Muslim Ban: A Muslim American Awakening

Visits to New York City are always bittersweet for me ever since my first visit there just five days before 9/11. I had stood beneath and marveled at the Twin Towers less than a week before they were erased from the landscape by people who ascribed themselves to my religion, Islam. This year my husband gave me a trip to New York as an anniversary gift. I was so excited, but also apprehensive as that Friday (January 27) brought news of the “Muslim ban”.

The youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai beautifully said that “We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced.” I too had been silenced before. We went through the cycle of “fake news” to gin up fear and then the banning of a part of the populace in the name of security and law and order before. This happened in the 1970s in Pakistan when a democratically elected government went after and outcast a whole community using these same tools of oppression. Pakistan’s national assembly enacted a law in 1974 that declared the members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community as non-Muslims. The assembly decided my religious identity for me even before I was born. Dictator Zia-ul-Haq, in the 1980s, added more stringent amendments, which criminalized much of my community’s rights of freedom of religion and of expression. In effect I had been silenced by my own government of my country of birth. So I truly value the voice and the rights guaranteed us under the U.S. constitution.

When I heard about all the protests at airports around the country, the day after the “Muslim ban” went in effect and how the people of my adopted country were standing up for Muslims, it made me think of how I too had a role to play. In order to do my small part, I decided to make a sign and stand outside Trump Tower. Armed with my pen and paper I got to work and come Monday, January 30th, I stood outside the building. It was biting cold in New York that day but I was determined to stand my ground and use my voice for once, to educate those of my countrymen who feel threatened by Islam and Muslims, such as the man who looked at my sign disparagingly and said, “Stop this (expletive) already!” But most importantly I needed to educate the person who now occupies the seat of power in our government. My sign read, “Ban Hate Not Peace – Islam = Peace. This was not a protest rather it was my way of conveying the way many Muslims understand and practice their religion.

I hope those in authority will listen to our (Muslim) voices and ask us how to combat the menace of radicalism and extremism. The only way to free the world of this scourge is through education and dialogue. As I stood in front of the Trump Tower and looked up much the same way I had done sixteen years ago, I had to fight back the tears; we have travelled to the nadirs of hate and fear, from the fall of Twin Towers in 2001 to the rise in power of the one that stood before me in 2017. I stood silent and prayed for the inhabitants of that building and the rest of the country, that may God open their hearts to the beauty and strength that Muslims actually bring to this country.