We have an amazing line of people. To give you an insight as to what the structure of the night somebe, we will have questions for the for about 45 minutes or so. After we will open up to you are. If you hear something that you want to hear more on, you russians on, feel free to jot notes down. We will have ample opportunity at the end of the evening to engage in questions and answers as well. Four amazing people with us tonight. Immediately to my left is a british journalist based in new writer forulture buzz feed news, a columnist for the guardian, and an essayist recently published the good immigrant. Law at thesor of City University of new york or he directs the immigrant and noncitizen rent clinic. Representsudents he nationalities held at guantanamo bay. He found himself in the crosshairs of this as well as immigrants and asylum seekers. Whose interests include legal and policy responses to the september 11 attacks and received National Security crisis is coming the rights of minorities and noncitizens and International Military and law. Him fashion educator, designsepreneur whose have drawn praise for their cunning blend of traditional and other sensibilities. She was the first Muslim American on project runway. She was also researching between her islamic faith and culture, letter to create mentoring brooklyn groups sorrow in 2015. The first in a line of premium adults nonalcoholic drink lastly the author of the critically acclaimed, how does it feel to be a problem, being young and arab in america, which won an american book award. You please give around the blogs applause. [applause] feel free to chime in if you have questions for anybody pure we saw a lot of highest we saw a lot of biased incidents, hate crimes. Probably ently local to the United States, was the murder of a 17 euros back like a girl. Bet do you all think would reviewed before not muslim to understand and a time like this, in light of some of these things were seeing right now . . [laughter] a dont think about what other people need to know. This is a question that is hard i typically dont think too much about what other people should to know. Hink its more protecting protective about the community. There is this whether its learning martial arts or that kind of thing. Ng a part of the community or i donttuation know. Iybe was concluded dont think that everything that every time a muslim is killed by somebody, just because she wore me kill thelet person. Liket know what happened soy can cant speak too much on that. I think the typical things would want to i someone to know is there being prejudice against another group or if they have hate in their hearts, and is that, you know, do not take out your anger on a situation that has happened, you know, at the hands of someone you do not know. The person who you are making a victim does not know. Dont take it out on just a random person. I think that is a basic thing. Obviously, generalizations hurt people. Prejudice, racism, all of that, hurt people. I kind of feel like it is just the same thing i would want anyone who is being racist or xenophobic im not sure if we developed a word for somebody who hates somebody because of their religion. What is that word . In that case, those generalizations, just trying to take that out on a person, going vigilante, is not the answer, clearly. If i might add a little bit, i think what happened to sister nabra was part of a spike in antimuslim hate crimes. Likes there were sisters in brooklyn who had their jobs are caps off on a regular basis. His sister who wore his job was set on fire in manhattan. Its important to think about for thesehe stage sake crimes, in regards to official policy and rhetoric that enable us permission to act on that and on the biases and racism. What you have here in new york city, you have an officially sanctioned Police SurveillanceProgram Targeting muslims. They get permission from private actors to engage in that sort of conduct. Look at what theyre doing overseas to identify communities by way of exclusion strikes. Mination that also gets permission. Are targeting muslim communities and society. Withdifficult to deal concrete ways it is rhetoric when it comes to muslims. Thats a large part of why we are seeing these antimuslim incidents. Quite a do you feel that its a change that we have to begin with a question like this. Think its really a shame theres more to Muslim American life than the hatred. Theres more to it than the violence. Theres more to it than the suspicion. This is very very true. And well get to a lot of that other stuff. Its also very very true that Muslim Americans are very vulnerable. Extremely scared, many of them. For very legitimate reasons as just hearing from other panelists. Understand,tant to in the general culture, Muslim Americans have the right for recognition that there pressure in pain. That seems unfair to me. This,have an example of not only in this case is this a trend, its not a hate crime but we also have an example in north carolina, three students who just two years ago but quicklyd became an excuse. Thatcame clear quickly this is a provocation for traffic altercation. As they go against somebody for the basis on the basis of who they are with no bearing on traffic dispute, or on a parking dispute there is a way to resegment out the pain and that kind of threat that has attached to Muslim Americans. Im sure thats nobody in this audience that feels that way. But i feel it the question