“Attack ISIS, Not Linda Sarsour”

by with No Comment FeaturedGen Z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0tr0CFik2k&feature=youtu.be

Over the weekend, Linda Sarsour, the Palestinian Muslim-American organizer of the women’s march, gave a speech in which she used the word ‘Jihad’. And the Internet exploded.

Right-wing media outlets seized the opportunity to make it seem as if her speech was proof of Muslim-Americans attempting to foment ‘Jihad’ against the US and Donald Trump. Even prominent liberal figures attempted to distance themselves from Linda. However, anyone who took the time to actually read the text or listen to her speech could clearly see that her use of the word ‘Jihad’ was being completely and sometimes purposely misconstrued. It is clear that what she was talking about had nothing to do with the use of violence. She was giving a speech about speaking truth to power.

This type of reaction to the simple use of a word is absolutely ridiculous and blatantly Islamophobia. Such a reaction is essentially saying that Muslims cannot use a certain term in their religion because it makes people uncomfortable. Some pundits defended Sarsour; yet, they still criticized her word choice.

There are two important points that need to be made. First, she was quoting a hadith- a prophetic saying. So those asking her to “think about her word choice” are essentially asking her to change the wording of her religion to suit the needs of others. Second, Western analysts are continuously saying that moderate Muslims should “take back Islam” from extremists. I’m not even sure what that means, because when a moderate Muslim who is an outspoken civil rights activist like Linda uses the word ‘Jihad’, those same analysts turn against her.

Saying Muslims should stay away from words like ‘Jihad’ is to suggest that Muslims should stay away from all controversial topics. The word ‘Jihad’ means to struggle and is most often used to denote an internal moral struggle. It’s a word that has been appropriated by extremists and bigots. It’s also important to note that the only group that interprets the word ‘Jihad’ to exclusively mean terrorism is ISIS and their affiliates. That does not mean its meaning has changed nor does it mean that Muslims should shy away from using the word. Any argument to the contrary plays right into the hands of bigots and extremists, and further perpetuates Islamophobia.

 

Mainstream Media or “Fake News”?

by with One Comment CultureMediaPolitics

A few weeks ago, Stephen Colbert was up in arms over the President’s dismissal of CBS anchor John Dickerson – whom the President referred to as “Fake News” and then dismissed entirely when Dickerson questioned the president’s source for claims that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

To a lot of people on the coasts, this seems laughable and shocking that a president could be so dismissive of mainstream media while making completely unfounded claims of his own.  Nonetheless, it resonates with millions of people throughout most of the Midwest (an area bereft of major broadcast journalists).

Donald Trump definitely has made heavy use of “alternative facts”, but the backlash the mainstream media has used to counter (perhaps in defense of their own credibility) has only served to give weight to his assertions.  A look at the CNN homepage for the past two months yields a full transcript of SNL’s best digs on the White House- despite no affiliation between CNN and SNL parent NBC.  I counted three articles a few weekends ago that discussed anecdotal information that various Republican congressmen didn’t know before sending the partial repeal of Obamacare to the Senate this week, and yet there wasn’t an article outlining the bill’s full content in even terms.  The closest two articles to an overview of the bill on CNN as I wrote this were “Pre Existing Conditions: Pregnancy, Sleep Apnea Could Make You Pay More” and “Here’s a (Partial) List of All the Pre-Existing Conditions the GOP Bill May Not Cover”.  There’s no real up front mention of savings, what’s protected, or that this is a starter version of the bill sent to the Senate.  There isn’t much of an overview at all.  I wonder how any independent person could come to any sort of conclusion at all about the healthcare bill from reading CNN, or even understand fully what it is (rather than a few anecdotal things that it isn’t).

One of the largest reasons the President’s “Fake News” message resonated so well as President Elect was the very surprise that he had won the election at all.  For many in the Midwest, talking to their neighbors and friends, it seemed clear Donald Trump was doing well in their own polls of peers.  Many in the Midwest looked around and could see clearly that he was winning in their district weeks ahead of the election despite poll numbers on major news networks showing different outcomes- particularly in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.  The fact that the polls misrepresented the actual vote gave many people grounds to distrust many of the major news networks as making any effort to present balanced facts – or even facts at all.

That may well have been bad polling.  In any regard, it’s given the President an opportunity to confuse the American people as to where to look for the truth, and it does appear that many of the networks – perhaps through attacking the President in response to criticism aimed at the networks – have played fully into his hands.  

165 days are over, but there are 1,295 more to go.  The public probably would appreciate journalism that starts with facts and overviews.  When everyone is yelling and pointing fingers, everyone is just noise, and if that’s how the next few years go- it’ll be the media and not the White House who will lose this war of words.

Trump’s “New” Cuba Policy

by with No Comment Uncategorized

During a speech given in Miami’s Little Havana” on Friday, June 16th, 2017, President Donald Trump criticized his predecessor’s Cuba policy, saying it allowed the Castro regime to benefit from increased tourism. “Effectively immediately,” Trump said, “I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba.”

