THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY CONFERENCE 2019
Grant Smith:
Wajahat Ali is a journalist,
writer, lawyer, and an award-winning playwright.
But of major interest to us is a fascinating report that he
wrote along with his team while they were at the Center for American
Progress back in 2011.
We’ve asked him to come and talk about a seminal report about the
overlap between some Israel lobby organizations and donors that
promote or otherwise distribute Islamophobia in America.
Please welcome Wajahat Ali.
Wajahat Ali:
Hello, hello.
How’s everyone doing?
That was amazing.
Thank you for that overwhelming enthusiastic applause, and I
appreciate that. People
on the top, I recognize you.
I see you people on the top.
Let’s give it up for godfather, Arab uncle
extraordinaire, Jack Shaheen.
Where is he? He’s
hiding all the way in the back.
Thank you, Grant, for inviting me to speak on this
heartwarming, uplifting topic of Islamophobia, a topic I’ve been
trying to avoid and get away from for the past five years, and I
feel like Al Pacino in “Godfather Three”: “Every time I try to get
out, they pull me back in.”
Thank you. Bucket
list checked. I wanted
to do that in front of an audience and I finally was able to do
that. I really couldn’t
care less what happens in the next 20 minutes.
I was able to do that.
I am Wajahat Ali.
I am the last moderate Muslim left on Earth.
Us moderate Muslims, any other moderate Muslims?
Two. We are an
endangered species. We
are the circumcised unicorns of America, and currently we are very
popular because people can't stop talking about us.
In fact, if you play a drinking game—and I don’t drink
because I’m a good Muslim, and if you drink and you’re Muslim, God
is watching—if you play a drinking game and take a shot of alcohol
each time the Trump administration mentions Islam or Muslims, you
will die of alcohol poisoning by January.
If you’re like my father and drink mango lassi instead, you
will go into a diabetic coma.
We’re always in the news.
Raise your hand if you’ve heard the following, and honestly,
if you’ve heard the following raise your hand.
President Obama is a Muslim.
Okay.
Sharia is a threat
to America. Radical
Islam has infiltrated America, the government, and every single
mainstream Arab- or Muslim-American organization.
Okay. There is no such thing as moderate Islam, traditional
Islam is radical Islam.
Okay. A practicing
Muslim cannot be a patriotic or loyal American.
Now, if you looked around you would see that
the overwhelming majority of this audience raised their hands.
About five years ago when I used to do this experiment, only
about half of the audience used to raise their hands.
This
once fringe,
and I repeat,
fringe—talking points: they were really fringed—and extremists have
now become part of the mainstream discourse, where nearly 90
percent of a 600-person audience is raising their hands because
they’ve heard it on mainstream media, and literally from the mouths
of mainstream politicians, including the president of the United
States of America, Donald J. Trump.
Question:
How did these once fringe memes become mainstream and why?
And who is behind these toxic divisive messages?
It was a great phrase you just said, Jack Shaheen, peddlers
of-what was it?-peddlers of prejudice.
So, to answer these questions, in 2011-I was once a young
man-I was the lead author and researcher of the investigative report
Fear, Inc.: The Roots of
the Islamophobia Network in America that was published by the
Washington, DC think tank Center for American Progress.
Don’t worry.
I won't do the entire 138-page report, but for those of you
who have not read it, in two minutes I will summarize everything for
you. What this report
was, was an investigative report that exposed how at that time seven
major funders had given over $43 million over a period of 10 years
after 9/11 to a small-key, small-very interconnected, I would say
incestuous—group of individuals and organizations responsible for
mainstreaming fear, bigotry and hate against Muslims and Islam in
America.
Now, for purposes of this conversation, what
is Islamophobia? Great question.
We defined it, as it manifested itself in America, as the
following: an exaggerated fear, hatred and hostility toward Islam
and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in
bias, discrimination—this is the key—the marginalization and
exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political and civic
life. Are you guys still
with me?