is asked, what should the general public take away from this, they just have to be aware. There is a level of acknowledgment. This is from our general culture today. And think that everybody everyone has said i also think when it comes to muslim life, we are also somewhat and what we think about muslims. There was a conversation around this the fact that she was a black muslim woman, which means something very different in the general imagination, but also in general, if we look at muslim lives, we also look must look at them intersection the leak. I look at it as a muslim and black woman wearing his job, for example. Through theved world is very different to how another book another black muslim woman in the other part of the country to does wear hijab our experiences are similar but very, very different. Not stopped as a muslim immediately come up in another person would be because they wear his chubby. That would be somebody something to consider, multiple identities colliding. This would behoove the general pop relation to think wiser. That would be are not one monolithic block, and that we live very different lives. Even within the same Group Setting that we all seem to be put into. I know theres lots of people waste of thats a my time. This one black muslim woman who said that so many of you speaking right now have no idea what it is like to walk in the wh\at it is like to walk in the world as a black muslim woman. That kind of shut a good number of people up. There was a lot of conjecture. Obvious conversations, historically marginalized groups, or not new. For me, i kind of go back to immediately post and 11 when i was living in london. A friend of mine who is a hija bi was and she felt very unsafe and she felt everyone is looking at her and she felt she was being followed and so on. I was not a ghostly sympathetic because i fully understood what she was saying. Another part of me could not help as a to her, oh, my god, that is my life as a black person. This is another layer of nonsense, of, you know, this kind of layer cake of nonsense. I think that is something we need to be thinking about all the time, that there are multiple identities, lighting colliding and living quite happily until they are to structure by outside forces. I think even in her case, i mean, the narrative kept changing even evolving about her identity, even. At first i did not know she was black. I did not read her that way right away. What happens with a lot of black people, anyway. Who knows how she identified me her father spoke with egyptian accent. It could have been if youre saying there is a bias involved, it couldve been xenophobia. It could have been her being black. Is that is the way she identified or we put identify her as. It could have been her religion. It could have been it couldve been none of that. It couldve been the altercation that happened previously with the voice voice. I dont know. It is just crazy and wrong. I really got what you and wrong. I really got what you were saying earlier that thing of, the aspect of putting more value on when a crime is done against a muslim. Automatically assumed to be linked to this date or a terrorist allegiance right away. By the time things are even a lot of times stories in the news the concluded the person because that is there so much and then whenever a white person commits a crime, its not looked at as anything at all. The prison was probably crazy, mentally ill. The idea is that when a muslim is killed at the hands of someone who had some kind of hate or felt like they were doing it on behalf of something political because they think if youre doing a hate crime in this form, it is something to do with politics, terrorism because of some larger thing that happened. Maybe its like this person its kind of like Collateral Damage or something. We can pull a lot of different frames out of all of these responses, like into to snow policy, media rhetoric, media narrative, shapes for the population what they perceive muslims to be. For me one of the more a regular question i get asked by media, by audiences, is what do muslims think, as if muslims are this one homogenous body that every single one thinks exactly the same and does the same things and has the same experiences. Within the Muslim Community and outside of it there tends to be this sweeping generalization of who a muslim is and then in turn, what we understand islam to be. So how would you describe, since the Muslim Community here in new york or more broadly the United States, we are coming together to engage the question of who is a muslim. But what would we say is really a response to that if we were asked, how would you answer that . Let me start with this one, if you dont mind. I think that islam and the United States is a history of the United States. One of the really interesting things to me is that if we study the history of muslims in the United States, we study the history of the United States in really interesting fashion. The Muslim American population is only perhaps 1 of the population around the country. They come from 77 Different Countries of origin, which makes it one of the most pluralistic communities of religious devotion in the country. It has something to say, in other words, about multiculturalism in the United States today. Its origins in the United States go back to before the United States. Theres a great history in this country around this time in america. There were sizable numbers