Technically, this is not the case. The real policy changes Trump is going to implement are less significant than he led everyone to believe they would be. Many of the Obama administration’s policy will remain in place. Under the new policy – Americans will no longer have the ability to plan their own private, individual “educational” trips to Cuba, and those who go as part of authorized educational group tours will be subject to stricter rules and guidelines. American companies and citizens will also be banned from doing business with companies controlled by the Cuban military or its intelligence or security services. But the relaxed rules that made it easier for US companies to do business in Cuba will stay in place. Cruises and direct flights between the US and Cuba will still be allowed, and Cuban Americans will still be able to travel freely to the island and send money to relatives there.  

These actions come at an inopportune time because, towards the end of his tenure, President Obama directed his attention on the thawing of relations between the two cold war enemies. Using his executive authority, Obama relaxed some of the trade and travel restrictions in the longstanding US economic embargo on the Cuban nation. In July 2016 – The U.S. officially restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and reopened its embassy in Havana. All of which makes Trump new initiative frustrating for growing businesses in Cuba, and travelers alike. In November, then-president-elect Trump tweeted that he would “terminate” the deal unless Cuba agreed to “make a better” one, but instead of terminating the deal, it seems that Trump is content with leaving most of the important policies in place.

So why do all this?

The main reason Trump cites for opposing the Obama Administration’s deal is that it didn’t go far enough in the right direction — Trump has so far shown little commitment to promoting such values elsewhere, especially if doing so comes at the expense of US economic interests. Part of the reason Trump’s new policy doesn’t go far enough as his rhetoric suggests is that it has to do with US economic interests. Consider the direct flights between the US and Cuba, as John Kavulich, the president of the US-Cuba trade and economic council mentioned back in November 2016. The administration would face major opposition, which would include lawsuits from the airline industry if Trump were to do terminate the deal. Why, because airlines have already made large financial investments in “good faith” based on the new regulations from the Obama administration.  And that’s just the airlines! A number of tourism and travel companies such as Airbnb, Carnival Cruise Line, and Starwood Hotels have also taken advantage of the Obama administration’s relaxed restrictions to expand into Cuba, hoping to cash in on what will become a hot new tourist haven. Airbnb alone (Cuba to Trump: US in no ‘condition to lecture us’ on human rights), over the past two years has been able to bring 40 million dollars back to the Cuban people who have rented out their homes for travelers.

Hilariously, this somewhat tougher stance with Cuba won’t get Trump the response he’s looking for. After all, 50 years of tough US policies toward Cuba failed to achieve the desired political, social, and economic reforms inside the island nation. The idea of what Trump wants and desires are totally out of par with what Americans want and desire. The world is continually evolving and changing, which makes decisions such as this all the more frustrating because of the impact it has on our countries relationships with our neighbors as well as with our ability to travel freely and learn from other cultures. 

Ideas Make This Country Great

by with 2 Comments Diversity & InclusionFeaturedGen Z

As a Muslim-American, I spend a decent amount of time thinking about patriotism. This has become increasingly so as some far right politicians and “conservative media outlets” seem to be intent on suggesting that my citizenship and my religion are incompatible. So what does it mean to be a patriot? Does it mean blind support of everything the United States does? Does it mean that anything the government does, especially anything it does abroad, I have to support? Does not doing so make me unpatriotic?

My answer to all the above is no. American patriotism extends far past borders, political affiliations, and current administrations. It has nothing to do with any specific policy objective, and it has even less to do with politics. It is not nationalism. It is idealism.

Ideas make this country great. Concepts like diversity and pluralism. Values like freedom and liberty. The rights guaranteed to us in the constitution. Being a patriot means standing by these values; no matter the circumstance, no matter the time period, and regardless of what may be politically expedient.

Patriotism has nothing to do with unconditional support of the government. In fact, I would argue that unconditional support of anything is toxic, and unconditional support of the government is almost certainly unpatriotic. When the NSA violates the constitutional right to privacy and the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches by conducting warrantless domestic surveillance it is unpatriotic to be unopposed. Thinly veiled attempts at retroactive justification by appealing to issues of National Security aren’t patriotic. They’re hypocritical and contrary to the ideals that this country was founded on. As Benjamin Franklin famously wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

To make this more contemporaneous, when Donald Trump proposes a completely un-American Muslim Ban we can’t allow silence to take the guise of patriotism. Silence is not patriotism. Unconditional support is not patriotism. Standing up for American values is patriotism, regardless of who is in office and what their policies entail.

Trump or Comey, Who’s More Credible?

by with No Comment FeaturedPolitics

Comey’s testimony a few weeks ago didn’t necessarily open any new lines of questions or give any new answers that were all that different than what I think most people knew or assumed before- that James Comey was fired as FBI director for some combination of lack of loyalty to the President, or because the President simply wanted to devote less time to the Russia investigation (which then could be because it could lead to him, or because for this President, he feels a duty to defend his team members loyally even if they are wrong).