Why is it relevant?
Because for the first time ever we really dissected and
exposed the network, categorized it, gave it a structure, named the
names, connected the dots, traced the funding and the money trail,
and showed the genesis of several fictitious anti-Muslim talking
points—some of them that I mentioned—that you now hear on mainstream
news and spewed by the president of the United States of America.
So, what is the Islamophobia industry?
It’s five pillars.
Number one, the color that every racist loves
is green. It starts with
the money, the money trail.
We see several funders and we gave seven funders—I’ll name a
few: Fairbrook Foundation; Rosenwald Family Foundation; Russell
Berrie Foundation; Becker Foundation.
We also had Donors Capital Fund, we also had Scaife
Foundation, we also had the Bradley Foundation—that give money.
Question: where does
the money go? Primarily
to Washington, DC and East Coast think tanks: Daniel Pipes, Middle
East Forum; David Horowitz’s Freedom Center in California; Steve
Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism; and Frank Gaffney,
Center for Security Policy.
By the way AIPAC just gave $60,000 to Frank Gaffney’s Center
for Security Policy.
Frank Gaffney was so extreme that CPAC, the annual conservative
conference-the who’s who crème
de la crème—found
him so extreme that they banned him.
Yet Frank Gaffney’s discredited poll that he ran with
Kellyanne Conway was used by Donald Trump last year to justify what
at that time was the permanent Muslim ban, that has now become the
temporary Muslim ban, that now has become the travel ban that isn’t
a Muslim ban, but really is a Muslim ban. [LAUGHTER]
Now, money goes to the think tanks that
create the memes. How do
the memes get distributed?
It’s a very good question.
The third pillar: grassroots groups in America.
Do not underestimate the power of grassroots groups in
America—and also, I’m sorry to say this to my evangelical Christian
friends, megachurches.
Okay? ACT! For America,
co-founded by Brigitte Gabriel, who once said, “Arabs and Muslims
have no soul”—awesome, I cannot sell my soul to the devil, good to
know—who was, by the way< just in the White House yesterday and
tweeted it out, one degree of separation out of the White House.
She works specifically with Frank Gaffney, and all the think
tanks to mainstream the anti-shariah
legislation.
People literally hand
deliver the anti-shariah
bill to their local congressmen in states like South Carolina, and
also evangelical Christians, people like Pastor John Hagee, who runs
Christians United for Israel.
In fact, that quote I just gave, where she said, “Arabs and
Muslims have no soul”—she said that in front of a CUFI conference,
Christians United for Israel.
So much so that a
New York Times reporter e-mailed me two weeks ago and said,
“Man, I was in Tennessee, and I was just hanging around doing
research, talking to people in the South, in the Rust Belt, and
these average Christians, just average Joes and Josés,
came up to me and said, ‘Islam is not a religion.
It’s a totalitarian ideology.’
Now, I’m like, where do these people get this definition
from? These are just
average Joes.” These
definitions are literally hand delivered from the think tanks and
spread through these grassroots groups.
Number four: the media megaphone, the
blogosphere, one news channel in particular—any one of you want to
take a guess? I know;
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for
being a stereotype. But
yes, Fox News, right-wing radio, and books.
Many of these people, if you look at the back of their books,
they keep blurbing each other.
These people that I’ve just mentioned, especially the think
tank experts, end up as national security experts on Fox News, on
Breitbart—where
Frank Gaffney, by the way, got a lot of play—on right-wing radio,
Sean Hannity, also Mark Levin, who you guys might remember because
Donald Trump cited him for the wiretapping that didn’t happen, but
probably did happen, but didn’t happen.
Are you guys with me?
Finally, number five: politicians. Literally,
word for word, the talking points that emerged from the Center for
Security Policy’s 2010 Report, “Shariah:
The Threat to America,” were word-for-word talking points for
mainstream political politicians.
