BY: Kristina Perry WASHINGTON, DC: These are trying times for the United States as xenophobia threatens the underlying narrative of this nation of immigrants. Throughout the 2016 campaign trail, the stump speeches of some presidential candidates have been sprinkled with references to the assumed threats posed by refugees, religious groups, and all the usual rigmarole. In … Continued
Reuters
About three months ago, Sarah Ibrahim’s son came home from his fourth-grade class at a Maryland school with a disturbing question.
“Will I have time to say goodbye to you before you’re deported?” he said, according to Ibrahim, a Muslim Arab American who works at a federal government agency in Maryland.
“The kids in his classroom were saying: ‘Who’s going to leave when Trump becomes president?’” said the 35-year-old mother.
The incident happened a few months after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — now the presumptive nominee — first called for a ban on Muslim immigrants and for more scrutiny at mosques after 14 people were killed in San Bernardino by a Muslim couple whom the FBI said had been radicalised.
Trump intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric after last week’s mass shooting in Orlando, in which a US-born Muslim man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub, calling for a suspension of immigration from countries with “a proven history of terrorism”.
He reiterated his call for more surveillance of mosques and warned that radical Muslims were “trying to take over our children.”
While Democratic and several Republican leaders have distanced themselves from Trump’s comments, many American Muslims say his stance has fuelled an atmosphere in which some may feel they can voice prejudices or attack Muslims without fear of retribution.
“What Trump did was make these hidden thoughts public. He gave people permission to speak out loud, he removed the shame associated with being prejudiced. People know that they won’t be punished,” Ibrahim told Reuters at a community iftar, the sundown meal during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. Trump has rejected the criticism that his rhetoric is racist, and has said he is often misunderstood by the media and his opponents.
A report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and University of California, Berkeley released on Monday said the number of recorded incidents in which mosques were targeted jumped to 78 in 2015, the most since the body began tracking them in 2009. There were 20 and 22 such incidents in the previous two years, respectively. The incidents include verbal threats and physical attacks.
Corey Saylor, CAIR’s director of the department to monitor and combat Islamophobia, said there had been a spike in Islamophobic incidents in the wake of Orlando, including those targeting mosques.
“Trump’s rhetoric is a direct threat to American principles. He has mainstreamed anti-Constitutional ideas like banning or surveilling people based on faith,” Saylor told Reuters.
“Such divisive rhetoric contributes to a toxic environment in which some people take the law into their own hands and attack people of institutions they perceive as Muslim.”
“DIVIDING THE COUNTRY”
CAIR says the last big spike in incidents targeting mosques was seen in 2010 following the controversy over locating an Islamic centre near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.
It said that lent “additional weight to the argument that levels of anti-Muslim sentiment follow trends in domestic U.S. politics, not international terrorism”.
American rabbis and preachers have also denounced Trump’s rhetoric. Anti-Semitic incidents in the United States still outstrip those against Muslims. The Anti-Defamation League said last year there were 912 anti-Semitic incidents across the United States during the 2014 calendar year, up 21 percent from 2013.
“If Muslims are not free and safe in America, then Christians and Jews are not free and safe in America,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Trump has also drawn criticism for his rhetoric against Latino immigrants, saying early in his campaign that Mexican “rapists” and other criminals were coming across the border and calling for all undocumented immigrants to be deported.
Manal Omar, a Muslim-American author based in Washington, said she has stopped taking the metro and walking alone late at night.
“I can’t dismiss the tweets and angry messages I’ve received from right wing militants,” said Omar, who says she has grown especially vigilant after last week’s murder of British lawmaker Jo Cox, whom she knew.
A few days after the San Bernardino attack, Ilhaam Hassan’s family restaurant was burned down in an arson attack in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Matthew Gust pleaded guilty in May to federal hate-crime and arson charges. He admitted to setting the fire because of the national origin of the employees and customers at the restaurant — a focal point of the local Somali-American community.
“I don’t know what to expect if he (Trump) becomes the president,” Hassan said. “He is against minorities. He is against Islam. It’s not a message of unity, it’s a message of dividing the country and that is not what America is based on.”
