What America’s Muslims think about Trump

Donald Trump has targeted a lot of minorities over his campaign to become President, but none more so than Muslim Americans.

From calling for a “total ban” on Muslim immigration to a having a public spat with the Khan family, Trump’s comments have understandably set many Muslim communities on edge.

So I went to my local mosque in Bloomington, Indiana to find out how Trump’s presidential bid has affected them. Because their mosque has experienced vandalism in the past, and because Trump supporters have a tendency to be intolerant monsters, they all insisted to remain anonymous and refused to be photographed.

A middle-aged man saw me scribbling in my notepad when I arrived – he tapped me on the shoulder and smiled: “You’ve never been here before have you?” He already knew the answer.

All of the individuals I interviewed were friendly and accommodating, more than willing to answer any questions I had. As I scribbled frantically on a notepad an older gentleman tapped me on the shoulder, he asked with a smile.

“I haven’t been in a house of worship since I was about five years old, does it show?”

“Here, I’ll show you around.”

After the brief tour I approached a group of people about my age and asked them bluntly: “What do you all think of Donald Trump?” Their immediate response was laughter, as if I had wasted my time and theirs by even asking the question.

A student who told me he was 22 spoke up. “I don’t think you’ll find a single person in here who supports Trump. That guy…He’s just something else.”

Much of the other conversations I had afterward followed the same script, with laughter at the very idea that a Muslim – one of the many groups targeted and demonized by Donald Trump – could find it reasonable to support him.

“Look, it was never easy to be a Muslim – or even dark-complected – especially after 9/11. Donald Trump says he wants to make life even harder for us. Why? Because we are easy to pick on. We exist in the minority, but we are Americans, just like you. We don’t support ISIS. And the very fact we have to make that clear is an insult in itself,” said one man, 27, who emigrated from Iran when he was eight.

“Donald Trump has to polarize things. He has to make it where it’s an ‘us versus them’ mentality, when it isn’t like that at all. We mourn and pray for those who are killed in mass shootings just like anyone else, because those are innocent Americans that died,” said another student, 19, referencing the shooting at the Orlando nightclub.

And this mentality, creating a dichotomized in group and out group, seems to be the fundamental strategy for Donald Trump and right-wing nationalists, who pit Muslim-Americans against the entire western world as if it’s a battle for the existence of humanity, and it works. It’s pandering, surely, but it’s terrifyingly effective, and this standard of zero-sum thinking serves only to perpetuate a system of state-sanctioned hatred toward a group that should bear no responsibility for the violence that ISIS and other terrorist organizations perpetrate. To condemn innocent Muslim-Americans for the shootings in Orlando or San Bernardino would require we apply the same standard of disparagement to the religious beliefs of the man who killed two people and injured nine more at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, or the man who murdered six people and wounded four more at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

But we can’t do that and we won’t do that, because to imagine that members of (here’s where your grandmother gasps and clutches her pearls) our sacred and tolerant (mostly white) “Christian” nation would commit such atrocities is unthinkable. The double standard exists and it exists out of a fundamental delusion that one religion is more legitimate or righteous than the other, and that there is no wiggle room for choice or morality in human beings beyond them. Islam is bad, Christianity is good. The followers of these religions act accordingly and Muslims become radicalized because Islam is inherently violent, period. The two cannot coexist peacefully, the thinking goes.

It’s a highly simplified and highly unrealistic manner of perceiving and interpreting the world that completely ignores any sort of nuance or individual human experience, but it’s easy, it appeals to people when they’re scared and it’s a nice prejudiced narrative that reinforces the comforting belief that we (the majority, the REAL Americans) are superior and fighting the good fight. Not to mention it’s also a great way to rake in votes. Everyone I spoke with wanted me to understand that.

“Extremism exists in all religions, Buddhism, Christianity…all of them. But the religion itself is not the cause. They’re [ISIS] perverting a religion to justify violence. Sick and bad people exist all over this world, and ISIS empowers the disenfranchised in the same way white-power groups like the KKK empower people here. People see what they want to see in religious texts,” said a student, 23.

If anything, pinning direct causation on Islam itself and supporting candidates who spout hate speech toward Muslims is doing ISIS and the like a favor. This is free recruiting. To push a minority group (or anyone for that matter!) further and further toward the fringes of society only increases their likelihood of disenfranchisement and disillusionment with the world around them, making them vulnerable for terrorist recruitment and more likely to lash out in a violent manner. This isn’t anything new and it absolutely isn’t exclusive to Muslims or the Middle East, or any other minority group. This spectrum of behavior exists in all humans and is reliant on their personalized response to anger and adversity and you see this manifest itself in all kinds of hate groups from the KKK to Neo-Nazism. It’s Psychology 101. (The recurring invasions of the Middle East, along with persistent drone strikes and never-ending military presence on soil that isn’t ours doesn’t do much to ease animosity between foreigners and the west, but that’s a different story entirely.)

The kids who were pushed to the edge and decided to shoot up Columbine High School didn’t do so because a religion or dogma provoked them, they did so because their perception of the world had become warped. Religion didn’t set them off on their rampage, a whole host of environmental factors did, and to simplify it down to one singular tipping point or reason is delusional and disingenuous to the complexity of how and why people behave. This doesn’t serve as legitimacy for how ISIS operates and the atrocities they’ve committed, but it does serve as an exposition for one (of the many) reasons why terrorism exists and will continue to exist. It’s possible to understand behavior without legitimizing it, and ISIS will continue to use Islam as a shield for murderous hate until the world stops linking the two together, and until the rest of the world realizes that being Muslim isn’t a predisposition to violence.

It’s frankly astounding that a group that has been so thoroughly vilified at every opportunity continues to feel welcome in such an unwelcoming place, but every single – and I mean every single person – I interviewed said they felt welcome in the United States and the numbers support that feeling of wellbeing. Despite viral videos of abhorrent racism and xenophobia exemplified by these assholes and this maniac and, of course, the rotting tangerine who is still running for president, Muslim-Americans seem to be feeling’ alright. No matter how hard the right tries to paint them as villains, sleeper cells or criminals to be surveilled, it doesn’t seem to matter.

I’ll leave you with this, from one of the men I met at the mosque:

“I think a lot of people group the entire Middle East into one stereotyped identity, with bearded men who ride camels and women who are slaves to men. It’s flat-out wrong. If there’s one thing I want people to know, it’s that Islam doesn’t represent one thing. I am a Muslim, but I listen to Drake, I go out on weekdays and I’ve smoked weed. My religion defines me, sure, but it is not my entire identity. I am a human being, just like you.”