I’m talking about nearly every single Republican presidential
candidate in 2012-except Mitt Romney, because he’s Mormon-ran with
this. And every single
major political politician, especially from the Republican Party-I’m
talking about Donald Trump and Ben Carson-word for word their
talking points on shariah
can get traced to the document that was released by the think tank.
So, money, think tanks, grassroots groups, media,
politicians—congratulations, you don’t have to read the report.
Now, you guys are still with me?
All right, 13 minutes left.
In order to make this somewhat conversational and different,
Grant sent me five questions and said in 20 minutes, answer these
five questions, which is like thesis questions, and enough for an
hour-long keynote. I
actually wrote him an e-mail, and I said Grant, why don’t I just
respond to the questions you gave me in front of this audience?
I thought that would be interesting, and he said, yeah, just
do that. So in 12
minutes let me do that.
Five questions—if I get through three, it’s a win.
Question number one: the revenue of the
organizations profiled in
Fear, Inc. seemed to have flattened since 2011, with an
e-mail appeal for funds from the Middle East Forum growing in
frequency and desperation (in tone, anyway).
That’s Grant. Do
you think the exposure these organizations received in
Fear, Inc. had
anything to do with this?
Is Fear, Inc. a lesson for investigative journalists?
First, yes, I think it is a lesson.
Second, I question whether or not these groups have all
become flattened as a result of the Trump presidency, in the one
degree of separation that exists between Steve Bannon, Kellyanne
Conway, Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo and most of
Islamophobic industry players mentioned in
Fear, Inc.
Mike Pompeo, by the way, received an award from ACT! For
America, and let’s not forget that Jeff Sessions, top cop, received
an award from Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, and
publicly praised David Horowitz in his confirmation hearing.
I’m just throwing that out there.
I would look forward to the 2016 and 2017 returns to prove
whether or not it has been flattened.
It will be very illuminating.
Fear, Inc.
definitely did have an impact, though.
I haven’t mentioned this
story publicly, but a week before
Fear Inc.’s release, this was about five years ago, we sent a
heads-up e-mail to the eight funders that were mentioned in
Fear, Inc.
Now, if you were paying attention to me, I said seven
funders. So the question
should be how did it go from eight to seven? Very good question.
Let me answer that.
There were originally eight funders
mentioned. One of the
funders realized what he was funding, came back, and said, “I’m so
appalled and shocked. I
thought they were doing national security work.
I had no idea what their real ideology was.
Please take this as my pledge to remove $1.1 million from the
Islamophobia industry.” You can applaud that. [APPLAUSE] I can't
name this funder, but this was a Jewish-American funder.
Okay.
Number two, a board member from another group
that was listed called us up and said he loved hearing about this
report. He said, “Man, I
hate David Horowitz and the other people mentioned.
Please take my name away from this.”
I said, “Look. We
followed the money trail.
It went to your organization.
You’re on the board,” and then he paused and he said, “It’s
my crazy, right-wing aunt.”
So even within some of these organizations,
it’s important to know that there’s discord, okay?
There is discord.
Also, we know that the Bradley Foundation pulled out of Gaffney’s
Center for Security Policy in 2012, which we think was a direct
result of Fear, Inc.
Another group, Russell Berrie Foundation, has been blasted
for its funding of Steve Emerson, and I know for a fact it has
caused tremendous dialogue and debate and discord within this
organization as well.
Two former high ranking government officials, one a senior adviser
to President Obama and another Republican adviser to the Bush
administration, both told me they hand delivered
Fear, Inc. to people
in the White House.
Specifically, the Obama adviser said it was the only think tank
piece he ever saw brought into the White House.
Most think tank reports, as you know, die a lonely, miserable
death.
The other lesson is the use of grassroots
groups and social media communities.
We deliberately strategized for this to go outside the
academic and Capitol Hill Beltway.
That was a major reason for its success.
In the second question I’ll answer, I’ll give you exactly why
and how we did that.