of people and slaves from africa who came to the United States in chains and were forced to work who themselves were muslim. Their stories are incredible stories that should become part of our curriculum, not just teaching about what slavery was in this country and complex fashion but also teaching history of enslavement in the United States. You can look at the history of the black liberation struggle in interesting ways through a muslim lens. You can look at the history of american imperialism through the history of the muslim lens as well. You dont need to look at these things in an exclusionary way. You should be looking at American History from multiple vantage points. What would lgbt history of the United States look like alongside a really rich Muslim American history at the same time . Rather than having a kind of singular narrative that drives the one story of the country forward, that sees it as a story that really begins in europe. And thats not really what this country ever was, by looking at its foundations, if youre looking at its origins and complexities. I think that would do a lot to dispose this idea that islam and the United States begins on september 12, 2001. Im a foreigner in a foreign land, so i havent really had a lot of time by virtue of the nature of the work that i do to kind of find a community of my own that is a larger community. My experience of being a muslim ive been a muslim all my life. I went to an nyu last week, towards the end of ramadan. That was the first time i had been in a room with more than 50 muslims in maybe a decade. Because i had found that i its very odd. I grew up across europe and africa. I was born in london, we moved to nigeria. I always found myself more comfortable going in nigeria than the u. K. That to me was down to issues of representation. We talk a very good game about how we are all equal and the same. Because we are human beings, there are very many interpersonal issues. I never felt comfortable going to the mosque in the u. K. I had a couple of bad experiences that made me go, i will just pray at home. Its fine. Going to nyu and looking around that room and seeing so many people, just looking at every shade, every color, all these languages that were coming up, and people had all these histories, secondgeneration, thirdgeneration people, and looking at that and going im 16 months into living in this country. I felt a very emotional just kind of sitting there and having all these people. All kinds of muslims. That can be really kind of that would have been a wonderful slapshot snapshot when were talking about islam in america. I think often about the fact that Many Americans of this generation, the first muslim they knew was probably a black man, muhammad ali. I think about how we have this idea of muslims as brown. For the longest time, muslims in the american imagination were black. Because of september 11, 2001, and the post9 11 world, suddenly every muslim was brown. It kind of erased and pushed aside a lot of other stories about what were going on, even the discussion of the muslim van. Ban. People were talking about, its going to ruin all these peoples lives. No one seemed to focus on the african countries that were listed there. No one was talking about sudan, which is huge. It was a writer on twitter who said, is anyone talking about the fact that 50 of countries on that list are african countries . These are black muslims. We cant separate the two. Im kind of obsessed with this idea of representation because its something im constantly in my work, im always looking at representation and images and stories that are told and how we are socializing to believing things about certain groups. Im coming at it because im a black person, im thinking about what happens when you add layers onto black identity. Sitting in that room that day, eating a decision is halal delicious halal lasagna, i was looking around the room and realizing this is something that we should be talking about within ourselves. I can think, i dont really care what people think to a certain extent. We should talk about this more within our own groups, our own spaces. That would extend as well to other places. We go into a lot of muslim communities here in new york city and the tristate area and even beyond. Since 2009 weve done literally hundreds of workshops in different muslim communities. The diversity of just new york city really reflects diversity of the Muslim Community globally. We have gone into mosques in Staten Island as well as west africa, north african communities, primarily yemeni communities and locally here. Also socioeconomically, many muslims in new york city are working class, they are driving cabs, their pushcart vendors, selling coffee on the street. Some are doctors. You have muslim professionals. You have mipsters, muslim hipsters. All these communities congregate in different ways and exhibit different degrees of religiosity. I want to point out something i think is important to remember. This reflective association of muslims, when the fundamental historical reality, muslim has been in the United States for us long as the United States has existed, even longer. Even today, 1 out of 3 muslims is an africanamerican. There is an africanamerican. Theres a very long history of american islam in that community specifically. There are many lessons to be drawn from that community, the africanamerican Muslim Community. That can be and have been of great value