme Court has found that when it comes to people outside the U.S. trying to get in, even people who may have family ties in the U.S. or who insist on seeing what evidence the U.S. has of suspected terrorist activity, there is little if any due process owed them under the Constitution.

“Would the Supreme Court feel the same way under a ban on all Muslims? It presents a real constitutional challenge,” said William Stock, an immigration lawyer in Philadelphia and incoming president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “As a general matter, the Supreme Court has said a lot of these substantive immigration decisions are related to foreign powers and political questions that (it) prefers not to adjudicate.”

Depending how far a President Trump might take such a policy, however, there could be legal questions: If he tried, for instance, to keep permanent legal residents in the U.S. from re-entering while traveling abroad, they could invoke due process rights to challenge it. And if he attempted to specifically limit the number of Muslims entering the country, there would be the possibility of a legal argument that such an act constituted a sort of federal establishment of a religion. That’s constitutionally barred under the First Amendment.

But barring all immigrants from specific countries deemed a threat by Trump because of what he refers to as “radical Islamic terrorism?” That’s entirely possible.

“The Constitution tends to stop at the water’s edge,” said Stock. “The president could say or the Congress could say all left-handed people are barred from the United States.”

A sweeping success?

From a practical standpoint, such a program would have to be sweeping to work: It would probably have to bar not only Muslims but Christians, Catholics, Jews and people of any other faith from the targeted countries, without a religious test to somehow screen immigrants that would face constitutional scrutiny and backlash at home and abroad.

As such, a program to bar all immigrants from those countries would likely generate huge political pressures on the administration and on Congress to stop it. And it would alienate American Muslims, who have widely denounced the shootings in Orlando, as well as those at Ft. Hood in Texas and at San Bernardino, Calif., as being unrepresentative of followers of their faith.

Trump’s comments, meanwhile, are already having “a very negative impact on the community,” said Fay Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, a national business group based in Dearborn. She recalled not only Japanese internment during World War II, but programs after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that required foreign nationals from Muslim-majority nations to register with the government, as well as have their fingerprints taken and movements monitored.

“The impact of Trump trying to do anything similar to this will continue to divide our country. Then they (Arab Americans) are going to feel more targeted, especially the youth,” said Beydoun. “All of our mosques, all our agencies have been working with government officials to help with the fight against terrorism.”

“Trump’s banning Muslim immigration plan is not only alienating American Muslims, but would also not make us safer if enacted,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Michigan’s chapter. “His hyperbole may play well to his base, but the majority of Americans don’t share his views.”

Source: www.freep.com

BY RAMY ZABARAH

COMPLEX.com

Ramy Zabarah is Complex Life’s Social Media Editor, GIF maestro, and resident brown man. He has a background in documentary filmmaking and writing about politics, film, TV, music, and whatever piques his nerdy interest. He tweets here.
 
Dear Hillary Clinton,

As a white American with the most powerful position in the world at your fingertips, you might think that actions matter more than words. When it comes to international affairs and national security, few would challenge the argument that you’re the most seasoned presidential candidate (though to be real, you’re first out of two, and the closest your opponent has come to addressing foreign policy this election season involved a taco bowl and a tweet.)

That said, I’m skeptical that you value the wellbeing of marginalized Americans as much as your political standing. Here’s why:

Earlier this week, in the wake of our country’s deadliest mass shooting in modern history, you said what many in your cohort—including U.S. President Barack Obama—have refused to say: You’re “happy” to use the term “radical Islamism” to describe the massacre of 49 people by an abusive, homophobic, self-described Muslim shooting a legally-owned assault rifle. In the same interview, you said, “From my perspective, it matters what we do, not what we say. It mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him.”

Hold up—what?

Since when do generalizations and perverted labels not matter? I mean, I get it. We got bin Laden (three cheers for ‘merica), and just like then, we’ll “get” ISIS. But while bin Laden is dead, there are millions of Muslims in the U.S. (and more than a billion worldwide) who still care very much about who is associated with their religion and culture.

