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- [00:05]
A
Okay. Welcome to this special episode of the Joy Reid Show. Please take a moment before we go any further to hit like and subscribe. And please also share this episode. Share it with a friend. Share it with somebody that might not be a friend. This is the way that we grow this important independent media so that we can continue bringing you all the information straight no chaser. The MFA in Boston just laid off not only their Native American art curator, but also their Islamic art curator, who is the only Muslim Islamic art curator in North America and Western Europe. I wonder what message they're trying to send in this safe DEI free Trump era. So this week, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston laid off 33 employees, or about 6.3% of its staff. And while the MFA denies that the cuts targeted specifically workers of color, as you just heard, among those positions eliminated were the institution's only black, only Muslim, and only indigenous curators. Other eliminated roles include the head of Learning and community development, the senior manager of Equity programs, and the senior Director of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and accessibility. And unlike the previous round of layoffs, in 2020, these cuts were made without executive pay cuts or offering any early retirement packages. In an open letter to institution leadership, 130 faculty and librarians at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design called on the museum to rehire the three curators, and nearly 2,000 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for their reinstatement. This is just one story in a litany of stories that tell the tale of Trump's America, where diversity, equity and inclusion have been turned into veritable crimes and corporations and even venerable institutions are caving. While white Christian nationalism has made the right's longtime marginalization and targeting of Muslims feel like public policy, complete with a brand new Muslim ban and a ban on visas for people in more than a dozen Muslim majority countries. While all but criminalizing the demonstration of any sort of support for Palestinians in the occupied west bank and Gaza, there couldn't be a more apt moment to speak with one of the foremost advocates for Muslim communities in America. Salam Al Mariadi is president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He's an expert on Islam in the West, Muslim reform movements, human rights, democracy, national security, and Middle east politics. He has spoken at the White House and Capitol Hill, and he has represented the US at international human rights and religious freedom conferences. Here's our full conversation in the basement, and Salam Maryadi joins me now. Salam, it's so good to see you. Welcome to the basement.
- [03:07]
B
Oh wow, I'm really enjoying it. Here.
- [03:09]
A
Thank you very much. We are so excited to have you. And so I feel like I'm gonna start at the present, and then I'm gonna go back. But it has been a really momentous year for the Muslim community in this country. I mean, the highs, obviously, Zorhan Mamdani winning in New York City, and obviously the lieutenant governor of the state of Virginia, a Muslim woman. So, like, big highs, yes, but also some, like, pretty significant, frightening moments. I mean, the campaign against Mamdani was incredibly Islamophobic. Didn't work, but it happened. And now you've had the shooting of two national guardsmen in D.C. which has touched off another round of, you know, Donald Trump saying, no more, quote, unquote, third world countries can immigrate. No more people from Afghanistan. How would you assess the sort of the state of Muslims in America?
- [04:02]
B
Well, there's a lot there, and there's a lot to talk about, so I'm glad. First of all, thank you for inviting me to have this conversation. It's so important because I think as Muslims, we're always struggling with the fact that we're just talking to ourselves and we're not talking enough to the public. And when we watch the news, people are talking about us. They're not talking to us. So I think this is momentous for us to have a chance to talk to somebody as influential and prestigious as you are.
- [04:30]
A
Thank you.