recently in times of crisis and targeting, for predominately islam immigrant communities. Islam has been the country a lot longer than Donald Trumps family has. [laughter] for me, growing up, ive existed in a variety of different communities. Im from brooklyn. The mosque that i consider my home mosque has been around since the late 1950s. It is the mosque that was founded by malcolm x. It started out in the nation of islam. Then they made the shift into more orthodox islam. We definitely carry on a lot of the good things that the good trainings and teachings that were in the nation of islam. Some people have very stringent diets still. We call the pioneers who are 60 and up. A lot of them have a diet that consists of one meal a day or two meals a day, something they learned in the nation of islam. Martial arts is a very big part of our community. Theres a dojo in my mosque, a dojo in the mosque down the block. With practice orthodox islam trade we pray five times a day. People cover. Our culture is very much like African American and Caribbean Culture. When its time to celebrate, we have a block party, when the weather is good. People sing calypso, they do james brown impersonations. Theres always a martial arts demonstration. People perform hiphop, all that kind of stuff. That is for me what i grew up to seeing, black muslim culture. I grew up around other groups my family exposed me to other groups that were young, and i put i took it upon myself when i graduated from college, having more time to be social, just being in all kinds of different communities, whether its the nyu community. And this being, within these different groups, there are various cultures. Like if you are muslim and from south asia, you have a culture that is south asian and muslim, a lot of times that is conflated as being muslim culture because a lot of times those people grew up around south asian, maybe even probably african and arab if you grew up in a country that has been predominately muslim, then your idea about what is islam is whatever your people are doing, right. But if you come from a culture where you are very much american, because you are africanamerican or you are caribbean american, which at least from my parents generation and myself as a child of caribbean american parents, we just kind of gradually started identifying a lot with the Africanamerican Community and gaining an understanding of what the thinking was and why, that kind of stuff even if we have the same exact history, so its like this merger. It was always this idea that i always grew up with this idea from my father, when it comes to your culture, like who i am as an american and caribbean american, and islam, then you take your culture and you finally through islam. Islam is like, it will teach you morality, is going to teach you to pray, dont drink alcohol. Dont drink alcohol. You have a certain diet. Abstain from sex until you are married. All these different things. The culture has these aspects in it that are not in islam, then you funnel that out but everything thats good, you can keep it. Thats what i learned growing up. The are lots of things i could do and take from american and Caribbean Culture but i didnt. As a caribbean american, carnival is a big deal. My family is trinidadian. When i was younger, they would take us to carnival as a little girl. My parents converted to islam. My dad was 19. My mom was like 26. They got married in the early 20s. We used to go to carnival when i was a kid. After a while my dad was thinking he started looking at carnival differently because hes thinking in terms of modesty and he started thinking, maybe this is not so good to have my daughter see people gyrating on each other and the huge party atmosphere. That thing, im caribbean, i can listen to the music and everything like that, but im not going to partake in carnival because i muslim. Im muslim. there was always this sensibility, this awareness i knew. Youre in it, everybody if you are a chechen, egyptian, if you are of a culture where you see that as a part of pak istani, means muslim for some people, you might not be able to funnel things out as much. Another thought about the Muslim Community that i want to share, i almost feel like we have such a strong term, i dont hear it as much now. Uma meaning, like this global muslim village. To me its almost like the \american idea, we the people and all these things we strive for but are not perfect with. Freedom, liberty called all this kind of stuff. Perfect union, right . And its you strive for it, this is the ideal, and the uma, theres this ideal that brings us together a lot where its like, you just kind of have this trust in a sense. I grew up with this feeling of trust. Because they have the certain morals that are good that just makes us get each other. And some of that has withered away a bit after 9 11. Even that sense of high alert, that america has kind of had about, muslims and about muslims and terrorists or whatev er, that has affected our communities as well. We have many, many layers to being a muslim. I think its interesting, if we back the professor pass comments about the historical roots of the country, we definitely have estimates of about 30 of slaves that came here were muslim. The settling of certain colonies like roanoke had people who were muslim, they were turkish, and moores who were president and iowa. The first mosque built in the country was in cedar rapids by lebanese immigrants in