“Do not leave your country out of fear of someone so insignificant,” he told his multiethnic congregation days after Donald Trump won the presidential election. Instead, he said, turn to Allah and continue to be productive and contributing citizens.
“Brothers and sisters, this is the time we get together and excel in everything you are doing,” the community leader said.
Even before the imam delivered his message of assurance, Faiza Haider said she wasn’t scared of anti-Muslim backlash.
“If we were afraid, we wouldn’t come to the masjid [mosque] today. We’d be sitting in our house and locking ourselves [in],” the Essex resident told Seven Days. “Whatever will happen, will happen. We depend on Allah,” she added.
All of her four children were born in the United States and this is where her family belongs, the Yemeni native said. Her non-Muslim neighbors have never made her feel unwelcome either, Haider said.
Salwa Hayyat, who moved from her native Jordan to the U.S. 38 years ago, shared Haider’s sentiments about Vermonters.
“I have faith in the people here in the United States,” the Middlebury resident said. “I went through September 11. Everybody was nice to me. I believe they will continue to support me.”
But according to the imam, some members of his congregation expressed concern during the campaign, especially when Trump repeatedly disparaged minorities, including Muslims and immigrants.
“These remarks made some feel scared,” the imam said.
Since Wednesday, Muslims across the U.S., including in New York City, have reported incidents of harassment.
Reaction in the Green Mountain State has been on the opposite end of the spectrum.
“I was sad today that our nation elected a man who does not welcome all faiths,” Hsiang wrote. “These fruits and nuts are simply a small gift to let your mosque know I appreciate your presence here in the community.”
These gestures are not uncommon, noted Farhad Khan, president of the Islamic Society of Vermont. The congregation received similar outpourings of support after terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris.
In a later interview, the imam was most passionate when discussing Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric about immigrants and Muslims. He pointed out that most Americans are immigrants.
“If the immigrants are [considered] less citizens, then [Trump’s] wife would [also] be [a] half-citizen,” he said of Melania Trump, who will become only the second foreign-born first lady in American history.
Haider, meanwhile, is one worshipper who is taking the imam’s message to heart.
“We are going nowhere and we’re sticking to our plan: to be Americans,” she said.
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The first amendment is crystal clear in protecting both religious freedom; and in separation of church and state. There should be no concern for legal immigrants of whatever religion as to the free practice of their religion. If Donald Trump or anyone else says otherwise, it’s nonsense.
To the extent Trump has tried to conflate “Muslim” with “terrorist,” it is absurd and most Americans see this for the same smear of calling someone a “communist” a la Joseph McCarthy. We all hope that the responsibilities of the presidency will have an immediately sobering effect on President-elect Trump (weird to even write that). There has been “home-grown” terrorism by US citizens, including descendants of European Americans such as the Unabomber, so cannot attribute terrorism to solely one religion or one area of the world .
On the other hand, and I’m not sure if the author even intended this, there does seem to be a conflation in this article of both legal immigrants (including refugees) and illegal aliens. Trump seems most focused on illegal aliens and further vetting of refugees (without necessarily realizing that the vetting process is already quite strict).
The great African-American, Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, as leader of Bill Clinton’s own Bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform, made clear that illegal aliens should be deported. That chain migration should end; and that legal immigration numbers should be reduced dramatically from over a million plus per year to around 500,000 per year. That demonizing immigrants is wrong and antithetical to our nation’s great history and yet manipulating and abusing our system to allow open borders and endless streams of unskilled, uneducated labor is of great disservice to our own disadvantaged US citizens (not that much different from position of Bernie Sanders).
Barbara Jordan had tremendous moral and ethical leadership from the civil rights and Watergate eras. It is really sad that she died at only age 59 and, upon her death, President Clinton immediately backed away from his own Commission’s recommendations and the bill making its way through Congress. According to the Boston Globe, Clinton let it fail to reward Chinese campaign donors who wanted continued chain migration. As someone who voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, I find it ironic that his decision let the issue fester and unfortunately gave rise to the painful conditions that could have even allowed someone like Trump an opening. Had the Democrats instead followed through, we might have been celebrating a President Hillary Clinton today.
No the first Terrorist was the white man against the Native American Indians..The Indians welcomed the immigrants and have been slaughtered ever since, their land taken away from them,even today.. President Trump will make this country great again,,he has always said that illegals need to be deported and they can come into this country the correct way..By not doing so is a slap in the face to the immigrants who did it the legal way!!!! As for the vetting, Homeland Security have even said they can not vet a lot of them because a lot of the countries don’t keep records..so there is no way there is a ” vetting process is already quite strict” unless Homeland Security is lying..
Donna, I believe president-elect Trump partly owns, or at least has money in, the pipeline that threatens Standing Rock. I hope he is able to put that aside to address the problem you correctly name in the first part of your statement.
@Mt.Philo ..lets not forget that the democrats are the ones who started this taking over the land for the pipeline..Both parties are in it..both parties are greedy..Yes I hope Pres Trump will do something about this!!!! Seeing obama didn’t care..
You are right about Obama not caring. He seemed content to leave it to Hillary who was alarmingly silent on the matter. Hopefully Trump does something, indeed.