Mississippi Muslims react to Trump
By Riley Manning
Daily Journal
TUPELO, MS
When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suggested a ban on Muslims entering the United States on Monday, Mohammad Ashfaq was speechless.
“I don’t know what to say if a person in a position of such responsibility does not consider Muslim people to be part of America,” Ashfaq said. “Talk like this is very strange. What does America stand for?”
Ashfaq immigrated from Pakistan in 1977, at age 23, to attend Cornell University, where he earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. Now he’s a senior research scientist at Ole Miss and has been working with the university since 2005. He noted he has been an American longer than many natural-born citizens.
“I got married here, had children, raised them,” he said. “I’m a grandfather. Think of the ones who were raised here, who are now being looked at with suspicion. How do they feel?”
He also said Trump had failed to consider the innumerable number of Muslims contributing to industry and the economy, people like Sara Abu Ghazaleh, who graduated from Mississippi State University in May with a degree in biomedical engineering. She came to the U.S. from Egypt for school in 2011 and now works in Texas on an extended STEM visa.
“When I heard about what Trump said, I thought it was funny,” she said. “Like, I can’t believe there’s a real person out there who thinks like this.”
In some ways, she said, Trump’s flavor of profiling already exists among some Americans.
“I don’t look super Middle Eastern. In Mississippi, people mistake me for Latino,” she said. “When people find out I’m from Egypt and was raised in a Muslim household, their view of me changes from a gender perspective and a nationality perspective. All of a sudden, I’m too Middle Eastern and not American enough. Who is anyone to decide that?”
Halim Boumedjirek, a Pakistan native who helped found the Islamic Center of Tupelo, said he wasn’t upset by Trump’s statements and took heart that so many denounced him, even Trump’s fellow Republicans.
“I don’t think this is his limit. I think he will continue to say things,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do about such a person. He’s just showing who he is.”
His main concern was that the American people not feel threatened by Islam because of ISIS. After all, worldwide, ISIS has killed more Muslims than it has any other religious group. And in that, he noted a discrepancy when looking at atrocities committed at home and abroad, like last week’s San Bernardino shooting, and the Paris attacks before that.
“There are hundreds of shootings in this country, but no one blames the shooter’s religion unless it’s Islam,” Boumedjirek said. “But Islam’s key point is peace, peace, peace. We’re not facing a religion, but a bunch of criminals hiding behind Islam to achieve their agenda.”
riley.manning@journalinc.com