 The immediate conversation is about whether the President did or did not lie, whether Comey did or did not lie, multiple layers of unprovable statements and their intents, and some statements and questions about tapes (which both parties refer to but act as though they don’t have).  There’s no apparent smoking gun- at least not one that rises to a level of taking legal action against the President that wasn’t there before.  My immediate reflection is taking two individuals and contrasting their service and what that means for the direction of the country.

 Comey has been repeatedly described as a “showboater” and “grandstander”, and there may have been some cause for that.  A cynic’s view could be that he has a high opinion of himself.  Another could be that he has a high opinion of his ideals- or rather that he is uncompromising.   If that makes him a “nut job” that he has ideals that he values more than himself, that probably isn’t that much different than many of the best career civil servants.  His testimony struck the tone of someone who feels as though his credibility has been called into question, and wished to come off first and foremost as honest and doing his best in a bad situation.  There are plenty of people on both sides of the aisles who question his judgments and who’ve said that he had no business making his statements publicly in many of his most famous exchanges- each of which would more traditionally have been made by the Attorney General (a role that he also has a clear concept of having served as Deputy and Acting Attorney General), but in both cases where both a Democratic and Republican Attorney General had decided to recuse themselves.  One could argue that his job was made much harder by two Attorney Generals who had become part of the investigations they were put in place to prosecute.

 I am struck by the President’s complete inability to understand or manage such people in public service.  In his past career, being the leader meant he was the guy writing the checks, and people listened or he stopped writing the checks.  People wanted the checks, because that’s why they were there- for the paycheck, and if there was a bigger one out there, they might go for that instead.  The President puts a premium on loyalty.  Perhaps that’s because in business, it’s his against others’ business, or market forces or other constituents- and within the spectrum of his business, it is fine to have common ground and focus first on your own team (within the limits of the law).

But being President is different.  Of the next 50 job opportunities Director Comey will have, it’s quite possible that FBI director pays the least, and that’s probably true of 95% of all Senate-confirmed appointees.  They serve at the pleasure of the President, but most are there not out of a sense of personal loyalty to him, but because they believe his administration has values similar enough to their own that within it they can provide a level of service that they value more than the other job opportunities they forgo.  And when put to the test and forced to pick between any one man and their ideals, they very often pick their ideals.  So what I was most struck by during this testimony is how odd it was that the President thought firing Director Comey (or mentioning to him that he would like those investigations to away) would have any positive impact on helping the President’s agenda.  It showed me a fundamental lack of understanding as to why all public servants seek and keep their offices in the first place- and that made me wonder (as I have in the past) why he is also serving.  Why does personal loyalty matter if all are working in selfless service to the nation?  The media will spend the next few weeks on “gotchas” that aren’t “gotchas”.  What I would rather focus on are how the President and members of all sides of Congress choose with their words and actions where they place their own loyalty- to Americans, to their parties, or to their own factions?  What I saw from Director Comey was a guy that doesn’t always get it right, and he’s struggling with that.  I also saw a number of Senators looking for self-interested quote opportunities, and a President who still doesn’t even seem to understand what motivates the leaders of his own organization.

Kushner’s Miserable Peace Prospects

by with No Comment FeaturedGen ZPolitics

Last week I saw a headline that read “Kushner’s First Foray into MidEast Peace Reveals Challenges Ahead.” Wow. Breaking News: Trump’s son-In-Law finds out Middle East peace is hard. What a shocker.

It continues to amaze me that Jared Kushner, the real estate-heir whose only real qualifications are being born into the right family and marrying well, has such an immense policy portfolio. In fact, Jared Kushner is responsible for so much of the Trump Administration’s agenda that CNN has jokingly referred to him as “Trump’s Secretary of Everything.” When you consider all the policy areas that Mr. Kushner is probably the least equipped to handle, foreign policy is definitely in the top two (healthcare reform is arguably the other as it increasingly seems that no one in the Trump administration understands or cares how the American healthcare system works). Yet, somehow with no diplomatic experience, no background in the region’s complicated political history, and no evidence that he has a substantive grasp of geopolitics, the 36-year-old is one of the Administration’s defacto lead diplomats and is somehow in charge of brokering Middle East Peace.  (And he’s the subject of the ever-widening federal investigation, but that’s a topic for another piece.)

The headline quoted above might actually be a little generous to Kushner. His trip to the Middle East to meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and advisors didn’t just reveal challenges. It seems to have failed miserably. Kushner met with Abbas in Ramallah as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to jumpstart peace negotiations that have been stalled since the assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014. He then proceeded to accost Abbas for not condemning an attack on Israeli soldiers, and according to Palestinian officials, merely listed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s demands “and acted like Netanyahu’s advisors instead of a fair arbiter.”

“Greatly disappointed”, “tense”, and “furious” are just some of the buzzwords appearing in Arab and Israeli newspapers regarding the meeting. If the Trump Administration can’t get both sides to see them as a neutral party then peace talks are DOA. Perhaps putting someone with actual experience and knowledge of the conflict might be a step in the right direction.