Believe it or not, a vast majority of Muslims don’t consider Osama bin Laden, Omar Mateen, or anyone who commits murder (still a sin the last time I checked my Quran) under the guise of spiritual glory a true Muslim. And if they do, chances are that they themselves are so oppressed that they’re looking for any excuse to exact revenge on those who build settlements on their land, send drones over their homes, or turned the word Islam—which translates directly to “submission” or “peace”—into a word always muttered in the same breath as terrorism, radicalism, and even evil.

So what does this have to do with Orlando? First of all, Omar Mateen wasn’t directed by anyone but his own disturbed conscience, which was probably influenced by the fact that he was struggling to come to terms with his own homosexuality. ISIS may have claimed responsibility for the attack, but let’s be real: Terrorist organizations would benefit from claiming any attack that would make them more terrifying—especially if the only person who could corroborate the story is dead.

Furthermore, if we’re going by traditional Islamic beliefs, Mateen didn’t even meet the minimum standards. Right off the bat, we know he was a regular consumer of alcohol. Multiple witnesses have confirmed that he frequented Pulse nightclub and got belligerently drunk. Alcohol is forbidden by the Quran—strike one. Mateen also used a gay dating app to try and meet up with other men, which probably means he was interesting in having sex with them. While I personally don’t believe homosexuality explicitly contradicts Islam, technically speaking, sex before marriage does. And so does adultery—strikes two and three.

So far, the only evidence we have that Mateen was a “radicalized Muslim” is that he supposedly called 911 to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State before his shooting spree. However, it’s still unclear whether Mateen even knew much about ISIS at all considering he’s also pledged allegiance to Hezbollah and al Qaeda, who are sworn enemies both with each other and with ISIS. Additionally, Mateen checked Facebook while he was holding hostages to see if his attack had gone viral. Sounds more like an unhinged, violent narcissist seeking international attention than a “radicalized Muslim.” Yet the Islam angle has dominated mainstream discourse of this attack.

Take a second to remember the 2015 Charleston church massacre and the subsequent media coverage. Any inquiry into the shooter’s motives (which was racism) was brushed aside by discussions of gun control, mental health, and American poverty. These are all concrete issues in the U.S. which can be linked to death and violence.

But the rise of ISIS and “radical Islam” is more of a threat to Muslims in the Middle East than it is to Americans. Thousands of innocent people are being killed in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and beyond by people who claim to be the rightful leaders of an Islamic Caliphate, and millions more have been displaced. In fact, more innocent people have been killed by American and American-supported airstrikes in response to ISIS than have been in America by ISIS or ISIS supporters.

And you, Mrs. Clinton, have steadfastly supported almost every attack by American armed forces in the Middle East since before your days as secretary of state. Furthermore, you continue to call for and support robust military action in the Middle East—so if we’re talking about “what we do” and not “what we say,” we’ve done a lot of murdering.

Conflating the terms “radical” and “Islam” to say what happened in Orlando was an ISIS plot isn’t just plain wrong, it’s pretty damn close to flat-out saying that Islam is America’s enemy—which a quick Google search of “Trump + America + Islam” will tell you is really making life uncomfortable, if not dangerous, for a lot of Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans.

And if “radical Islam” is really America’s enemy, how will that play out in the long run? Fighting a war between two armies is one thing, but a war against an entire ideology is another. What you’re happy to call “radical Islam” is almost completely reactionary. The Middle East has endured decades of oppression, destruction, poverty, and death at the hands of American and American-backed leaders. Many of these people are uneducated or undereducated, poor, and have little recourse but the comfort of their religion. What happens to poor people with little confidence in government and society? Obama said it best in a 2008 address to American working-class voters: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

And so goes the cycle of hate…

For some time now, Obama has refused to use terms like “radical Islam” out of sensitivity to those communities, and demagogues like Donald Trump have openly criticized him for it. (You know what else the GOP candidate has said? That Muslim-American communities are harboring terrorists, even though nearly two out of every five Al-Qaeda plots threatening the U.S. since 9/11 were prevented with help from Muslim communities in the U.S.)

When you slander an already-marginalized people’s religion by associating it with innate violence and hate, a few things happen: You add to the collective anxiety of non-Muslim Americans fearing for their safety. You alienate Muslim-Americans, whose support has proven to help stop common enemies. And you give your actual enemies more credibility in the war against you.