Source: thehimalayantimes.com
By KATIE GLUECK
Politico
Bernie Sanders supporter Cornel West was painted as “anti-Israel” in new ads by the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Republicans are seeking to drive a wedge into an issue that’s already emerging as a highly sensitive one in the Democratic platform: Israel.
The latest salvo will come from the Republican Jewish Coalition this week, as the group — which is home to some of the biggest donors in GOP politics — launches an online advertising campaign attacking members of the Democratic National Committee’s platform drafting committee.
The RJC plan, first shared with Politico, comes as Democrats are already grappling with the possibility that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will emerge as a major flash point at their national convention next month, given the sharp disagreements some on the platform drafting committee have with one another on the issue.
The RJC ads will target Arab-American activist James Zogby, public intellectual Cornel West and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. The RJC’s five-figure social media campaign characterizes the three platform committee members as “radical” Democrats who are “stridently anti-Israel,” “hand-selected member[s] of the Democratic platform committee.” All three were selected by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“Sadly, this isn’t the old Democratic Party,” each spot intones, as an image of the late President John F. Kennedy splashes across the screen. Switching to an image of Hillary Clinton, the voice-over continues, “It’s today’s Democratic Party.”
Clinton herself is generally considered — especially in Democratic circles — a staunch supporter of Israel, as are a number of her allies on the platform drafting committee. But even as Republicans face a much bigger fight over party unity than Democrats do, the RJC and others in the GOP see the potential Democratic platform fight over Israel language as an opportunity to highlight divisions on the other side.
The issue of Israel is a touchy one in Democratic circles: There was a public and embarrassing flare-up over Israel in the 2012 platform, when language declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital was removed and then reinstated into the platform, engendering some boos. Some attendees maintain that those in the room were booing procedural methods, not the substance of the language, but the moment — and the larger back-and-forth over the language — sparked controversy nonetheless.
This time around, Democrats desperately want to avoid anything that detracts from Clinton’s efforts to project unity. But there are significant differences between the party establishment, starting with Clinton herself, and the more progressive grass roots, led by Sanders, with regard to posture toward Israel, leaving open the possibility for conflict on the issue.
Sanders and some of his supporters, including those on the platform committee, are eager for what many refer to as a more “even-handed” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even as Sanders has also said he believes in Israel’s security.
The RJC is hoping to force those Democratic disagreements into the open.
“As we’ve seen over the last couple months, the Democratic Party is getting nervous about the amount of real estate these voices are taking up,” said Mark McNulty, a spokesman for the RJC, of the Sanders picks. He went on to add, “From 2012 on, and sometimes before that, we have seen divisions within the Democratic Party when it comes to Israel and pertinent Jewish issues. This is just another time for us to make the case to Jewish voters that their interests are better served by Republicans.”
Those disagreements within the Democratic Party were highlighted last week, when, during a DNC platform hearing in Washington, West and Zogby clashed with former Rep. Robert Wexler, a Clinton supporter (though not on the committee this year), over whether the word “occupation” should be used to describe Israel’s control of Palestinian territories, a word that makes staunch Israel supporters cringe, but that more progressive voices — as well as the State Department — consider an accurate description.
At the meeting, Wexler said that it isn’t the party’s place to call Israel an occupier, while West and Zogby maintained it is essential for Democrats to use the term.
That debate underscored the sharp disagreements in the party on the issue, tensions Democrats acknowledge.
Asked whether the issue of Middle East peace could be a key flash point, Dwight Bullard, the Democratic chairman of heavily Jewish Miami-Dade County replied, “Politically speaking this could be it. I think there’s enough red meat out there of issues that [it] could be contentious.”
Added Dennis Ross, a veteran of Middle Eastern policy who served as a special adviser to Clinton at the State Department, “I think there are some divisions within the Democratic Party on the issue. Clearly I think the more mainstream, centrist part of the party tends to believe support for Israel is the kind of standard of principle by which it wants to be identified. Looking at what might be described as the more Sanders wing, [they] are ready to raise questions about that.”
