“I think Islam hates us,” Donald Trump said in 2016, while still a candidate. “There’s something there. There’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.”
Some people, especially political and media gatekeepers, were shocked by these inflammatory remarks, and by Trump’s call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” I wasn’t. I pay attention. I have always taken Trump literally and seriously.
I’ve been paying attention ever since I was a twenty-year-old undeclared senior at the University of California in Berkeley, watching the Twin Towers fall while sitting on my couch in my Costco pajamas. Before then, I was a basic suburban kid, a son of Pakistani immigrants. My dad came here for college in 1966 and my mom arrived about a decade later, after they were married. They brought over other family members the same way as Melania Trump—through what her husband and other immigration opponents today derisively label “chain migration.”
My parents thought it would be brilliant to not teach their American-born child English and also give him a tri-syllable name. They thought I’d just naturally “blend” in with the other kids at A Child’s Hideaway Preschool in Fremont, California. Eventually, I learned most kids don’t eat with their hands or have turmeric stains on their shirt. They also didn’t speak Urdu, which is the language we spoke at home.
My fellow comrades in OshKosh B’gosh also didn’t know the nuances of the history of the 1947 Partition and thus casually lumped Pakistan and all other South Asian countries into the brown bouillabaisse of India. Back then, we didn’t have Priyanka Chopra or Hasan Minhaj as cultural ambassadors. Garam masala and saag paneer were not available at Safeway. South Asian teenagers were not crushing the competition at the annual spelling bee championship on ESPN. All we had was the animated Kwik-E-Mart owner, Apu, on The Simpsons.
Naturally, I blended.
Throughout elementary and high school, I became the de facto representative of Pakistan and Islam. I was often the token brown, Muslim friend for peers who eventually learned never to offer me pork and who understood why I fasted during Ramadan. Growing up in the ethnically diverse Bay Area suburbs, many of us came from immigrant families who nurtured hopes of realizing the “American Dream.” This included a nice house in the suburbs, a respectable job, health care, relative stability, and a solid education for the kids, who would hopefully turn out to be doctors, engineers, or wealthy businessmen: the holy trinity. Those were the only options. I eventually graduated college with an English major and am now paid to write for a living, which means that in their eyes I ended up a failure.
We would be ‘good’ minorities—safe, respectable, reliable, productive, unproblematic.
There was also aspirational whiteness, a desire to drive through gated, suburban communities in a Mercedes and plant our picket fence on a manicured lawn. This would mean we could finally fit in. We would not be awkward foreigners with silly accents. We would not be punchlines. We would not be compared to black people or Mexicans or poor people of color—the “bad” minorities, who were criminal, violent, lazy, taking food stamps, wearing hoodies, and not pulling their pants up to their waists. We would be “good” minorities—safe, respectable, reliable, productive, unproblematic.
Then the 9/11 terror attacks happened, and everything changed.
We began hearing that “Islam hates the West.” My question then, and now, remains the same: “Who is Islam and who is the West, and how come I’ve never met either of them?” (Full disclosure: I have met a married father of two, named Islam, who once lent me his bow tie.)
As far as Islam is concerned, last time I checked it was a global religion with 1.8 billion adherents, including nearly 3.45 million in the United States. It has existed here for hundreds of years, beginning with the estimated 10 to 15 percent of the African slaves who were Muslim, brought here against their will. Muslim blood, sweat, and labor have fertilized this country’s soil from the beginning.
But after 9/11, it became clear that our historical roots, our advanced degrees, our suburban homes, our excellent credit, our moderation, our apologies, our lack of criminal records, our flag waving, our love of hot dogs and baseball, our Muhammad Alis, meant nothing to some of our fellow citizens. In the war between “Us” and “Them,” we were still Them.
The rude awakening of 9/11 was a baptism by fire. It represented a fork in the road for many of us. To this day, there is always a pre- and post-9/11. In the 2000 election, one poll said that about 70 percent of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush, who promised to end the use of “secret evidence” to detain immigrants, and even visited a mosque. Six days after 9/11, President Bush visited another mosque, the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., where he said, “Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
President Bush then represented democracy and freedom by launching an endless “War on Terror,” which includes ongoing, bloody, and devastating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed thousands and given birth to ISIS and a new generation of violent extremists. His administration passed the suppressive Patriot Act and launched the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) that deported more than 13,000 immigrants from majority Muslim countries.
Despite his warmongering legacy, President Bush’s posture toward Islam and Muslims was a far cry from that of President Trump. If George W. Bush were running for President today, he’d be mocked as a politically correct “Muslim lover” and rejected by the Republican Party.
As President, Trump retweeted three inflammatory videos by an extremist, anti-Muslim hate group called Britain First, which Prime Minister May said uses “hateful narratives [to] peddle lies and stoke tensions.” Trump also stands by his lie that he saw a videotape (which doesn’t exist) of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 terror attacks.
Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions are anti-immigration hawks aligned with some of the most notorious anti-Muslim bigots in America. His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, accepted an award from ACT for America and was fêted by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, two of the nation’s leading anti-Muslim hate groups, which peddle conspiracy theories about sharia law taking over America and mosques being incubators of violence. His national security advisor, John Bolton, was recently chair of the Gatestone Institute, an anti-Muslim think tank that produces similar toxic narratives across the Atlantic, promoting fears of the “Islamization” of Europe.