Finally, connect the dots in plain English.
There is no need to use highfalutin’, academic geek speak
that no one cares to read or understand.
Make it smart.
Make it digestible. Use
infographics. Make it
easy for people to understand.
Final point, and the reason I think it was
successful, is we sought alliances.
We sought alliances from nontraditional players.
We actually worked beforehand with Republicans who were very
high ranking, who were disgusted at the time by this extremism that
had crept in and now has taken over their party.
Getting multiple messengers worked.
Get multiple messengers to carry your water.
Oftentimes, this is my own critique, we work in our silos or
are paralyzed by an absolutist litmus test that creates certain echo
chambers and bubbles in isolated cocoons that ultimately limit our
effectiveness.
Question number two: funding from opaque
donor advised funds, Jewish federations and large individual donors
always greatly outnumber “the right-wing” funders identified in
Fear, Inc. While “right-wing foundations no longer seem to be
significant sources of revenue, do you think the Islamophobia
outfits will ever lose their far more important backers?”
So for the purposes of today’s conversation,
there are many ideologies, interests and footprints in the modern
American Islamophobia industry.
A large footprint, sadly, and I say this with sadness,
belongs to Jewish American groups.
I said this in front of Jewish Americans.
The Israeli lobby is not monolithic, neither is American
Jewry. In fact, most
American Jews would be horrified by these politics, but a rather
small, but very influential, wealthy, and very committed portion,
nonetheless still fund and support these endeavors.
Why? I think
these two quotes from Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum-you guys
all know him, shaking your head-are very illuminating. Here’s a
quote from a 1990 [issue of]
National Review.
“Western European societies are unprepared for the massive
immigration of brown-skinned people, cooking strange foods, and
maintaining different standards of hygiene.
All,”—can’t even make this shit up—“All
immigrants bring exotic
customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than
most.”
A 2001 speech to the American Jewish
Congress: “The increased stature and affluence and enfranchisement
of American Muslims will present true dangers to American Jews.”
It’s a zero-sum mindset for some of these
people, where the rise of Muslims, and I would say Arabs, and those
who look Muslim-y, is somehow directly tied to the marginalization
of Jewish Americans and somehow a direct threat to Israel, even
though American Jews and Israel are not always, as you know,
completely connected.
All for nothing, zero-sum, for sake of national security, for sake
of supporting counter-jihad, for sake of Israeli security, for sake of fighting
“existential” threats, we must marginalize, limit, humiliate-and for
some, eradicate—this violent horde called Muslims or Arabs or the
Muslim-ys.
Even the moderate Muslim cannot be trusted,
because the moderate Muslim is doing something called
Taqiyya.
Be honest, who here knows what
Taqiyya is? Very
few. If you ask most
Muslims-I’ve done this, I’ve gone to Muslim majority countries-I
say, “What’s Taqiyya?”
Most people don’t raise their hand.
They think it’s a new taco released by Taco Bell.
Taqiyya sounds delicious.
Okay. But
Taqiyya was misdefined by Frank Gaffney in that 2010 report, “Shariah:
Threat to America,” as religiously mandated lying, specifically
saying that even a peaceful moderate Muslim—we’re not against all
Muslims, only the radical Muslims later on—but do you know that all
Muslims do Taqiyya
and they hide their true agenda?
What’s their true agenda?
A violent militant
jihad to impose a totalitarian ideology of Islam and
implement shariah,
which they misdefined in a way which was unrecognizable to any
Muslim as a military, political, legal doctrine that seeks to
supplant the Constitution and make every non-Muslim submit under the
sword. Are you guys
still with me?
Some rationalize funding the Islamophobia
network as helping the Luca Brasis, right?
That’s a great Godfather reference-Google it.
The people who are willing to do the dirty work, this is a
game that’s played in the sewers, we don’t want to do it, but it’s
still an existential threat.
So, we’re going to empower the Luca Brasi hitman to do the
dirty work for us, for security and for defense.