I realize that you have an election to win, and I realize that your opponent is as worthy as a weasel at the Four Seasons. If anything, Trump’s meteoric rise should wake you up to the importance of “what we say.” As an Arab-American with deep ties to Islam, I urge you to consider the livelihoods of others like me when you speak about our culture in broad strokes when discussing the likes of Omar Mateen and Osama bin Laden. Consider the millions of Muslims whose religion is constantly dragged through the dirt. Consider how nervous and impressionable the American public can be in times like these. Mateen attacked a group of marginalized Americans for their identity—don’t do the same to us.

Sincerely,
An Arab-American

Source: www.complex.com

By Mike Lillis 

The Hill

Democrats are heading into their convention next month with deep divisions over U.S. policy toward Israel.

The issue created deep rifts at the Democrats’ convention four years ago, and that discord is likely to grow more pronounced due to the influence of Bernie Sanders, the insurgent liberal populist who’s been much more critical of Israel and its approach to Palestine than Hillary Clinton and most of the party brass.

Clinton has secured enough delegates to win the party’s presidential nomination, but Sanders is vowing to take his campaign all the way to the Philadelphia convention in order to maximize his leverage and yank the still-evolving platform to the left.
Sanders supporters have wasted no time advocating their position during the platform drafting process, where they’re calling to exclude references to Jerusalem while advancing the notion that Israeli settlements in the West Bank represent “an occupation” –– language adamantly opposed by many Clinton backers, who say it would undermine the peace process.  

“For too long the Democratic Party’s been beholden to AIPAC [and] didn’t take seriously the humanity of Palestinian brothers and sisters,” Cornel West, an educator and activist appointed by Sanders to the drafting committee, said last week, referring to the pro-Israel lobbying group. 

“We’re at a turning point now.”

The Israel debate highlights a key challenge facing Democratic leaders as they seek to unite the party and move from an often contentious primary to November’s general election.

Clinton has been a staunch defender of Israel throughout her career. But many liberals have criticized her position as overly hawkish, leaving party leaders with the delicate task of adopting an Israel plank that represents her views –– and doesn’t anger Jewish voters –– without alienating the Sanders supporters who tend to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and distrust the former secretary of State on issues of foreign policy.

While both Clinton and Sanders are strong advocates of a two-state solution, their divergent positions when it comes to Israel’s actions and strategy have been on stark display throughout the primary. 

Clinton has defended Israel’s use of force against Hamas and dismissed criticisms about “disproportionate force” harming civilians as an unfortunate part of that defense. She has accused Palestinian leaders of allowing Hamas to turn Gaza into “a terrorist haven.” And, speaking at an annual AIPAC convention in March, she said “America can’t ever be neutral when it comes to Israel’s security or survival.”

“Some things aren’t negotiable,” she said, “and anyone who doesn’t understand that has no business being our president.”   

Sanders, by contrast, has called for a more “even-handed approach” that lends more consideration to Palestinian casualties. He’s criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “disproportionate” at the expense of civilians. And he skipped the AIPAC convention, instead laying out his Middle East agenda in Salt Lake City, where he decried Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank as an impediment to peace.

“Peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed upon borders, and pulling back settlements in the West Bank, just as Israel did in Gaza — once considered an unthinkable move on Israel’s part,” he said in March. 

It’s hardly the first time Democrats have grappled with each other over Israel during election season. At the Charlotte, N.C., convention in 2012, party leaders stirred a hornet’s nest when they rewrote the platform, mid-event, to declare Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital. The contentious voice vote drew a chorus of boos from critics who both opposed the policy and questioned the veracity of the unverifiable tally.

This year, similar lines are being drawn between the Clinton and Sanders camps. Last week, during the first meeting of the 15-member Platform Drafting Committee, Sanders’s surrogates promoted the Vermont senator’s calls to include the “occupation” language as part of the official campaign message. West led the way and was joined by James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and another Sanders appointee.

“If we’re concerned about security, it seems to me we’re going to have to talk seriously about occupation,” West said. “I don’t know if you’ll allow the use of that word. … Occupation is real, it’s concrete.”

West was addressing a witness, Robert Wexler, who rejected the language outright.

“I would in fact oppose the use of the word ‘occupation’ for the very reason that it undermines our common objective,” said Wexler, president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and a Clinton supporter. 

