My Muslim Brothers and Sisters are to Me Just That: Brothers and Sisters
If it had been my sister — my best friend, the person I love more than anyone else on this earth, without whom I’d feel lost — who’d been killed in Paris or captured because of her faith (which I don’t know and which doesn’t matter), would I feel differently about the rhetoric that’s become a part of the American presidential election process? Would I adopt a different stance toward my Muslim brothers and sisters?
The answer is resoundingly “no.” My Muslim brothers and sisters are my brothers and sisters, period. Just the same applies to my Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Shinto, Taoist, agnostic, atheist mates. A demagoguery of blaming immigrants (to a nation of immigrants) not only defies every principle upon which this nation was supposedly built, but every one which we purport to uphold. Latino-Americans and Muslim-Americans helped and help build this nation; you are welcome here — not by all — but with those with the common sense to recognize that you are part of the fabric of America, the living embodiment of the American dream.
Those who seek to excoriate the Muslim- and Latino-American communities (among others) are no different from the discredited bigots who sought to relegate African-American, LGBT-American communities to history’s dustbins. …Yet found themselves in it. That’s where you will find yourself Mr. Trump — condemned to obscurity, a footnote at best to history, your legacy confined to a sometime clue on Jeopardy! about “Quixotic Presidential Campaigns” along with Ross Perot, George Wallace and John B. Anderson.