the late 1800s. Trying to understand that in the framework, how its very easy to have identity erased, to be present but still be invisible and to not be kind of recognized also goes back to some of the historical roots of the country where aspirations of individuals coming sought a land that embraced immigrants and diversity, which is distinct from the european context in which people were leaving from. They didnt seek to embrace diversity in that sense. Where you had the literal launching of crusades, transatlantic slave trades in the name of religion, and then an embrace of the secular and liberalism, saying that spirituality and faith, they are the bane of everything in society, so lets go in a different direction. This country didnt fight its worst battles in those frames but it fought its bloodiest battles, its civil wars around race and class. The foundational documents of the country literally afforded full privilege to white men, gave nothing to women, and didnt even a quite black men and women as a whole person in comparison to their white counterparts. Thats an important thing to understand, that im hearing from you all, how the institutional developments in policy we see today, there is this deeply entrenched mechanism that impacts minority populations of all backgrounds, to necessitate this understanding, foundational antiblackness, to address what is symptomatic and manifests itself in the form of muslim identity. Today we see multiple realities that even if we werent aware of it from decades or centuries ago , its something you cant really deny anymore. How do you think the broader American Society concert to deal with the challenges we have here . They are impacting muslim communities but even through intersection analogy, to look at distinct communities, is impacting a lot of minority populations, tied to race and class. What do we as diverse and eventual, to be able to harness pluralism that allows for us to be part of the solution to this, and move beyond the conversation that enables us to individually come together better, then start to take on some of the institutional issues that are really infringing on the daytoday lives of so many. Do you want to go . I think the conversations are an important part of what will eventually come. I think the ways in which certain communities and groups have learned by virtue of the fact that they had to in order to survive. I think about the conversation with my friend post 9 11 and this new awareness that suddenly was her reality of, oh my goodness, suddenly im a target. I was able to fall back on my many years of being a black pers on and say, that wont happen. Dont worry about that. Just keep going. I think the conversation at the beginning of the change, some of those things are easily won. For many of those people, about evil being a level of awareness, that muslims are many things in the media the media has its own narratives as well. Well and are not necessarily as independent as you may have hoped. The idea of seeking answers, the idea of which is a difficult thing to do when you are told to not trust, you know, what was traditionally seen as trusted sources, and this kind of theres been a societywide ersion of trust. Erosion of trust. That is going to be how we reckon with what we choose to treat marginalized and minority ethnic groups in general. Theres a lot of conversation around that, americans with lower incomes, the health care debate. These are the things that no one was looking at before. The poor can suffer. Whatever. The tipping point, were all kind of pushing, and all of a sudden that becomes a big story about the disenfranchised. Again, talk about separating groups. The white working class, theyre thinking about all the other people who are working class who are not white. I think about the ways that having conversations and pushing boundaries, and these things that are part of a domino effect that we have, the idea that we have one mode of attack, one mode of tackling the problem is something we have to get out of thinking. This is something that happens a grassroots levels and there are so Many Organizations doing amazing work across levels. It has to be a multipronged approach. Otherwise there are cracks and people fall through them. Thats when you begin to form a narrative. We talk about islam in america and we are talking about brown people or black, whatever. We are talking about rich doctors as opposed to the workingclass people who drive cabs and are street cleaners and struggling. These are small things. It starts with the idea of representation of who is muslim. Thinking about your work, for example. We spoke about this on the podcast that buzz feed produces called see something, say something. We are talking about the daniel daylewis character. I think it was the First Episode he prayed. It was the stiffest praying id ever seen. It was so odd. The idea of equating these are all things were trying to challenge and move past. That is the beginning of something and those conversations that followed on, oftentimes conversations that dont feel necessarily helpful but actually are. I would say that because im a talker. I think these are things we have to consider. Its from all levels, and people working in tandem with one another, all these other structures that help to push things forward. I think if you are interested only in your own liberation, the liberation of society as a whole, that is not liberation for anyone. There