The founder and editor of MuslimGirl.com has written a letter to her future Muslim daughter telling her that no matter who wins this presidential election in 2016 “Muslim children had lost this election before we even reached the polls.”
The letter is penned by Amani Al-Khatahtbeh and was published in Cosmopolitan in order to “explain this strange time in our country’s history” to a Muslim girl who will one day learn about the “racism” that was so rampant during this year’s election.
Al-Khatahtbeh begins by telling bits and pieces of her own exposure to racism when she was a child. How she was so scared that she lied about her religion in sixth grade. How she ran to her father “when someone insulted my ‘people’ in fourth grade.”
Maybe you’ll enjoy privileges I didn’t have and you’ll be shielded from all of that until later on — until the day that you might decide to start wearing a headscarf, and you complain to me about people suddenly asking you if you speak English.
What does Al-Khatahtbeh tell her future daughter about these deep strains of racism running through America, this bigotry that instills such fear? What does she say about this “strange time in our country’s history”?
Does she begin by telling her daughter how Muslims flew airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York City and other sites killing and injuring thousands in 2001?
Does she tell her daughter about how Muslims gunned down a 60-year-old man on a golf course in Tucson in 2002? Or how about the Muslim father who killed his wife and attacked his own daughters with a knife and hammer in the name of honor in Scottsville, NY, in 2004? Does she tell her about a Muslim man shooting four of his co-workers and a police officer because it was “Allah’s choice” in Denver in 2006?
Does she share how a devout Muslim father strangled his 25-year-old daughter in Jonesboro, GA, in 2008, or how another Muslim father shot his two daughters in Texas that same year because he didn’t like their “Western lifestyle”?
Does she tell the gruesome details of the founder of a Muslim TV station who beheaded his wife in Buffalo in 2009 for seeking a divorce? Or how about the man who shot his brother-in-law and another man after discovering that they’d gone to a strip club in Phoenix in 2009—all because they had offended his Islamic values?
Does she share with her daughter the brutality of another Muslim father in Arizona who ran down his daughter with his car for being “too Western”? Does she describe how the girl suffered in agony from her injuries until she died?
How about the death of a Christian man who was shot by a Muslim man for helping to convert his daughter in Houston in 2012? Does she tell her about that racism, that bigotry? Or how about when three Jewish men had their throats slashed open by Muslims in Waltham, MA, in 2011?
Maybe she doesn’t know about those incidents and so many more. Maybe she only knows about more well-known incidents of violence in the name of Allah like the Muslim psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 31 in Ft. Hood in 2009? Does she tell how children lost their mothers and fathers that day—all for the glory and honor of Islam?
Does she tell the story of Muslim devotees who detonated two homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three, including a young boy cheering his father across the finish line, and injuring 264 others? Does she describe the limbs that were blown from the bodies of Americans who were simply enjoying a sporting event with their families and friends?
How about the Muslim man who shot his lesbian daughter and partner in Texas, leaving a copy of the Quran beside them with its condemnations of homosexuality? Does she share how two homosexuals were murdered by a Muslim in Seattle that same year, just because of whom they loved?
Maybe those incidents don’t capture her attention enough. Maybe there aren’t enough deaths to warrant a mention. How about when a Muslim man entered a gay bar in Orlando in 2016 and killed 49 people, injuring 53 others? Does she describe the bloody details, the screaming, the cries of pain, the mothers and fathers who rushed to the scene praying that their child was not one of the victims?
Does she tell about the five Muslim men who were arrested in Colorado Springs in 2014 for gang raping an elderly woman? All the men were in the country legally, and one of them assisted the U.S. military in fighting terrorists in Iraq. So severe was the attack that the woman suffered internal injuries. It was only after the men began smelling “the unmistakable odor of feces” in the room that they stopped. Does Al-Khatahtbeh share those details with her daughter?
No, she doesn’t share any of this, nor does she tell of the rapes and murders sweeping across Europe with the wave of Syrian refugees, or the Christians being butchered, burned, and beheaded across the Middle East. She doesn’t describe how young Christian girls are ripped from their families and forced to marry older Muslim men. She doesn’t mention a word about how Muslim girls are mutilated in the name of sexual purity.
No, Al-Khatahtbeh doesn’t mention any of this. She doesn’t describe the fear Americans feel at such horror. She doesn’t even share how Muslims are attacking Muslims, killing them if they don’t submit to their fundamentalist code. She can claim these are not her “people,” but they share her heritage, her ethnicity, and her religion. She knows them better than we do. Where is her voice condemning them?
Does this make every Muslim a threat? Of course not. But the fact that these incidents happen, that Muslims are the leading terrorists in the world, is something you would think a concerned Muslim woman would not ignore as she explains this strange time in history to her daughter.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t share that part of the story at all. Instead, as she tells of her worries about wearing a headscarf and people making critical comments about her “people,” she writes this to her daughter:
Yes, habibti, a presidential candidate for the free United States of America did offer a ban on Muslim immigration as an actual part of his policy platform. Yes, he stood at a podium and talked about shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood, and his numbers did rise in the polls every time he said something bad about us. I know, it’s hard to believe millions of Americans supported him, but, yes, it happened, dear.
I will tell you the name of Asad Khan and have you repeat it. It is the name of a Muslim boy in the United Kingdom who hanged himself at 11 years old, only a few weeks ago, after he begged his mother to change schools because of the bullying he endured. I will sit you down and tell you about my first time talking to the Muslim Youth of North America, just last month, when I stood before a room full of hundreds of elementary and middle school students, maybe around your age, and asked them to raise their hands if they’d ever been called a racial slur. I will tell you that my heart dropped when dozens of their arms shot up into the air.
Yet, not a word about the violence committed in the name of her religion by fellow Muslims. Not a tear shed, not a word of grief or even admonishment toward them. Not a single note of empathy for little Christian girls terrorized by Muslims who embrace violent Islamism, not a hint of understanding for American mothers and fathers, for Christians, Jews, and homosexuals, who only want their own daughters, their own lives, protected.
To Al-Khatahtbeh, banning Muslims from areas where there isn’t sufficient vetting (not all Muslims, as she claims) is the worst form of racism. At no point does she realize that this isn’t racism at all, but wisdom in light of a very real threat.
Instead of pointing her finger at those who have created the fear and anxiety, she blames fellow Americans who love their daughters too, who don’t want the racism, bigotry, and barbaric cruelty so rampant in the Middle East to be unleashed in their country, infecting their home and threatening their lives.
While Al-Khatahtbeh worries about her daughter being called a racial slur, many Americans worry about their daughters being killed, raped, and brutalized. She and others might laugh off this fear, call it unfounded, but that only betrays her own prejudice. By refusing to call out the real threat—jihadists and Muslims who reject Western liberties—she is revealing her own bias, her own lack of compassion for the nation she says she loves, and her own prejudice against a people who merely want to live in peace.
Maybe Al-Khatahtbeh will reflect on what’s really going on in this world, the real threats, the real dangers, instead of being so self-referenced that she can’t see from another’s perspective, from those who have lost too many to Muslims who rape and kill in the name of their god.
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