An example is Nina Rosenwald of the Rosenwald Family Fund,
heiress to the Sears Roebuck wealth, whose father actually used his
money to help Jewish refugees.
She, however, who is an heiress and a socialite in New York,
uses the money to oppress and demonize Muslims through institutions
like Gatestone Institution and funding to the Islamophobia industry.
AIPAC giving $60,000 to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security
Policy after that was outed as a hate-mongering group by the
Southern Poverty Law Center, and even marginalized by the
Republicans. We also saw
the Israeli ambassador accept an award just a few months ago from
Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.
Jewish groups are still funding Pamela Geller, and even the
ADL, which knows better, relied on Steve Emerson, who was
discredited, to smear Keith Ellison just a few months ago.
This has also gone international, and if I
have one thing to say, if anyone has money, I’ve been begging people
to do the sequel to Fear,
Inc.-the transatlantic connections.
Finally, finally, finally this month, people made the
financial connections in mainstream papers-New
York Times-between the Islamophobia industry and what’s been
happening in Netherlands and France and Belgium.
You guys have been following the rise of the far right, the
death march of white supremacy.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party of the
Netherlands, who just lost in the Dutch elections-yay-who believes
we’re at war with Islam, wants to ban Qur’an, wants to ban the
mosques, and the Dutch court found him guilty of inciting
discrimination.
Nonetheless, David Horowitz, mentioned in the American Islamophobia
industry, contributed nearly $150,000 to Mr. Wilder’s party for over
two years, of which nearly $120,000 came in 2015, making it the
largest individual contribution in the Dutch political system that
year. Wilders is “a
hero” and a “Paul Revere” of Europe to David Horowitz.
Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum has also supported
Geert Wilders’ legal fees.
Congressman Steve Israel-excuse me, Steve
King of Indiana—said-I didn’t mean to say that, totally didn’t mean
to say that. Steve King.
Steve King tweeted out recently, “Wilders understands that culture
and demographics are our destiny.
We can't restore our civilization with somebody else’s
babies.” Geert Wilders
lived in Israel for two years, has visited the country 40 times in
the past 25 years. In
2009, he told an audience during a report that, “We in the West are
all Israel,” and he has also said that Israel is the West’s first
line of defense against what he perceives to be the threat posed by
Islam. The good news is,
most American Jews are repulsed by this.
But the far right is doubling down, especially in the age of
Trump, and this is happening across Europe.
Question three in two minutes, I’ll do it.
Why did AIPAC hit back so hard against CAP?
Why did CAP scrub follow-up reports of Israel funding sources
from its website? What
do you make of it?
So, I’ll share it for the first time.
I can only speculate.
While writing Fear Inc., I can tell you there was a strange pushback within
CAP. For example, I know
that CAP had a budget to do an all-out press breakfast, something
just like this. And by
the way, everyone was paid, and there was money left over in the
budget. Are you guys
still with me? Okay.
But-and by the way, it was supposed to be originally a
25-page report, and when I started my research I told them a great
“Jaws” quote, “We are going to need a bigger boat.”
After all that, we still had money left over.
I was told by someone senior in CAP the week
the report was about to be released that they were going to bury the
report on that Friday on a afternoon caller, right before the storm
was about to hit in DC.
I was literally told, “Wajahat, if you don’t use your networks to
push this out, I fear it might just die.”
So then I became a marketing outreach guy in addition to
researcher-writer, and I used all my grassroots connections, all the
NGOs, the think tanks, the leaders in the different communities.
I used Facebook and Twitter.
I gave people a heads up: it’s coming.
I used the online community, blogs, and I also authored an
op-ed with The Guardian,
and a few writers did as well.
It came out. It
triggered. It went
viral. Okay?
It took on a life of its own.