Unlike me in my youth, Muslim kids growing up today will actually have living, breathing, three-dimensional representatives and role models in the media, instead of stereotypical cartoon characters voiced by white guys.
Being a Muslim in this climate should be terrifying, but it’s mostly exhausting. Sometimes I feel like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day, answering the same questions while knowing that my loyalty and patriotism will always be suspect. I can’t mess up or lose my cool or say anything too inflammatory for fear of not being seen as “moderate,” for which entire communities of my peers may be punished.
Our value as citizens and community members remains defined within a national security framework. We are good if we’re helping fight terrorism and bad if we’re not. Republicans aren’t solely to blame for this reductive straitjacket. At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, former President Bill Clinton said, “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you.”
Recently, I reached out to fellow Pakistani American Muslims to ask if they felt wanted in America in 2019.
Mansoor Shams
“I don’t know,” replied Baltimore business owner Mansoor Shams, citing the rise of anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment during Trump’s presidency. A father and a former U.S. Marine, Shams came to the United States from Pakistan at age six. He was in the military prior to the 9/11 attacks, but then requested deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan because he thought his religious background and language skills could be helpful. Then the “Taliban” and “terrorist” jokes became more frequent and he felt a few Marines started treating him differently.
But Shams says the current anti-Muslim environment didn’t metastasize until 2015, when Trump began his campaign. Shams created the website MuslimMarine.org to, he says, “showcase to this nation that whatever nonsense they have in their mind about Muslims or a man with a beard is just not correct.” The hateful climate is even affecting his kids, all born and raised in America. At school, a classmate told his son that he should get out and leave America. Shams blames Trump for this incident.
“This is the ramification when the President of the U.S. uses his microphone . . . to the point that kids, who should not have any clue of politics at age ten, know that somehow Muslim is bad and that Allahu Akbar [Arabic for “Allah is the greatest”] is bad. How does that happen?”
Rabia Chaudry, attorney, author, and host of the podcasts Undisclosed and The 45th, echoes many of Shams’s fears, especially for her kids’ safety, but believes America is heading toward an upward trajectory. “The Trump Administration has galvanized so many people in solidarity, that it’s actually been a silver lining,” she says, recalling the diverse allies who have stood with Muslims during the past three years, including the spontaneous mobilization against the first travel ban.
Rabia Chaudry
Chaudry is a Pakistani Muslim woman who wears a hijab, and thus considers herself “visibly Muslim.” She’s been an advocate and activist on behalf of her Muslim community ever since 9/11. She says Trump’s megaphone has brought Islamophobia and demonization of Muslims “into the light,” proving that our concerns and fears were justified. She also feels less tokenized than before, recognized through her advocacy, legal work, and podcasts not as a representative of Islam but simply as a human being who cares about wrongful convictions and social justice.
Mona Shaikh, who moved from Pakistan to Jersey City as a fifteen-year-old with her four older brothers, says she experienced plenty of racism and sexism as one of the only women on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor in 2004. Then the 2008 recession and a nudge from an acting coach inspired her to do a five-minute set at the Comix Comedy Club in New York City (“which has since been shut down, thanks to my comedy,” she jokes), launching a full-time stand-up career that has included opening for established acts such as Patton Oswalt. She often talks about her dating life, the challenges of being a woman in America, and blowing up the “hypocrisy and taboos and bullshit in Muslim and Pakistani culture.”
Mona Shaikh
A few years ago, Shaikh was the victim of a hate crime at a shopping center in Beverly Hills, where she was attacked by a white woman who called her a terrorist and injured her neck, requiring painful surgery. She says Trump’s presidency has actually been beneficial for Muslim comedians and storytellers, who have “historically benefitted when crazy conservative Presidents have taken office and done crazy shit.” She believes the stage allows her and other comedians to expose the problems and bigotry that have long existed in America. “You make them laugh, and when they open their mouth, you slip them the bitter truth.”
In fact, the past three years have seen a boom in Muslim American comedians, including Hasan Minhaj, Aziz Ansari, and Kumail Nanjiani. Unlike me in my youth, Muslim kids growing up today will actually have living, breathing, three-dimensional representatives and role models in the media, instead of stereotypical cartoon characters voiced by white guys.
Thankfully, a lot has changed since the 9/11 terror attacks. I’m no longer an undeclared senior in college. I am a happily married father of two adorable, caramel-mocha-skinned babies named Ibrahim and Nusayba. But, importantly, there’s no pre-9/11 timeline for them. They will always live in an America where millions of their fellow citizens elected a serial liar and entertainment caricature who peddled anti-Muslim fear and white nationalism just to temporarily feel great again.
Standing up and resisting is honorable, important, urgent, and necessary. But it also takes a lot of work. I’ve been doing it for eighteen years. Many others have done it longer. Some communities have been doing it since this nation began.
I hope my children’s generation won’t have to answer the question, “Does Islam hate the West?” or pass a litmus test to prove their loyalty, or play the role of the sidekick or stereotype or token, or have their worth and utility measured by how they’re advancing the national security agenda of the day. But hope is not enough. It requires work to achieve this as a reality. I wish I could outsource this job to the Avengers.
In the meantime, I realize it’s up to me and my generation to emerge, repair, heal, clean up the mess, and build stronger, healthier narratives and foundations. (But no capes!) If Muslims can emerge as the best representatives of our faith and our values of pluralism, decency, and tolerance, then maybe one day America will see us as an example of how it can be great.