The committee is set to continue hammering out language at a draft committee meeting this weekend in St. Louis. Clinton has six allies on the committee, to Sanders’ five, along with four other members selected by the DNC.
“We’re still in the process of creating the platform,” said Dana Vickers Shelley, a spokeswoman for the DNC platform committee. “I’m comfortable that the party’s words and actions will be consistent in support of Israel’s security and safety.”
Ross and other Clinton allies downplayed the notion that that debate will unfold via the platform committee at the convention, noting that Sanders has spent much more time prioritizing economic issues than he has the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Sen. Sanders and the vast majority of his delegates, his strongest supporters, are rightfully most concerned about economic justice, about income inequality, and the many economic issues, domestic issues that Sen. Sanders based his presidential campaign on,” Wexler said. “Foreign policy was not Sen. Sanders’ focus. And while he did make a statement or two regarding Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s not the focus of his campaign, nor do I think it will be the focus of the convention.”
Matt Duss, a Middle East expert who testified last week at the behest of the Sanders campaign, said the Clinton camp’s more centrist approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would likely prevail at the convention — but that won’t paper over the significant areas of disagreement that remain on the issue.
“I’m happy to have been asked by the Sanders campaign to share my views, but at the end of the day, Clinton is the nominee, so her choices are probably going to carry the day,” Duss said. “But I just hope there’s an understanding that this is a debate that’s not going to go away.”
Source: www.politico.com
Zaid Jilani
The Intercept
DONALD TRUMP TOLD CBS News over the weekend that the United States should consider religious and ethnic profiling to prevent terror attacks.
“I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” Trump said. “Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads.”
Israel’s most systematic use of racial profiling occurs at its borders and has been rife with abuses that stand in contrast with American values of equal treatment and safeguarding personal liberties.
The Arab American Institute has collected stories of Arab and Muslim Americans who have been harassed or detained while entering Israel. They offer a window into the human impact of racial profiling.
For example, Najwa Doughman, a New York City architect with no ties to terrorism, was sent to a waiting room in Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport after being asked what her father’s name was. “Bassam,” she replied, setting off what she later called a “14-hour nightmare.” During an extended interrogation, she said she was asked questions like “Do you feel more Arab or American?” and was subjected to an invasive pat-down where she was asked to remove her clothes. After an overnight stay at a detention facility, she was denied access to the country and put on a plane to France.
“It’s an issue serious enough that our own State Department has a travel advisory that’s posted permanently on the website that advises anyone who is traveling to Israel basically to expect this kind of treatment, if they are of Arab American background,” Maya Berry, executive director of AAI, told The Intercept.
Even former senior government officials are not exempt from Israel’s system of profiling. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who was president of the University of Miami at the time, was detained and questioned for nearly three hours during a trip through Ben-Gurion Airport in 2010. Shalala is of Lebanese Christian descent.
If the U.S. were to adopt this level of intrusive, racially based profiling, it wouldn’t be the first time officials adopted an Israeli security program. A former chief security officer at the Israel Airports Authority helped design the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program, a sort of checklist that TSA officers use to identify suspicious passengers. In interviews with The Intercept last year, a number of former TSA officers decried the program’s checklist as “ridiculous” and a “license to harass.”
Pragmatists in the U.S. intelligence and security communities oppose racial and ethnic profiling. Former Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff explained that, shortly after the September 11 attacks, Bush administration officials briefly debated the use of profiling in response to terrorism. “There was a unanimous belief that racial and religious profiling would not only be ineffective, but counterproductive from a security standpoint,” he said. “The problem with using racial and religious profiling is it takes you down a road to looking at people who you don’t need to look at and avoiding looking at people that you should look at.”
That would be the obvious conclusion from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s secret spying program that targeted Muslim New Yorkers. For years, the New York Police Department mapped and infiltrated Muslim communities, using only their religious identity as justification for targeting. Yet this massive religious-profiling program did not generate a single terrorism case.
Racial profiling can also have lethal results. A Washington Post investigation published last year found that African Americans make up a disproportionate number of traffic-stop deaths; the findings corresponded with other studies that show that blacks have a higher chance of being pulled over by police, an event that can lead to deadly confrontations.