- [04:31]
B
In media, we really appreciate and honor this invitation. But as far as Zohran Mamdani, I think what's important is that he ran a campaign without shying away from being Muslim. And many times in the past, and it could be five years ago, 10 years ago, definitely 20 years ago, if a person was Muslim and he wanted to run for office, he would hide that. He wouldn't necessarily say, hey, I'm an American Muslim, because he knew or she knew that the attacks would start. Keith Ellison was the exception that proved the rule because he was already part of the state legislature in Minneapolis. Same for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. But a lot of people, especially in local politics, want to come out and say, yeah, I'm a Muslim. Zahran did, and I think that's an important step. And he also was pro Palestine, which to us is suicidal if you want to run for office. And many politicians in the past, if they knew that we were pro Palestinian, they wouldn't want to touch us. We were the kiss of death. We even joked around that if we wanted somebody to lose, we'd endorse that candidate, and. And that would be our strategy. But now things have changed. And obviously Zoharan is giving confidence to hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of American Muslims, not just to run for office, but to be civically engaged, to be more involved in local politics, be more involved in your school board and so many other areas. And I think that's what's important, because people keep claiming, if you read the amicus brief in the Supreme Court for the travel ban, the premise of the whole travel ban is Muslims can't assimilate. And Justice Sotomayor, who wrote the dissent, said that's the usual argument of the government is they pick on a group that they claim cannot assimilate. And 100 years ago, it was Jews, it was Catholics, it was Eastern Orthodox, today it's Muslims. And then they bring a national security argument to why they need to have a travel ban. And whenever the Executive branch says, well, it's a matter of national security, we all step back and say, well, we can't do anything about that. Which is what the Supreme Court usually does when the executive branch claims invokes national security. They did that in the famous Korematsu case for Japanese American internment. They said it was a matter of national security. They went to war in Iraq. It was a matter of national security. And that was done just to shut us up, that we didn't have any ability to argue against war. And that leads us to some of the challenges that we are facing, not just as American Muslims, but as Americans, that this propensity for war, the genocide in Gaza, that somehow is not being covered as much, even though hundreds of Gazans, hundreds of Palestinians are killed all the time, we're not hearing about it. And it's interesting that in the narrative, in the status quo, if you say, let's cover the genocide in Gaza, you're accused of being a terrorist sympathizer. But if you support war, then you're a national security expert and you're brought on the show to say pretty much nothing. But they say, oh, we have a national security expert now on our show. So those are just some of the challenges that we're still facing in terms of media narratives, in terms of our place in American society. But I feel that even though the forces of excluding American Muslims, Muslims are still great, starting with Stephen Miller and all the assistants of the president in the Executive branch, in the White House and in this Republican Congress, even though we're faced with those challenges, it is more critical now to show that American Muslims are part of America. It's more important now to show that Islam is, is an American religion. It is not a foreign faith. It's as American as Christianity, Judaism, and any other faith in America. And therefore our role in making that argument or demonstrating that kind of life, that American life is more critical now than ever.
- [09:09]
A
You know, there's a lot that you said there, and I want to unpack a couple of things. I think it's always funny when people say things like Muslims cannot assimilate or when more than a third of the Africans enslaved in America from 1619 on.
- [09:22]
B
That's right.
- [09:23]
A
Were Muslims. I think they're pretty assimilated. I think these, these, these American Muslims, I mean, you mentioned, you know, Congressman Carson, you mentioned Keith Ellison. A third of African Americans right now are Muslims. So it's like for black folks, it strikes us as always funny when you hear that, because a lot of us have cousins and family members who are Muslim. We're like, they're pretty assimilated. And they generally mean brown Muslims can assimilate. Right. They mean Muslims from the Middle East. And so there's this weird way they've kind of, they've like bifurcated the Muslim world to block African Americans out of it. Right. So is there, is that bifurcation, has it taken inside of the Muslim community?
- [10:00]
B
It has. And I think internally or as a community, we're still suffering from that bifurcation, as you called it, division. And part of it is that for my family, for example, immigrant family from Iraq, they came to Phoenix, Arizona, and we pretty much lived in a white neighborhood. And so a lot of immigrant Muslim communities grew up thinking they were white or they were part of the white.
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A
Or aspiring to whiteness in a way. Yeah.
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B
And there's nothing wrong with having white friends. Right?
- [10:37]
A
Yeah.
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B
But to be exclusively part of the white community. And I think after 9, 11, after Gaza, it's a wake up call that, hey, there's a big part of America that we're a part of and it's not exclusive to one race. And so that is part of the division. I think also repercussions of colonialism. So, for example, a lot of people in my ethnic group or among Arab Americans, they worry about being too dark. Don't go out in the sun, don't.
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A
Be in the sun. A lot of black folks, unfortunately, do too, in some cases. Yeah.
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B
So I think there was like a.
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A
Paper bag test in our history as well.
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B
Yeah. So that came from colonialism. You know, the white master came in, told us what to do, who our leaders are how to be, quote, unquote civilized. And so people aspire to be like their colonial masters. And so that was also brought here to America as immigrants, came from Muslim majority countries. So there's some of that, I think among younger generations of American Muslims, that issue has pretty much been settled.
