Former Director of CIA, former commander of NATO forces, and one time hopeful for the position of Secretary of State under Donald Trump, General David Petraeus, came visiting our workplace about a couple of months ago, before the inauguration of Mr. Trump. When asked on word making rounds that he was being considered for the foreign office position, the general said that he had been interviewed for the job. However, he said when Mr. Trump had asked him what the general thought about the idea of building the wall on the border, “I said to Mr. Trump: sure, President Elect, we definitely need a wall on the border. If not to stop Mexicans from crossing in, then at least to prevent American people from leaving the country, as the immigration trend for the last three years indicates.”
Then he looked at us and asked “now you tell me how much chance I stand for the position?”
Long before Trumps came to live in the White House, and long before the crown jewels of Manhattan, the twin towers of The World Trade Center, once tallest buildings in the world came tumbling down, I had the first taste of racial prejudices.
Driving from Cleveland to Detroit very late one extremely cold winter night, I took a detour from the highway to a little village in Ohio to fill up the car tank. After filling the tank, I asked the night clerk about the restroom. The solitary gas station of the village did not have a restroom and the night clerk told me to go to the motel across the road. As I emerged after using the restroom in the motel, I saw one policeman, his one hand on his gun, looking towards the restroom. As soon as he saw me coming out, he beckoned me to him. The cop asked me what I was doing at this late hour there. I told him that I was there to use the restroom. He asked for my ID. I could have given him my driver’s license but for some reason I don’t remember now, I handed him my passport instead. The cop had a look at the passport. “Izzlamik Republic of Pakistan” he read out loud. Then returning my passport, he turned to the front desk clerk and said “They hate us. Don’t they?” This was 1991. Ten years before 9/11.
But this is only one side of the picture. Immediately after Donald Trump announced his candidacy, lambasted immigrants, talked about creating a Muslims registry and vowed to build the wall on the Mexican/USA border, one of my superiors, a white American Christian, walked into my office. After closing the door of the office behind him, he said “They say don’t talk about three things at your workplace: sex, religion and politics. I am here to talk to you about two of them. Do you know what they are?”
“Religion and politics?” I said, having already read about Mr. Trump’s proclamations that morning. “That’s right. I am here to talk to you about religion and politics” he said. Then he said “I want to tell you that you don’t need to worry about anything. This is USA and he is not going to get beyond his first primary. He stands no chance at all.”
My friend was proven wrong. Donald Trump got way beyond primaries. Russian connection or no Russian connection, he won the White House. Not through the popular vote, though. Popular vote still went to Hillary Clinton. Majority of the American people, like my friend, did not vote for Mr. Trump or whatever he stands for.
But, after the election we do see a noticeable hike in the hate crime, resulting in the sense of insecurity in the Muslim community. And, they are not alone to feel threatened. Many of the Jewish temples and graveyards have been desecrated in the last couple of months. I was listening to NPR today and was not at all surprised to know that in the last two months, Jewish community Centers all over the country have received more than a hundred threats. Recently, when a Jewish graveyard got desecrated, Muslims raised money to rebuild it.
Did Donald Trump turn American people xenophobic? Not really. As described in the example of the Policeman above, all he has done is scratch the surface underneath which centuries old prejudices lay dormant to be woken up. He has given voice to the biases waiting in the hearts and minds of white supremacists. Donald Trump did not invent Ku Klux Klan. Only that they could not dare to come out in the open before.
Luckily, though, more and more signs transpire every day to indicate that they are not in the majority. More and more people who feel that American dream is under threat due to Mr. Trump’s policies and proclamations are coming out to protect it. For example, when a mosque was burned down in Victoria, Texas, the people living in the area, a vast majority of whom are white Christian and Jews, collected around one million dollars to rebuild the masjid. Meanwhile, Jewish people handed over the keys to their synagogue to Muslims to use it for prayers!
Ports of entry to USA were flocked by American Christians and Jews as well as Muslims the moment the President of the country announced his infamous Travel Ban, with lawyers wielding placards offering their services pro bono to anyone harassed by the immigration authority. There are “I am a Muslim today” rallies all over the country every day, thronged by non-Muslims.
Institutions in this country are strong enough to frustrate any move, even by the President of the country, to play illegally. Courts are working courageously to protect civil rights. Press, not totally independent, tries to show its colors sometimes, though. Not only was Gen Michael Flynn, the National Security Advisor, forced to step down when his links to Russians were revealed, Jeff Sessions, another of the Trump henchmen, is most probably on the way out for the same reason.
However suffocating the current atmosphere may be, like they say, this too shall pass. The tenure of Trump will end in four, at the most eight, years. Americans being a democratic nation will get over with this in no time. The rise in the white radicalism is a reason to be concerned about. To me, however, as a Muslim, the more worrying is another kind of extremism gaining currency amongst Muslims living even in the so called civilized countries: patronage of fanaticism.
The other day an organization of Pakistanis in Pennsylvania announced on social media the plan to celebrate ‘urs’ of Mumtaz Qadri, a condemned murderer, who was hanged to death for assassinating in cold blood a man whose life he was entrusted to safeguard! The advertisement called upon Muslims to attend in large numbers! Never heard of a similar thing happening in this country before.
The writer is an independent political analyst based in the USA