“A two-state outcome will result in an agreement on borders,” he added. “Once you have borders, the issue that propels your concern as what you refer to as occupation, will be resolved.” 

Zogby spoke next, asking Wexler whether the “occupation” language should not be adopted “as a way simply of clarifying that to get to two states an occupation has to end?”

Wexler fired back that the focus on settlements ignored other vital elements of a much broader narrative.

“Settlements is one part of this very problematic story,” he said. “But so is Jerusalem. And so is refugees. And so is security. And so are borders.”

Zogby responded: “So should we leave Jerusalem out of the platform?”

“No,” Wexler said.

“I think that that would fit your notion, appropriately, that we should not negotiate or litigate any of the issues in the platform,” Zogby replied. “I would agree with that.”

Wexler pushed back even before the sentence was done. 

“I would agree that we should not litigate the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms of the Democratic platform,” he said.

Source: thehill.com

By KATIE GLUECK 

Politico

Hillary Clinton wasn’t the first choice of Dearborn’s Muslims. But thanks to Donald Trump’s escalating anti-Muslim rhetoric she’s quickly moving into that position in Michigan, a state Trump is hoping to put in play.

Interviews with Muslim and Arab-American leaders in Dearborn and the Detroit metro area — home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab-Americans — suggest that Democrats there are quickly making their peace with Clinton, spurred by concerns about Trump, even though many strongly preferred Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and helped him win the state.

“Both locally and nationally, probably [Sanders] was the favored candidate,” said Ismael Ahmed, a Dearborn-based member of the Arab American Institute’s board of directors, who is running for the state board of education. “But I think it’s a highly motivated community, as it’s moving forward, people are more and more accepting that the answer to stopping Donald Trump is Hillary Clinton. They’re going to vote for her.”

Shahid Tahir, chair of the Michigan Muslim Democratic caucus, agreed with that assessment. “People say, ‘God forbid, if he gets elected, I might move to Canada, even.’ There are concerns about his biased approach to minorities. All the ethnic communities are more comfortable with her.”

That doesn’t mean they don’t have reservations. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, favors a more muscular foreign policy than Sanders, and also offers more unqualified support for Israel than he does, putting her out of step with many Arab-Americans in Michigan (though she did win in some communities during the primary). Sanders, with his populist economic message, also did particularly well with younger Muslims and Arab-Americans in the Dearborn area, as he did nationally.

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, noted that the Arab-American and Muslim communities in Michigan are not monolithic. But on the whole, he said, those voters in Michigan have shown “no popular support” for Trump but they’re not going to fall in line behind Clinton easily—and so far, he’s keeping the emphasis on local elections.

“The main focus is not really speaking about the presidential election,” Walid said. “A lot of our constituents will not vote for Trump but they’re also not exactly throwing a party about Hillary Clinton.”

But with Clinton having effectively sewn up the nomination, said Sami Khalidi, the president of the Dearborn Democratic Club, many in Michigan’s Muslim and Arab communities are beginning to focus on whom they see as the bigger threat: Trump, who this week reiterated his support for a temporary ban on Muslim migration. Concerns about his stances are helping Clinton shore up her base in a state Trump is hoping to make competitive.

“Trump is definitely one of the reasons why we all have to come together, with other groups of people that he has been attacking. Basically, he is spreading hate speech,” Khalidi said, going on to add, “There will be a lot of people coming out to vote in this election, and they’re going to vote for Hillary Clinton… she’s commander-in-chief-ready to run from the first day. We don’t see that Donald Trump can be commander-in-chief. If he is already prejudging that Muslims are not equal to him, then how can he meet with world leaders from the Islamic world?”

A representative for Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Not everyone sees the race as a binary choice, arguing that Clinton can’t count on automatic support just because Trump has alienated the community. Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News, said Clinton needs to earn the community’s vote by offering assurances on foreign policy—or risk their staying home.

“People who are going to go and vote for president from our community are most likely going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but it doesn’t mean she’s exciting the base of Arab-Americans and American Muslims to go out and vote for her,” he said, going on to add, “I’m not motivated enough to vote for Hillary Clinton. Even though I know what Trump is doing, I need Hillary Clinton to say more than a few words about xenophobia and discrimination against Muslims. I need to see some substance, [plans to] create some peace in the world.”