Additionally, a 2009 study authored by a leading statistician found that racial profiling is no more effective than a random screening.
Given these facts, there has been progress in officially curtailing the use of this form of profiling.
Then-Attorney General Eric Holder issued new guidelines in late 2014 barring federal law enforcement from profiling based on gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and race. Those rules explicitly exempted airports and border crossings.
Source: theintercept.com
BY: Kristina Perry/Contributing Writer WASHINGTON, DC: Every year, the world observes June as World Refugee Month, with June 20th marking international events raising awareness for refugees hosted by the United Nations Refugee Agency. This year, World Refugee Month coincides with Ramadan, and the presumptive end of the presidential primaries. As the nation witnesses its closest … Continued
By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
Published: June 17, 2016
The aftermath of the bloodiest massacre in the history of the United States, since 9/11, which happened at a popular nightclub in Orlando last week, has seriously fractured the American establishment. US President Barack Obama has angrily denounced Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, for his “dangerous” mindset. “We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence,” he said.
The New York Times underlined that Obama did not mention Trump’s name, but his statement, according to the New York Times, was “an extraordinary condemnation by a sitting president of a man who is to be the opposing party’s nominee for the White House”.
Obama continued: “Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating against them because of their faith?” Obama wondered whether Republican officials actually agree with this. Because this is not the America we want. It does not reflect our democratic ideals. It won’t make us more safe. It will make us less safe.”
In turn, the Washington Post reported that top Republicans joined with Obama and other Democrats in “sharply condemning Trump’s reaction to the Orlando massacre, “decrying his anti-Muslim rhetoric and his questioning of Obama’s allegiances as divisive and out of step with America’s values”.
The Orlando incident prompted various groups to launch conflicting theories about the objectives of the US-born gunman, Omar Mateen, who, two years ago, had been reportedly in touch with another American who had driven a truck loaded with explosives into a hilltop restaurant in Syria.
The horrific incident in Orlando triggered several oral blasts from leading American figures like Trump, who, according to the Washington Post, “Escalated his already controversial rhetoric about immigrants … even though the shooter was born in New York”. The paper added that in a speech “laden with falsehoods and exaggerations”, Trump accused American Muslims of “harbouring terrorists and blamed them for the Orlando attack, as well as for last December’s shooting in San Bernardino, California”.
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said she wasn’t shying away from using the term “radical Islamism” to describe the attack in Orlando, and that she had a plan to address the threat. She told NBC she had a plan to defend America from “lone-wolf” attacks. But “I’m not going to demonize and demagogue” like Trump because “it’s plain dangerous”.
Meanwhile, the Washington-based delegation of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation took an unprecedented step last week of strongly condemning “the violent terrorist” action in Florida, stressing that the threat of extremist groups like Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) reaches far beyond our regions … a threat against all humanity that must be confronted by all of us”.
In contrast to Trump’s racist remarks, last weekend saw the memorial service that praised Muhammad Ali, the legendary American boxer who had converted to Islam. Speaking at the ceremony among many others was Rabbi Michael Lerner, the popular radical editor of Tikkun magazine, who said: “We will not tolerate politicians or anyone else putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people,” — a comment seen as a thinly-veiled criticism of Trump for favouring a ban on Muslim immigration into the US.
Another comment, assumed to be directed at Hillary, was loud and clear: “Tell Israeli Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu that the way to get security for Israel is to stop the occupation of the (Palestinian) West Bank and help create a Palestinian state.”
In reaction to the rising tide against Trump was his decision this week to bar Washington Post journalists from covering his events — a step he has already taken against more than 10 prominent news outlets. In a surprise report out last Monday, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank revealed that Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center found that top news outlets gave Trump the equivalent of $55 million (Dh202.29 million) of free advertising last year, and about two thirds of Trump-coverage was positive. “The question is,” according to Milbank “is whether news organizations will recognize that Trump’s ban is not just an attack on the Post, but a call to conscience for all who believe in a free press”.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
Source: gulfnews.com
Dean Obeidallah
Mediaite.com
Bill Maher did it again Friday on his HBO show. He went on his predictable rant against Muslims. And just as predictably, he didn’t have even one Muslim on the panel to respond.
