Anti-Islam rhetoric by Republican Party politicians raises concerns about religious hatred

Jeff Bennett:

More than two weeks into the war with Iran, Muslim Americans are facing a new wave of hate speech here at home, amplified online and echoed by Republican lawmakers.

Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles posted that Muslims do not belong in American society.

Florida Congressman Randy Fine wrote: “We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational.”

Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville paired 9/11 images with New York City Mayor Zahran Mamdani, saying – quote – “the enemy is within the gates.”

Civil rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers condemned the comments as dangerous and openly bigoted.

Joining us now is Maya Berry, Executive Director of the Arab American Institute.

Thank you for being with us.

Maya Perry, Executive Director of the Arab American Institute:

Thanks for having us, Jeff.

Jeff Bennett:

When you hear and read some of the comments from Republican lawmakers now, what stands out to you most?

Maya Berry:

I mean, to be honest, the initial response is how broken our democracy is. I feel it in a very personal way in terms of targeting the American Muslim community like this, and taking a community like this as a scapegoat.

But the fact that it’s coming from elected officials who have American Muslim voters should understand more clearly how their rhetoric may be different from mine or yours, and yet they feel so comfortable continuing to engage in this, creating fear and putting communities and individuals at risk.

Jeff Bennett:

Does the rhetoric we are hearing now represent an escalation or is it part of a longer pattern in American politics?

Maya Berry:

So I think that’s a really important observation. Scapegoating communities at different times for different reasons is definitely a pattern in our country.

What’s different here, and I would suggest it’s worse than what we saw after September 11, is that after the terrorist attacks happened on September 11, you had elected officials, a president, who went into a mosque within two days to launch those attacks and said, don’t target your fellow Americans. This is not who we are. That’s not what we’re going to do.

Now, obviously there were policies that followed that securitized society, treated it as a potential security threat going forward, and really damaged the relationship between these individuals and their fellow citizens.

But what I would say is that when the largest office in the country, which is the presidential pulpit, is used to say to their fellow Americans, don’t scapegoat those communities, that’s very different from what we see today. The single largest crime – or hate crime data that we have targeting both Arab Americans and Muslim Americans came after 9/11.

The second largest numbers came after 2015 and 2016, which was the beginning of President Trump’s primary campaign and his candidacy for the presidency. So, I think there’s definitely a decision among some that this discourse is helpful. It gives them viral moments. Helps them raise money.

And that, to me, is why I continue to stress that you should care about this because it’s hurting society, but you should also care about this because I think it’s an indicator of how problematic it is and how fragile our democratic institutions are right now.

Jeff Bennett:

There are those who defend their statements by pointing to recent attacks allegedly carried out by Muslim men, such as the car that rammed into a synagogue in Michigan, and the shooter at Old Dominion University last week.

President Trump, who I mentioned, was on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show on FOX last week. Listen to what he said.

President Donald Trump:

They are sick people. Many of them were allowed to enter here. They should not be allowed in. Others are very bad. They’re going wrong, something’s wrong. There’s something wrong there. Genetics isn’t exactly — it’s not exactly your gene. It’s one of those problems.

Jeff Bennett:

I want to ask you to respond to that. There can be legitimate concerns about how people become radicalized and then commit violent acts.

There’s a separate question about how leaders deal with this without turning it into sweeping allegations, insulting allegations to millions of Americans.

Maya Berry:

Look, I’m not going to pretend that someone who resorts to violence like we saw in the horrific attack in Michigan or the shooting in Virginia might not be sick in some way. There’s something wrong there, without a doubt.

But the difference is that no one was suggesting that we engage in this kind of conversation when we talked about the Sikh shootings, and the Oak Creek temple shootings. No one said that when there was a shooting in South Carolina. No one said that when we were talking about the devastating murder of congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue or Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer was murdered, or the supermarket in El Paso.

There have been systematic ways in which our country has increasingly moved with a certain level of comfort with political violence, which is really troubling. There were two attempts to assassinate President Trump. There was a legislator and her husband – they were killed in Minnesota.

The question is, why do we take those individual incidents and understand that there’s a problem that our country needs to address and not propose that we develop different relationships with white supremacists, for example, who dealt with those and start saying we need to — what went wrong? How do we strip them of their citizenship? What is the denaturalization process?

None of this happens except when it comes to American Muslims and sometimes Arab Americans.

Jeff Bennett:

Well, on that point, I want to ask you this, because in the past, party leaders have taken action against members of Congress for racist and extremist rhetoric. This was the case in 2019, when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fired Steve King from his committees over his racist rhetoric.

Fast forward to the present moment. There does not appear to be the same level of accountability. What is the effect of this?

Maya Berry:

No, on the contrary, there is no blame. There are no committee assignments being withdrawn. In fact, in the case of Congressman Randy Fine, the day he said starve them all was the day he was appointed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

And you have a situation where the Speaker of the House, instead of saying this kind of rhetoric needs to stop, it’s harmful to our fellow Americans and we shouldn’t engage in it, says there’s a legitimate fear about sharia, and demands that sharia be implemented in our country. Sharia is something, a concept within a moral or religious code that applies to me personally.

This will not apply to you or anyone else if they are not Muslim. It dictates things like our prayers, marriages, or burials. So the idea that we would take something like this and the speaker might suggest that this is why his members get away with saying things that they said is just intellectually dishonest and morally reproducible.

Jeff Bennett:

Beyond rhetoric, do you see signs that these positions are influencing policy?

Maya Berry:

Without a doubt. There have been some very significant setbacks in terms of protecting basic civil rights and First Amendment rights.

But I’ll focus more on — at this point, frankly, I’ll go back to Congress, because I’m certainly not suggesting that the executive branch is working well. But the problem with Congress is that it’s not just a member tweeting something reprehensible. Look at the remarks they give on the House floor.

Look at the questions and comments they provide during congressional hearings. It’s not just that they need to participate or behave in decent ways. It really comes down to a structural problem within the body itself. It doesn’t pass budgets on time. Not passing laws. There is no oversight from Congress.

Our country just went to war without a war powers resolution. But what do they find time to do? They find time to sit down and tell us that we need to be afraid of our fellow Americans.

Jeff Bennett:

Maya Perry, Executive Director of the Arab American Institute, thank you for your views.

Maya Berry:

Thank you.