Eli Clifton, co-author, and I had tremendous
pushback with including MEMRI in the report, which we thought was a
slam dunk. MEMRI, if you
don’t know, is the Middle East Media and Research Institute, a
Middle Eastern press monitoring agency created by former members of
the Israel Defense Forces that supplies translations relied upon by
many members of the Islamophobia network.
We traced it.
That includes Spencer, Pipes, Gaffney, ACT! For America. We found it
very strange that we had to prove that it needed to be included even
though we found the direct quotes. Around that same time MEMRI had
received State Department funding.
Nobody was fired.
All of us who worked on
Fear, Inc. found out that we could no longer work on Islamophobia
or broader Mideast-related topics if we chose to stay there.
There was self-censorship.
AIPAC proxies, such as former communication
director Josh Block, had ties to senior figures at CAP and, we
believe, were able to influence them that these were third rail
topics, and we believe at that time they were effective in scaring
CAP’s leadership. But at
the same time, as you remember, Anders Breivik, the white Christian
nationalist in Norway, killed 76 people.
He left behind a 1,500-page manifesto, which directly quoted
nearly every single person mentioned in the Islamophobia report and
shared their ideologies.
Slowly but surely, more and more of this became mainstream, and then
about three to four to five to six months afterwards, CAP started
promoting the piece and owning it.
I am out of time.
I had two more quick questions.
But that’s my time.
I want to respect the time.
If you want me to answer it, I will.
Five minutes?
Grant Smith:
Answer it, and send in your
questions.
Wajahat Ali:
I’ll finish in three minutes.
Four: will there ever again be positions at
mainstream think tanks or news outlets for such work, or should
aspiring investigators wishing to follow in your footsteps look for
other perches? Why are
so few people able to follow?
So this is what I say.
Don’t give up hope.
You really shouldn’t give up hope.
Look. There are
600 people here right now, right?
I think opportunities are now there more than ever,
especially with Donald Trump in the White House, especially with
Steve Bannon as his right-hand person, especially with the fact that
they were so transparent and open about their ideologies and their
connections. They are so
overt with their extremist agenda, you can now just grab and taste
it like, um, Islamophobia tastes disgusting, right?
And so much so that allies who otherwise were on the
sidelines and said, oh, you Muslims and Arabs, you always complain.
As a result of the election of Donald Trump, people are
saying, you guys were on to something.
How can we help?
Case in point are the people who came out
en masse organically
to Dulles, to JFK, to SFO right when the Muslim ban happened and
welcomed visitors to our shore.
That’s something huge.
I was only partially kidding about
Fear, Inc.
Remember, I didit like four and a half years ago, five years
ago, it was like the most miserable professional experience of my
time, took six months of my life.
But Fear, Inc.
is now more relevant than ever, for better and for worse.
Peter Beinart in The
Atlantic did two huge pieces that came out last week which
essentially let out the same cases of
Fear, Inc., right?
Atlantic did
it. Fox did it.
These are now mainstream talking points.
Not just the liberals, not just the progressives, not just
Jack Shaheen. It’s not
just all of us who are Muslim-y, and the Arabis.
It is mainstream international news, especially with the rise
of Le Pen in France, with UKIP, and with Geert Wilders.
So this is something, I think, that people
should take a lot of heed in, and there is an opportunity and
opening here to really play this well strategically, because it’s
all out there, right?
It’s not a conspiracy theory—I wish
it was. And also that
level of journalism, and that level of investigative journalism, as
we are seeing, is very necessary, and there has been a huge spike in
subscriptions and a huge spike in donations when it comes to both
local, state and national newspapers doing this work.
And the good news is these people are being outed. And my
request, again, for the next two, three years, is someone please
fund the research for the transatlantic connection between U.S.
Islamophobes and European Islamophobes.
With the refugee crisis not going away, with the death march
of white nationalism, I am telling you—hint-hint, wink-wink—there
are massive connections.
Do Fear, Inc. 2,
this will be very helpful.