Clinton, who has met with Muslim community leaders in places including Minnesota and California, plans to continue making her case to the community—and will keep drawing contrasts with Trump, said Xochitl Hinojosa, a Clinton representative.

“Hillary Clinton will continue to reach out to the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities to discuss the issues that they care about most,” Hinojosa said in a statement. “She will also continue to speak out against Donald Trump’s hateful and dangerous rhetoric on banning Muslims from the United States and will work to stop discrimination against the community once and for all.”

Ahmed doubted voters from those communities would ultimately be willing to skip voting in the presidential this year.

“I don’t think Arab-Americans or Muslims will stay on the sidelines, not on this one. There’s just too much at stake,” he said. “You’re talking about a guy who’s talking about registering Muslims and Arab-Americans and keeping lists and placing security in our communities and all of that stuff. And it’s scary, to be blunt.”

Source: www.politico.com

By Robert Samuels

The Washington Post

The morning after the worst mass shooting in American history, Azra Baig woke up expecting Donald Trump to resurrect his message about her religion. And she knew that she, too, had to resurrect her message about him.

“If we don’t stand up now, I don’t know when the Muslim community across this country will be politically engaged or civically minded,” said Baig, a 44-year-old registered nurse who attends the mosque at the Islamic Society of Central Jersey. “Unfortunately, it took this climate for people to be more active, but it will happen. We are going to vote.”

Baig said that she and others living in this Muslim enclave about 80 minutes from New York City had already felt a higher call during this election year. It became personal when Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, reacted to the terrorist attack last year in San Bernardino, Calif., with calls for banning Muslims from entering the country and increasing surveillance at mosques. He backed up his views with what felt like a particular insult to the Muslims who live in this state — echoing a discredited rumor that some in this community openly celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In this and other Muslim communities across the country, including in battlegrounds such as Florida and Michigan, candidates from both parties have courted Muslim voters for years. President Obama and President George W. Bush frequently described Islam as a peaceful religion marred by extremists. Republican Gov. Chris Christie gained the respect of New Jersey Muslims after standing up for his appointment of a Muslim lawyer to the Superior Court in Passaic County and dismissing concerns expressed by some conservatives that the jurist would enact sharia law as “crap.”

And until now, many in this community said, they had focused much of their activist energy on building friendly ties with local officials. Community leaders tried to engage with police departments and politicians to give them a more complete understanding of the fundamental tenets of Islam.

Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. in December. But since then, his commitment to a “total and complete shutdown” has wavered repeatedly. Here’s how. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
Trump’s presence is changing the calculation for these Muslims, who say they feel emboldened to become more of a force in national politics. Trump’s response to the shooting early Sunday in Orlando — he delivered a speech Monday in which he accused American Muslims of harboring terrorists such as the Orlando shooter — has only intensified the sense of urgency here.

“I want every American to succeed, including Muslims, but the Muslims have to work with us,” Trump said. “They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn’t turn them in. And you know what? We had death and destruction.”

Many in this community said they had been bracing for Trump’s response since they first heard about the tragedy. They worried about the impact of the moment, particularly coming during the holy month of Ramadan and amid a global outpouring of love and support following the death of one of the world’s most revered Muslims, Muhammad Ali.

The president of the Islamic Society, Arif Patel, felt empowered and inspired after he attended Ali’s memorial service in Louisville last week. On Sunday, he awoke to text messages from fellow Muslims fearing what conservatives might say if Ali werereplaced in the news cycle by a shooter who was Muslim. Then came the anguished messages after news that Mateen had professed Islam as his faith and then his allegiance to the Islamic State. And then, more texts came, wondering if police could do more patrols around the mosque — an added precaution to help protect against attacks.

Patel told worshipers at the mosque to “double down in terms of being good human beings.”

“There’ll be a lot of propaganda,” Patel reflected. “It is so uninformed to think we would harbor terrorists. They kill Muslims, too.”

Trying to avoid the specifics of candidates’ politics, he called on worshipers to “donate blood and participate in domestic violence walks and partner with everyone.”