is a way that Muslim Americans have to be deeply concerned about everybodys liberty. But thats also actually on the other side of things. Theres a tremendous opportunity around Muslim American issues are also at the core. You dont have to convince people of this anymore. You had to really convince people there is a reason why they should be paying attention to Muslim American civil liberty issues. Now you dont have to convince people. Everybody knows theres a reason. There is a really important element to that right now, which is that now i think we are starting to see something that many of us have known or are intuitive for a long time, which is that fighting for Muslim American rights is not really about the rights of Muslim Americans only. Its really about fighting for the principles of the society you want to live in an what they will be. To that degree, i think one of the most underreported or unde rthought, undertheorized things about our contemporary moment is when we talk about the situation of Muslim Americans, we often put them in the frame of u. S. Raical relations. But, when we think about Race Relations in the United States historically, we tend to think almost exclusively in domestic ways. The fact is that as long as there are wars overseas, Muslim Americans are vulnerable. The ways in which Civil Liberties of Muslim Americans exist or dont exist is intimately and deeply connected to what happens with american foreignpolicy at the same time. I think that w as a general population, i think we have to change what is going on overseas. That is what is that stake here, is really not only for our own survival but the survival of what this country should the and for the survival of the planet. I do not want to sound grandiose, but that is where we are. I think the theme of resisting artificial is a constructive and powerful scene. When you think about the spectrum of local to global, you pause to consider that from the u. S. Governments perspective, they look at it as a single continuum. They do not look at it as domestic policy, and what is going on overseas in certain countries internationally. They are looking at a range of Security Policies and practices that can be global all the way down to the most minute local circumstance. I think we are doing ourselves [no audio] by accepting that kind of sign loan and focusing on what it is. The same can be said for ways to function in ways more accountable. It is entirely artificial and to that extent, foolish to distinguish between one set of policies and practices that are racist and another. For a long amount of time, things can be more concrete. Many activist working on this work siloed off on accountability issues. That was a strategic mistake and when i think that was corrected recently. It is the same as police doing stop and chris, targeting latino and black communities. Stop and frisk, targeting latino and black communities. I think many people on the panel have made this point and embodied this point that many folks are black, latino and muslim, so they are subject to stop and frisk in their neighborhood, just like to nypd surveillance in the neighborhood. In recent years, activist in new york cap correct have corrected that and drawn lines and bridges, recognizing the commonality, the challenge, and that they are dealing with a common enemy. That has been a much more effective approach and one that needs the generalized nationally, up to what happens overseas, in the problematic ways in which a government dissipates. Government participates. Their narratives that are domestic inclusive domestically in euro neighborhood. Where in brooklyn a beautiful place. A lot of insecurity issues. A lot of poverty challenges. Park that here to where the beastie boys a few months ago some but he had graffitied it with swastikas, the word trump, things like make America White again. There are realities that are local. But also,untry locally as well. Nobody recommends to people to be able to broaden perspective and become more informed, more understanding and aware. You know, if you like after a lot of things that have happened since with muslims being seen as the villain me oflly, it reminded what it felt like the feeling i americane as a black as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s every time i would see a black man with his head down or when i would hear about the kind of crime or whatever i felt likenk black people were so vulnerable to the acts of one person, like a whole community was so vulnerable. It,people would talk about and a joke on Comedy Central in ,e said when he had to show forwards, little kids, five steps back. Youodys action could take like your people just lose i feel like of one the same thing played out again with the media and also the police the way they would treat black people, and now it is the same thing the media and the way then something, about something may hurt. Person for me i feel i am watching the game thats played. This is a game that keeps being played and it gets played on different individuals. It just moves around. Ago japanese were subject to what happened in the that. Policies and all it just moves around. People,the new group of it brings them back and overshadows somebody good people. , i dont want to call it human , we dont know who the next group is going to be. It will probably be another group of people after muslims. Let me use the example of the that represents the darkest potential of humanity