As Trump promises an even “bigger” Muslim ban if he wins, VP Harris welcomes Muslims to her home

This was an Historic event at VP's residence

VP Harris welcomes Muslims to her residence for Eid event on July 11, 2023-photo courtesy of the White House

Last week was both a celebration of how far Muslim Americans have come in terms of political activism and a stark reminder that there are still GOP leaders who will target our community with hate to score political points. 

We saw that play out when Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed Muslim Americans (including myself) on Tuesday to her vice-presidential residence to celebrate the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha. This event--which was coordinated in association with the El-Hibri Foundation,  a philanthropic organization--marked the first time ever that a US vice-president has celebrated an Eid at their residence.

Yet just days before, there was 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump pledging during a rally in Iowa to implement an “even bigger” Muslim travel ban if he wins than he did when he was in the White House.  (Trump as President originally banned people from nine Muslim majority nations but after court challenges the final ban upheld by the GOP controlled Supreme Court applied to five Muslim nations.)

In typical Trump fashion, he ginned up anti-Muslim bigotry while making his pledge of a new travel ban by stating, “We don't want people blowing up our shopping centers. We don't want people blowing up our cities.”  

We obviously have not seen ISIS type attacks like this in the United States but that won’t stand in the way of Trump feeding his bigoted base anti-Muslim red meat. And of course, this is the same Trump who has defended his followers who waged the Jan 6 terrorist attack to overturn the election as being unfairly prosecuted—even pledging that if he wins in 2024 he would pardon “a large portion of them.” Apparently, Trump has no issues with terrorism when carried out by his supporters to help achieve his political goals.

Trump’s proposed new Muslim ban is actually an important wake up call for many in our community. I’ve repeatedly warned that GOP candidates will circle back to demonize Muslims in the 2024 election cycle because it has long played well with their base. And no one was more openly bigoted and hateful to our community than Trump during the 2016 campaign, serving up a buffet of anti-Muslim hate from his bald faced lie that American Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attack to his claim “Islam hates us” all to building to his call for a “total ban” on Muslims entering the United States. The result was our community saw a spike in hate crimes that eclipsed what we endured in the months after 9/11—with physical attacks on Muslim Americans, bullying of Muslim students and vandalism of our places of worship.

If Trump and other Republicans believed targeting our community was going to cause us to cower in the shadows, they were mightily mistaken. Instead, Muslim Americans became more active in politics than ever before. Many became grassroots activists, others worked on campaigns and a record breaking number of 145 Muslims ran for office in 2022. Of that, at least 80 Muslims won elections from school boards to Congress to statewide success with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison winning re-election.

In fact, the gathering at Vice President Harris’s residence was a testament to how far our community has come, with Harris vowing in response to bigotry that, “we are all in this together.”  However, with the Biden-Harris administration, it’s not just words of support. There are currently more than 100 Muslim Americans serving in the administration--many of whom were at the event such as White House assistant press secretary Abdullah Hasan.  And as Wa’el Alzayat, the executive director of Emgage noted while we are at the Eid gathering, there is now 13 Senate confirmed Muslims in various positions in the Biden administration—the most ever.

Dean joking around with VP Harris at Eid event—photo courtesy of the White House

The message of these developments resonates beyond our borders as Farhan Latif, the President El-Hibri Foundation, explained via email. As Latif noted, the significance of this event with the Vice President and the embrace by the Biden administration of Muslims exemplifies to “the nearly two billion Muslims around the world who are watching our democratic values in action.” What a contrast to the message sent to the world’s Muslims by Trump who during the 2016 campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” 

At the Eid event, Vice President Harris touched on the story behind the Eid al-Adha—known as the “Festival of Sacrifice”--which marks when Abraham was tested by God to sacrifice his first son. Abraham was prepared to do as God commanded but then God stopped Abraham, instructing him to instead sacrifice an animal. If that story sounds familiar it’s because it’s also with slight variations in the Bible. In fact, the reason Judaism, Islam and Christianity are known as the Abrahamic religions is because all share Abraham as a prophet.

The Vice President then shared how faith she views faith as a “verb” in that she sees a “connection between faith and action.” Adding, “Our faith is what allows us to believe in the good, but also in understanding that it requires our action to make it so.”

However, it was something else the Vice President stated near the end of her remarks that resonated deeply as she touched on the forces of the right trying to erase progress and move our nation backwards. Paraphrasing a quote from Coretta Scott King, she explained that the “fight for civil rights and progress…must be fought and won by each generation.”

It's also a message that perfectly applies to my fellow Muslims. While we have seen great progress in terms of political activism and achievements, there is a dark cloud gathering over the horizon as Trump once again ratchets up anti-Muslim hate.  And we will soon be called again to fight to maintain that progress.

(A version of this article originally appeared in Salon.com.)

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