US fights back over Islamophobia
More Americans rejecting politicians’ anti-Muslim rhetoric, peace forum told
More and more Americans are rejecting the anti-Muslim rhetoric of populist politicians, a prominent scholar told attendees at a peace forum in Abu Dhabi yesterday.
Dr James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said that president Donald Trump has been stoking anti-Muslim sentiments, “but here is the good news, the reaction to Trump and his agenda has had a backlash effect”.
Speaking on the second day of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies conference, Dr Zogby said: “The good news is that we are winning the political battle here, certainly we’ve got a problem with the rhetoric coming from some, but more and more Americans are rejecting it.”
He pointed to a recent poll that found more than 50 per cent of Americans had a favourable attitude towards Arab Americans and Arab Muslims.
“And Republicans have recoiled against the president’s Muslims’ ban,” he said.
Dr Catherine Orsborn, director of Shoulder to Shoulder in the US – a national campaign of interfaith organisations dedicated to ending anti-Muslim bigotry in the US – reinforced the point. “Many policies are polished up as not Islamophobic when they actually are, but when people see hate for what it is they don’t want it,” she said.
“One of the things we see working is that Americans are committed to this idea of fairness, so when we are all standing together and making arguments about fairness of treatment, we see this going a long way,” she said.
Participants also discussed anti-Muslim sentiment and examples of best practice to tackle the issue around the world.
Hamza Yusuf Hanson, a renowned American Muslim scholar and co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkley, California, saidd similar progress in the US and Europe. “During the mid-centuries in Europe they had the worst attitudes towards Muslims. Now we have thousands of mosques in the US and Europe, despite [the attitudes of] some people in these countries.
“We are in an extraordinary time when we talk about Islam and peace, a lot of people see it as the opposite,” he said, but he stressed that Islam was a religion of peace, uniting Arab tribes during a time of war.
Dr Zogby said that while hate crimes against Muslims increased after the 9/11 attacks, many Arab and Muslim Americans have continued to advance their careers in US government agencies.
At an inter-agency meeting, during the Obama administration, he said “a third of those representatives from government agencies were Arab American or American Muslims”.
“And I think this is the kind of progress that we made, when we started this work we did not have anybody in our community [in those positions] and they are now.”