Maher not inviting Muslims to be in his show when he lectures on “what Islam is really about” is like having a discussion on Black Lives Matter with only a panel of white people. True, we see that very thing happen on Fox News, but Maher keeps telling us he’s a liberal. Well, wouldn’t a liberal invite a Muslim who disagrees with him on the show when having such a conversation?
On Maher’s show Friday, he told America that Muslims are not countering the threat of radicalization enough, declaring, “We need to ask more of Muslims.” Well what a great place for a Muslim American activist to explain to Bill and the audience exactly what our community has been doing. And to make it clear that no one wants to stop Muslims from committing acts of terror more than fellow Muslim Ameircans for a few reasons. The first is because we don’t want to see innocent people killed in the name of our faith – it’s morally reprehensible. Plus we are painfully aware of the backlash we endure after such an attack, as we are seeing now after Orlando with shots being fired at a mosque, a Muslim man being punched in New York City, women in hijabs being threatened and more.
And if Maher had on a Muslim who is actually a part of the Muslim American community- as opposed to a Muslim who has no following and is more about selling books- he would have learned that Muslims have turned in suspected terrorists and are working with law enforcement.
The reality is Maher at one time did invite a spectrum of Muslim voices on his show. Maher welcomed people like Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, author Reza Aslan, journalist Rula Jabreal and others.
But Reza and Rula haven’t been back on the show since they challenged Maher’s views on Islam a few years ago after his famous blow up with Ben Affleck. And to my knowledge, no one else from the Muslim American community has been invited on the show unless they are on Maher’s side, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
It appears Maher doesn’t want Muslims on his show that will talk back to him. Or could it be that Maher simply doesn’t know any other Muslim Ameircans? Maybe that’s it- Maher needs more Muslim friends.
On my weekly SiriusXM radio show (which will be expanded this week from once a week to live Monday to Friday at Noon ET on Ch. 121- and yes, that was a shameless plug) I open each program by saying, “I want to be your Muslim friend.” Now given my history with Maher, I doubt he wants me on his show. (Last year, Maher mocked me on his show for my Daily Beast article defending Ahmed Mohammed, the teenager who made a clock. Plus I have written countless articles for CNN and The Daily Beast very critical of Maher.)
But I can promise you this is not about me getting on Maher’s show – it’s about having a person from the Muslim American community who can, and will, push back against Maher’s overgeneralizations and half truths about our faith and community.
So here are a few Muslim Americans I have had on my radio show in the past that Maher might like to be friends with and invite on the show. (The order below is random, not a ranking.)
1. Congressman Andre Carson (D-Ind.) – The second Muslim member of Congress and a great progressive voice.
2. Linda Sarsour- a leader in the Muslim American community in New York City and a tireless fighter against racism, sexism and bigotry.
3. Maysoon Zayid- a comedian and activist who is co-founder of the Muslim Funny Fest and New York Arab American Comedy Festival.
4. Wajahat Ali – a journalist and activist with extensive media credentials.
5. Suhail Khan – a Republican Muslim (yes, they exist) who served in the Bush administration.
6. Haroon Moghul – a writer and activist who is busy building bridges between Jews and Muslims.
And the list goes on from Imam Daayiee Abdullah, the openly gay Imam in the United States to Dalia Mogahed, the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and many, many others. I’m happy to share their contact info if Maher’s producers are interested.
But now it’s up to Bill: Is he content simply playing a liberal on TV or will actually be one and invite Muslims who don’t agree with on his show? We will all be watching for an answer.
Source: www.mediaite.com
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
Through comic dialogues and elegant illustrations in his handwritten newspaper Abou Naddara, the late-nineteenth-century satirist James Sanua galvanized Egyptians against the political ills of their day. By Anna Della Subin and Hussein Omar The New Yorker This past February, in a speech laying out his plans to repay Egypt’s titanic debt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi … Continued
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
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