At a rally in Atlanta on June 14, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed immigrants coming into the U.S. believe in “execution for things that you would say are like standard parts of life.” Trump suggested the U.S. should help build safe zones in Syria for refugees instead of allowing them in. (Reuters)
He pointed out that a national coalition of organizations on Sunday morning launched an online fundraiser with the hopes of raising $25,000 for victims and their families. They surpassed the goal in mere hours and have continued to raise money.

“Be an ambassador for your community,” Patel recalled telling the group. “We had already been doing that, but we need to do even more of that.”

Three years ago, after encouragement from Patel, Baig became the first Asian American woman to serve on the local school board. She said she gave out more than 100 forms at voter registration drives at the mosque in the lead-up to this month’s New Jersey primary — and she plans to hold more during the general election. Many people, she said, told her they would be voting for the first time.

Many in this community attended rallies for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to get a sense of which might best represent their interests.

“My biggest motivation during this election is to stop Trump from becoming president,” Dilawar Jaulikar, 42, said one recent night before Ramadan prayers. He moved from India to the United States when he was 21 and works in information technology. “Now I am paying more attention to politics than ever before. We have to watch everything he is saying.”

Nouran Shehata, a 21-year-old recent graduate of Rutgers University, made a small confession during a group discussion at the Islamic Society.

“I am voting for Trump,” she said. Then she paused and smirked, and now the group was laughing because the very idea seemed so ridiculous to them. Laughter, she said, helps to ease the tensions of the times.

“I don’t understand anyone who would vote for this man,” she said.

“He is trying to destroy us with his hate,” Jaulikar said. “I have never seen anything like him.”

As hundreds streamed in, some wore traditional hijabs and loose dresses and tunics. Others came in jeans, and there were children in pajamas. Inside the mosque, the bulletin board is decorated with newspaper columns excoriating Islamophobia, offers for trips to Mecca and requests for housing for members. A handful of Syrian refugees just started attending services. An enlarged quote reads: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people.” The inspiring words are not from a Muslim, but from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

About an hour north of the mosque, a man named Diab Mustafa, who was locking up a community center recently, sighed:

“It feels like we’re back at square one.”

Mustafa, 46, is a real estate broker who lives just outside Paterson, where Main Street is filled with restaurants offering Ramadan buffets for hungry Muslims eager to break their fasts after sundown.

After 9/11, Mustafa remembers, people in this primarily Arab American community felt fearful, angry and a little defensive. They worked with police to try to limit profiling. There were raids targeting potential terrorists.

The community, Mustafa said, “tried to moderate language.” Fearing that they might actually harbor terrorists, Mustafa said many kept a lookout for neighbors who might say hateful things about the country — in hopes of calming them down or reporting them to authorities.

Something different has happened in recent months, according to Andre Sayegh, a Paterson city councilman who is Catholic and represents the part of the city known as “Little Ramallah.” When Trump first mentioned the Muslim ban, Sayegh said the community did not feel an obligation to defend the purity of the faith. Instead, religious leaders called on politicians to explain their beliefs.

“We all had to go up to the Islamic Society to assure them that we denounced Trump,” Sayegh said. “That was how much politics have changed in the community.”

Back in South Brunswick, Baig prepared to join hundreds at the mosque for their nightly prayers. The solemn month of fasting that is intended to help build a closer connection to God has also become a festive time to build community. Worshipers spilled out of the mosque after the late-night service and hung out past midnight. One group of young men discussed internships. A small girl in a pink hijab bounced a basketball. Baig ate sweet desserts prepared by Mohammad Jawad, 48, a local restaurant owner.

Jawad began donating food and drinks during Ramadan as a way to honor his deceased father and thank God. Jawad said his faith lifts him above the current state of American politics.

“The politicians are too busy talking about each other,” said Jawad, who said he will vote for a Democrat, like he usually does. “The poor are getting poorer by the day. When I go to New Brunswick, the line for food stamps gets longer and longer. They are not trying to do what they are supposed to do, which is help people. Trump? He can say what he wants, but if he gets to the office, he’ll be just like the rest of them.”

As he spoke, he spotted a security guard patrolling the mosque.

“Sir, did you like the mango lassi?” Jawad asked. “Take some more.”

Source: www.washingtonpost.com