By 1. On the series of recent hate crimes in the American-Muslim community:
Linda (@lsarsour): I have had the fortunate and unfortunate experience to work with the families of Chapel Hill during this very difficult time… the reason why, obviously, that I say unfortunate is to see and to have to experience three young people in our community who were killed at the hands of hate. But the reason why I say fortunate is because I was blessed to work with a family that was very faithful, very proud of who they were as American Muslims, and really to teach us patience, perseverance, and resilience, which I think is something we need across the Muslim community.
Oftentimes the trauma that our community experiences is because we haven’t built that resiliency and that cohesiveness. As a community, we haven’t built that self-worth to organize in a way that brings true dignity to our community.
There are 99 excuses for everything that happens to us, except a hate crime can’t be one…Why is it so far-fetched that people don’t believe we are a community that is being targeted? I have no idea why, when someone says “we are a target of hate”, people are like “how can that even be possible”… as if that is not possible.
Margari (@margari_aziza): I feel like, as a community, we have a lot of people struggling with that sense of belonging, the sense of “this is our country”… it’s important that we understand our sense of belonging here, our contribution, because if we let that narrative dictate us, it’s really going to keep us feeling like this isn’t our country, and we don’t have roots here, even though we do. If you look at African Americans, we have been dealing with hate crimes, and that doesn’t make us any less American.
Malik (@themuslimstreet): A message to the Muslim community that this is a temporary condition. Muslims need to understand that this is temporary, and that we will eventually as a community, as a nation, come up out of this hatred.
We do have to acknowledge, though, that this has been going on since 1990 when the US decided to launch their first of many wars on Muslim lands, after the fall of the Soviet Union prior to that… We became the new enemy to feed this industrial military complex. There’s always been a scapegoat, it just happens to be Muslims right now. But understand it is temporary, and we must exert our selfworth. And that will demonstrate, not only to us internally as Muslims, but also to the external people in America, who we are, and we are a proud people.