MUSLIM IDENTITY IN THE U. S. CAMPAIGN
AS POLITICAL SPOTLIGHT FOCUSES ON ISLAM LIKE NEVER BEFORE, CITY’S MUSLIMS WATCH WARILY
Growing up, Aliya Khabir never felt like an outsider. She’s a Muslim and an African-American and she wears some religious clothes. But in Philadelphia, home to over 200,000 followers of Islam, most of them black, none of that ever seemed outside the American norm.
“I tell my friends we live in kind of a spoiled environment where it’s not odd to see a Muslim woman driving a ... bus,” she said. “It’s not odd to see the sanitation worker with a quote unquote ‘ Muslim’ beard. It’s not odd to drop your kid off at kindergarten and see that their teacher is Muslim. It’s not a big deal here.”
But in the past several years, Khabir has noticed a change. It’s not extreme in her own life. “Here in Philadelphia the Muslims are very respected,” she said. But online and on TV, and even in the workplace of other Muslims she knows, it’s been there, nonetheless.
In the past two years, Khabir believes, the language many Americans use to speak about Muslims has shifted; it’s become darker and more estranged. Old attitudes, once hidden, have become mainstream. And for that, she blames Donald Trump.
“I see it as something that was always kind of there. But it was covered up,” she said. “It wasn’t politically correct to say ‘ I hate Muslims, let’s send them back to where they come from’ on TV. Now it’s OK to say that. .... Donald Trump made it OK.”
The Democratic National Convention wrapped up here on Thursday. The four- day program culminated with nominee Hillary Clinton’s prime- time speech. But perhaps the most memorable moment of the night came hours earlier, when Khizr Khan, the father of an American soldier killed by a car bomb in Iraq, spoke.
Shaking with emotion, Khan recounted the highlights of his son’s life. “Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son ‘ the best of America,’ he said. “If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America. Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims.”
Later, Khan drew a copy of the U.S. constitution from his jacket and shook it in the air. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” he said, addressing Trump. “You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacri- ficed nothing and no one.”
It was an emotional moment, but not an unusual one in this campaign. Islam has been an ever- present i ssue on t he t rail since Trump emerged as a frontrunner late last year. The Republican nominee has called for a ban on all Muslim i mmigrants coming into the country. He has attacked plans to accept refugees from Syria. And here in Philadelphia, home to one the country’s largest Muslim populations, that focus hasn’t gone unnoticed.
The Philadelphia area hosts more than 70 mosques. Most of the Muslims in the city, more than 80 per cent by some counts, are African-American. But in recent years, new immigrants from the Middle East have shifted that balance somewhat. Speaking this week, some Philadelphia Muslims expressed fears about what a Trump presidency could bring.
“I mean, people have been joking, but joking as a way to deal with the worry and the fear,” said Mariam Durrani. “It’s like, ‘ I guess we’ll have Muslim ID cards’ and ‘ will my friends visit me at the internment camp?’ But it is a real fear.”
Durrani recently finished her PhD in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies Muslim youth in America and such issues as feminism, migration and the media.“I have a seven- year- old daughter who was born in Virginia and has been growing up here and I don’t really know what her world will look like if Trump is president,” she said. “I think people are very concerned, both for the next four years but also for the next 20, 40, 50 years.
“Like, how are things going to change if someone comes into the office who is so volatile and unpredictable and so kind of easily provoked.”
For Sally Baraka, a corporate lawyer who grew up with Egyptian parents in suburban New Jersey, American attitudes toward Islam have actually been improving in recent years. In fact, she’s been heartened by how much of the response to Trump’s rhetoric has been open revulsion. “I’m more concerned about it ( Trump winning) as an American than anything else,” she said.
Khabir is less easily mollified. She’s worried about what the future might hold for her and her family if Trump wins. “I always think about how my mother always said, ‘ everybody needs to have an active passport. You never know when you just have to up and leave,’ ” she said.
“This man has convinced various pockets of the country that barring Syrian refugees who are fleeing for their lives, barring Muslim immigrants, is OK. ... He has convinced them that he is an appropriate candidate, because they keep voting for him. And they nominated him. So yeah, I think about it all the time. I think I’m just hoping and praying that it hasn’t got to that point.”
For Khabir, watching Bernie Sanders supporters equate Clinton with Trump this week has been tough to take. For her, the stakes are too high to think of a protest vote. She supported Sanders initially. But she’s backing Clinton now and hopes other Sanders holdouts begin to do the same.
“What you are doing is literally handing over the election to Trump,” she said. “And those people who are doing that, I don’t think they see the stakes as that high. I don’t think they understand that it is a life- and- death situation for some people.”
If Trump does win, she’s not sure what she’ ll do. “I think a lot of us are paying more attention to, you know, hopefully Canada has some open arms,” she said. “But we are just really hoping that America will stay true to itself, and when people step into those voting booths, will really do what we in Islam say is ‘ Want for your brother what you want for yourself.’ ”