- [11:58]
A
You know, it's so interesting you say that because Zorhan Mamdani, he's a young man, obviously, Mira Nair, his mother is a legend. I mean, she. She made Mississippi Masala. So black people are like, wait a minute, she's like pappy in the community. But one of the things that I think makes him different in that is that he is of Southeast Asian extraction, but he's also African. Like, he actually comes from Uganda originally. So it's a weird way in which he's already African. So he was sort of like pre Africanized when he came here. So he doesn't seem to have that kind of weird barrier. But what do you make of him just as a cultural figure? Because you'd mentioned, you know, he not only didn't run away from being Muslim, he made ads about being Muslim. Like, some of his ads were like leaning into the food that he eats. His community. Like, he leaned in.
- [12:39]
B
Yeah. And that's what was so inspiring about his campaign for all of us to see that and to see that, oh, my God, he's going to win big, like, historic win. We all thought that. Oh, no, he's definitely going to lose now because, you know, he's. He's using. He's talked about being Muslim too much, as some people thought. And so when he won that normalized what it means to be Muslim in America for us, not, oh, yeah, I happen to be Muslim. Or yeah, I have to fast. No, I'm proud of what I am and what I do as a Muslim. So he brought a lot of that pride to our community. And I think also he wasn't just running as an American Muslim. He's running as an American who's part of this multicultural society. And that is what is so astonishing. You know, when you follow what's happening in the Congress or read the establishment media about reports of Muslim communities, number one, it's usually about something violent. Even though violence is across the board.
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A
This is the most violent country on earth.
- [14:01]
B
Exactly.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And when you look statistically, Muslims comprise maybe 5% of the violence in American society. But they're the ones that get the attention because their race is followed, like this guy from Afghanistan. And instead of looking at the fact that he was recruited by the CIA when he was 15.
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A
Yeah. For a death squad. For what has been designated as a death squad.
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B
And he was brainwashed into killing Afghans, people of his own culture, and to either witness or to participate in rapes that were going on among his death squad and all that. And then you're wondering why, you know, he's.
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A
Surprise, surprise, he's violent.
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B
He's violent and he needed help. And there were markers where somebody needed to intervene. I mean, the President, he said it bluntly. He said, well, the guy, he went cuckoo.
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A
He went cuckoo. Yeah.
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B
Well, the reality is our counterterrorism policy is cuckoo.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That's where we need to look, is the policy itself, instead of the establishment, only looks to culture, looks to race, looks to religion, divides us along those lines. And then we're all caught in the spiral of which religion is better or which religion is worse. And I think that's what's really damaging America right now.
- [15:24]
A
And you also don't see Dylann roof planted onto every white Christian in America. Right. Or you don't see. But when there is a Muslim that is involved in any form of crime, all Muslims have to answer for it. And yet there are so few Muslim people in media who can actually sit on a set and discuss it because there's no recruitment there to really make sure that there's representation. It's sort of a can't lose, can't win situation.
- [15:50]
B
And look at this example of this man from Afghanistan. Where are the Afghans? Where are they, you know, who have suffered so long, for so many decades in war and during the fight against the Soviet Union, there were around a million Afghans that laid down their lives to defeat the Soviet Union. But did they ever benefit from the peace dividends from the Cold War? No.
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A
No.
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B
Did they get an acknowledgment from the United States government to say at least thank you to the Afghan people for all that you've done for us? No. Instead, again, you have CIA operations supporting bin Laden here or there, then he goes rogue, just like we supported Saddam Hussein.
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A
He went cuckoo.
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B
Yeah, exactly. And then we're blamed for it. Or when we went to the National Security Office in the White House and we told them, you know, the fact that the United States is financing and supporting a genocide in Gaza, you are going to deal with anti American sentiment that you've never seen before. There's going to be so much resentment, so much bitterness and so much hatred. Their answer was, we'll manage it. You know, we'll deal with it.
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A
Which White House because it feels like that you could say that White House about every White House. The only thing harder.
