On the anniversary of executive order 9066, which called for the internment of Japanese Americans, signed by Roosevelt in 1942, thousands mobilized in solidarity with Muslim Americans, and in opposition to the Trump administration’s executive order targeting Muslim immigrants. The event, which carried the slogan ‘I Am Muslim, Too’, was organized, in part, by former Trump friend Russell Simmons, and included an extensive list of civil rights advocates, celebrities, religious figures, and politicians
New York governor Andrew Cuomo was one of many political figures to throw support behind the event. Cuomo, who refused to “second guess” the NYPD’s pervasive infiltration and surveillance of Muslim American communities, shared a video on Twitter of himself delivering a speech from January during Family Planning Advocates Day of Action wherein he stood behind a pulpit and declared “I am Muslim, too”. “We will ensure New York remains a beacon of hope and opportunity and will work to protect the rights of those seeking refuge in our state,” Cuomo belted.
Standing in Times Square, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told an energetic crowd that “an attack on anybody’s faith is an attack on all people of faith”—a few years ago, de Blasio was singing the-police commissioner Raymond Kelly’s praises when the first wave of stories revealing the extent of the department’s surveillance program were published by the Associated Press. When Muslims impacted by these covert spying operations sued the city of New York, de Blasio’s administration responded by thoroughly defending the practice of spying on Muslim Americans. And still, he stood amongst New Yorkers at the ‘I Am Muslim, Too’ rally and said just that, that he is Muslim, too.
Among the many placards and homemade signs carried by demonstrators, there was one poster that was seemingly the most popular—the image of a woman wearing a headscarf with a US flag design. The poster, which was illustrated nearly a decade ago by Shepard Fairey based on a photograph of Munira Ahmed, who does not wear the hijab, has been used by patriotic Trump resistors in order to communicate one fundamental point, that Muslim-Americans are a part of the so-called American Dream.
The adoption of the American flag as a symbol of progressive desires is an appeal to nationalism that is steeped in anti-immigrant history. It is also reckless language that alienates those not committed to being proud of being Americans. The combination of claiming to be Muslim for the sake of unity, when one isn’t, and nationalism produces a toxic brand that undermines genuine solidarity efforts. Any attempt to use patriotism to undermine restrictive and inhumane immigration legislation only works to make patriotism palatable. This in turn allows detractors to use it as a litmus test for someone’s humanity, and specifically whether or not they deserve our empathy.
As touching as it may be to claim, even in a sense of solidarity, that you are Muslim, if you aren’t, then you aren’t. You will not face the same heavy-handed consequences most often delivered by the state, its representatives. Government programs have likely never been built around “mapping” your communities, or infiltrating houses of worship and community centers due specifically to their Muslim affiliation. And believe it or not, vowing to “register as Muslim” should Trump’s administration create a Muslim database is not resistance but pure naïveté, at best. You don’t get to claim empty slogans for the sake of fleeting camaraderie because they make you feel good while also arguing that systematic change is necessary in order to rectify injustice. You don’t need to be Muslim to express solidarity, nor does resistance demand any attachment to nationalist mythology which turns Muslims into commodities only worth defending should they express the right amount of patriotism. By all means, demonstrate your support, but at least question the manner in which this support is expressed.
Makes sense. And that’s why despite my belief in and support for the universal and consistent application of justice, accountability and equality, I am not Muslim, Jewish, Charlie or a wild party (rah, rah, olé!).
You don’t have to be patriotic. Regardless, I AM Muslim too, like it or not. :-)
These brave Oscar winners showing shameless Congress people what standing up to an occupier should be like. Good for them. No swimming naked in the Dead Sea here.
A Tourism Ministry public relations gimmick to bring Hollywood stars to Israel has bombed, with not a single one of the 26 Oscar nominees awarded free trips to Israel last year actually making the trip. Now, the BDS movement is taking credit for the failure.
The tour packages, worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece, were given to 26 nominees in the highest-profile Oscar categories, including actors Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Sylvester Stallone and Kate Winslet.
Last February, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement put out an official statement urging recipients not to use the tour packages, charging that by coming to Israel, they would be helping the Israeli government whitewash what BDS terms the crimes of the occupation.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.773274?v=1B67AD3205254D3A6EDDADD240BAF1AD
Aligning yourself with “the Muslims,” even as you fail to oppose these violent interventions and proxy wars in the Mideast that have destroyed many Muslim majority nations, and caused the refugee crisis, is the height of hypocrisy or cluelessness.
“I am a Muslim too” is not meant to be taken literally. It is a form of symbolic expression that has a long history in Western societies. It challenges the authorities to treat the speaker as though he or she were a member of the persecuted group: if you are going to mistreat my fellow citizens in this way — it says — then please treat me the same way, I do not want to be privileged over them.
The author of the article may not be aware of the tradition to which this form of expression belongs. For instance, during the student protests in Paris in 1968, after a government minister blamed “a German Jew” — Daniel Cohn-Bendit — for the trouble, the demonstrators chanted: ‘We are all German Jews’ (in French). Of course they knew they were neither German nor Jewish. A similar form of expression was during the Holocaust, when the Nazis demanded that Jews in Denmark wear the yellow star, the King announced that he would be the first to wear the symbol and many Danes followed his lead.
A recent form of such symbolic identification with the persecuted is the wearing of the keffiyeh by non-Palestinian sympathizers with the Palestinian cause, including some Jews. It does not mean that they imagine or claim that they are Palestinians. Is it objectionable? I think it sends a powerful message that can make others stop and think.