Final question, many are asking, who is
currently backing major Islamophobia campaigns, any updated
insights? I know there
is a new report, new research coming, I can't mention the people who
are doing it. But it’s
still mostly the same nexus of players, but now throw the weight and
the power of the White House, and also the resurgence of radical
right-wing anti-government groups, radical anti-immigrant groups,
and white supremacist groups—who, by the way, not only hate Muslims
and Arabs and those who are Muslim-y, but also African Americans,
Latinos, women and—not surprisingly, but ironically—they are also
very anti-Semitic. This
has become intersectional.
Hate has become intersectional, which was inevitable.
Keep an eye out for the Jewish Communal Fund,
a mainstream philanthropic fund that describes itself as
“co-dedicated to the welfare and security of the Jewish community at
home and abroad.” It’s a
donor-advised fund, meaning donors to the fund deposit money and
receive an immediate federal income tax deduction and the fund
directs the money to eligible 501(c)(3) not-for-profit
organizations. However,
“the board of trustees of the Jewish Communal Fund retains the right
to deny any grant request where the purposes and activities of the
recommended charitable organizations are deemed to be adverse to the
interests of the Jewish community.”
But, with that, they have given funds to Pamela Geller, David
Horowitz Freedom Center, Middle East Forum, Steven Emerson’s
Investigative Project on Terrorism, and Frank Gaffney’s CSP.
The UJA-Federation of New York holds a “controlling financial
interest in JCF.”
So, if you look at their mission statement,
it seems by funding these groups this is somehow in the interest of
the Jewish American community.
And there are reports coming out within Jewish American
groups, I got a report that I think was still—I can’t talk about it,
it’s embargoed. But
there are Jewish Americans in New York who are actually pushing
these communal funds to stop and to divest from these organizations.
Again, it is not mainstream American Jewry.
It’s that same small, wealthy interconnected group that is
unfortunately doubling down in the age of Trump and I would say—and
I’ve said this in front of Jewish organizations—to their detriment.
Last year I was invited to—I was like the
first Muslim invited to a synagogue in Florida, this particular
synagogue—and I warned them then, they’ll first come after Muslims,
they’ll go after undocumented immigrants because they’re the
lowest-hanging fruit, they’ll go after blacks, they’ll go after
Latinos. And that bus and train is never late—they’re going to go
after Jews. And you’re
seeing the rise of anti-Semitism in America, and I think there are
many Jewish allies now who are waking up and realizing we have to
work together against this hate.
I would also keep an eye out on grassroots
groups such as ACT! For America.
Do not underestimate ACT! For America, especially how they
work with local churches in the South and in the Rust Belt.
ACT! For America and megachurches—you need a local strategy
here. Do not
underestimate the power of local pro-active community building,
because they are going to their local councilman saying, “Under
zoning ordinances, we can’t have this mosque.
It’s too loud.
Not enough parking.” So
zoning is being cited now as a pretext to shut down mosques and
churches, and church community members who are not malicious people
with horns on their heads, you know, with tridents and forked
tongues. I went on the
campaign trail and talked to many Trump supporters, but they are
being fed deliberately, peddlers of prejudice.
You have to fight back against that and appeal to people’s
goodwill.
And last thing I’ll finally say is there’s a
great quote of the Prophet Muhammad that “even if you see the day of
judgment coming, plant a seed.”
And many of us think that one of the horsemen of the
apocalypse is a Cheeto-colored man with small fingers.
But plant a seed.
Have hope. I have two
kids. Two American born
Muslim kids, Ibrahim and Nusaiba, and I refuse to tell them that
their legacy will be, “You’ll be a fantastic victim, you’ll always
suffer.” I’ll tell them
that they can throw down and own the American dream and be a
protagonist of the American narrative.
And inshallah,
when they make it, they’ll look back, and lift up all the other
marginalized communities who will also have a stake and a right in
the American dream.
Thank you for your time.
Grant Smith:
Thank you, Wajahat.