Muslim Americans have come so far since the dark early days of the Trump administration. But even as we celebrate, there stands a stark reminder that there are still GOP leaders who will target our community with hate to score political points. We saw that play out this week when Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed Muslim Americans, including myself, on Tuesday to the Vice President's Residence to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. This event—which was coordinated in association with the El-Hibri Foundation, a philanthropic organization—marked the first time ever that a U.S. vice president has celebrated an Eid at their residence.
Doug and I were honored to host the first Eid celebration at the Vice President’s Residence. To all those who celebrate, we hope you had a blessed Eid al-Adha! pic.twitter.com/OOD9BdEXUZ
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 14, 2023
Yet just days before, there was 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump pledging during a rally in Iowa to implement an "even bigger" Muslim travel ban if he wins than he did when he was in the White House. Trump as president originally banned people from nine Muslim-majority nations but after court challenges the final ban upheld by the GOP-controlled Supreme Court applied to five Muslim nations.) In typical Trump fashion, he reignited p anti-Muslim bigotry while pledging to implement a new travel ban. "We don't want people blowing up our shopping centers. We don't want people blowing up our cities."
This, of course, is the same Trump who has defended his followers who waged the Jan. 6 terrorist attack to overturn the election as being unfairly prosecuted—even pledging that if he wins in 2024 he would pardon "a large portion of them." Apparently, Trump has no issues with terrorism when it is carried out by his supporters to help achieve his political goals.
Trump's proposed new Muslim ban is actually an important wake-up call for many in our community. I've repeatedly warned that GOP candidates will circle back to demonize Muslims in the 2024 election cycle because it has long played well with their base. And no one was more openly bigoted and hateful to our community than Trump during the 2016 campaign, serving up a buffet of anti-Muslim hate, from his bald-faced lie that American Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attack to his claim "Islam hates us" all to building to his call for a "total ban" on Muslims entering the United States. As a result, our community saw a spike in hate crimes — including physical attacks on Muslim Americans, bullying of Muslim students and vandalism of our places of worship — that eclipsed what we endured in the months after 9/11.
But if Trump and the right believed targeting our community was going to cause us to cower in the shadows, they were mightily mistaken. Instead, Muslim Americans became more active in electoral politics than ever before. Many became grassroots activists, others worked on campaigns and a record-breaking number of 145 Muslims ran for office in 2022. At least 80 Muslims won elections from school boards to Congress to statewide success, like Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's successful re-election.
In fact, the gathering at Vice President Harris' residence was a testament to how far our community has come, with Harris vowing in response to the bigotry that "we are all in this together." However, with the Biden-Harris administration, it's not just words of support. There are currently more than 100 Muslim Americans serving in the administration—many of whom were at the event such as White House assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan. And as Wa'el Alzayat, the executive director of Emgage noted while we are at the Eid gathering, there are now 13 Senate-confirmed Muslims serving in various positions in the Biden administration—the most ever.
This embrace by the Biden administration and the significance of the event with the Vice President resonates beyond our borders, as Farhan Latif, the President El-Hibri Foundation, explained via email. "Nearly two billion Muslims around the world," Latif noted, "are watching our democratic values in action." What a contrast to the message sent to the world's Muslims by Trump who during the 2016 campaign called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.
At the Eid event, Vice President Harris was clearly touched on the story behind the Eid al-Adha—known as the "Festival of Sacrifice"—a high holiday that marks when Abraham was tested by God to sacrifice his first son. Abraham was prepared to do as God commanded but then God stopped Abraham, instructing him to instead sacrifice an animal. If that story sounds familiar, it's because it also appears, with slight variations, in the Bible. In fact, the reason Judaism, Islam and Christianity are known as the Abrahamic religions is because all share Abraham as a prophet. The Vice President then shared how she views faith as a "verb," in that she sees a "connection between faith and action." Adding, "Our faith is what allows us to believe in the good, but also in understanding that it requires our action to make it so.
However, it was something else the vice president stated near the end of her remarks that resonated deeply as she touched on the forces of the right trying to erase progress and move our nation backward. Paraphrasing a quote from Coretta Scott King, she explained that the "fight for civil rights and progress…must be fought and won by each generation. It's also a message that perfectly applies to my fellow Muslims. While we have seen great progress in terms of political activism and achievements, there is a dark cloud gathering over the horizon as Trump once again ratchets up anti-Muslim hate. And we will soon be called again to fight to maintain that progress.
