American Muslims Feel The Heat

After San Bernardino, after Donald’s Trump call for a ban on Muslims entering the country, we talk with Muslim Americans about life, fear and politics in the USA.

This is not an easy moment to be Muslim in America, trying to work and raise kids and get along. Within the drumbeat of mass shootings in this country – and there are many, by Christians and more – a killing by Muslims draws a fierce focus and, in the week since San Bernadino, calls for stark discrimination. Think Donald Trump. And still, there are millions of American Muslims getting up every day to live ordinary, admirable American lives, in times that feel anything but ordinary. This hour On Point, we’ve invited in a roundtable of American Muslims to look at the country and our challenges, their challenges, now.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Rizwan Jaka, chairman of the board of trustees at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society Mosque in Sterling, Virginia.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. (@HussamA)

Kameelah Mu'Min Rashad, Muslim Chaplain at the University of Pennsylvania. Founder of Muslim Wellness Foundation, Inc. (@kameelahrashad)

New York Times: Among Muslims in Donald Trump’s Old Queens Neighborhood, Shock and Dismay — "Donald, come home. That was the message on Monday night in Queens, as two dozen men finished their prayers in a basement mosque beneath a discount store on Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, just a block away from where Donald J. Trump grew up."

NPR News: Some Muslim Americans Irritated By Obama's Call For Them To 'Root Out' Extremism — "President Obama's request that Muslim Americans help 'root out' and confront extremist ideology in their communities is getting mixed reactions. Muslim leaders say they want to help, but some are not happy that they are being singled out."

Vox: It's not just Trump: Islamophobia in America is spiraling out of control — "The threat of violence often has the same theatrical point as violence itself: to terrify and intimidate, to inflict psychological suffering on the targeted group in the form of fear and alienation, to force that targeted group to live a little bit less in the open and more in the shadows. Obviously, actual attacks on Muslims are worse than implicit or explicit threats — and, make no mistake, when militias stand outside an Islamic center, even if they have no intention of using violence, they are conveying a threat — but they serve the same goal of inflicting suffering on Muslims meant to drive them into the shadows or out of public society altogether."