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B
Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter if it was Sullivan or whoever. Is it Ruby or not? I don't even know who's running that shop right now. But anyway, I mean, the oil companies are clearly big oil, the real president. But when it comes to really caring about anti American sentiment or engaging other peoples who have become allies to the United States, we have done a poor job as a country in supporting them, in bringing them some hope or some way of, of rehabilitating their country, renovating their country after all the damage from war. Instead, it's just more war, more invasions, more control. Now the US Government wants to regain control of the Bahrain base for strategic purposes. And that's how it's been for over 100 years. And that's the problem with US policy, is that we are stuck in this time of what happened 100 years ago when the British and the French divided much of the Muslim world between them and they drew arbitrary lines. They created countries that didn't exist before.
- [18:32]
A
Iraq being one of them.
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B
Iraq was definitely. The borders of Iraq were made by the British. And the more oil they found, the more the borders changed. And so we have been suffering from this policy for 100 years. And instead of going to that, we just go to more war. And then when there are repercussions of war that hurt America, we blame the culture or we blame the religion for that, for that issue.
- [19:05]
A
It's a vicious cycle. Because I think about the people in Afghanistan who, to your point, you know, in trapped in the Cold War mess with the Soviet Union and the United states between the two countries, what was like 40 years of occupation of that country, that was a normal country in the early 1990s. You go back and you look at, or, you know, you look at early pictures of it before the Taliban took over, and it was a quite normal country, but war has devastated it. Now. We've seen, you know, just the women of Afghanistan taken from, you know, shrouded and not able to get education to a decade or more of getting an education to now being thrown right back into the Taliban. The people of Afghanistan have gotten, as you said, very little for their support of the United States effort to supposedly liberate them.
- [19:54]
B
Right. They've only suffered more. And like you said, now under the rule of the Taliban, there's going to be more suffering, and we owe them. And to have some of them come over here as refugees, that's the least.
- [20:12]
A
It's the least we could do. I mean, the same issue happened with Vietnam where people came from Vietnam and suddenly they were hated. They were hated immigrant, minority. But it was their fault. It was our fault that we had to bring them here because we brought war to them. Right. Talk about, you talk about being an Iraqi American. Iraq, to me is maybe one of the most egregious scandals in American military and political history. I mean, it was a war that. That had literally nothing to do with 9 11, but the scapegoating. You know, Saddam Hussein was a horrific person, a horrific man, but he had nothing to do with 9 11.
- [20:45]
B
That's right.
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A
And the fight to create this sort of the determination to draw him into 911 involved torture in setting up a gulag in Guantanamo, in doing lies at the UN Besmirching the reputation of General Colin Powell. They did. You know, the Bush administration did everything they could to draw Iraq in because they obviously wanted the oil for you as a young kid growing up as a Muslim American, as an Iraqi American in your family, being an immigrant family, how did that impact you growing up?
- [21:20]
B
Well, actually, you know, by 2003, I was numb towards what was happening in Iraq because I really had most trauma or I felt more traumatized in 91 with the first Gulf War, when the United States decided that Iraq was not a friend anymore, it's a foe. And we were going to go to war. And I think James Baker said, it's a matter of our way of life. We're going to war to preserve our way of life and national security. And the same arguments. And there were lies then. At that time, the lies were Iraqi soldiers went to Kuwait and were throwing babies out of incubators. And I think that was testimony of one of the Saudi ambassador's daughters at the United Nations. It was later lied. Yeah, they said it was not true and many other lies. And so when I first saw the bombings and it was on cnn, you saw it live, I couldn't believe it. I didn't think that the United States would go to war because in my mind, as an American, what threat is Iraq to the United States? And yes, Saddam Hussein is a terrible person. He's a dictator, but that's the job of the Iraqi people to deal with him. And yes, we should support the Iraqi people in creating change, but going to war is not going to create positive change. If anything, it's going to entrench Saddam, which it did for the next 12 years. And then 2003 happened. And what happened there was more than war. The United States decided to sponsor their own militia to go into Iraq. And so there was a US Sponsored militia led by Ahmed Chalabi. And then he gathered people much like Israel is trying to form their own gangs in Gaza right now. And so the militias started fighting each other. It turned out more Iraqis were killed as a result of that, in addition to all the bombings and the invasion of Iraq. And now I think there was a Brown University, a Brown University report that estimated that at least 800,000 children under the age of five were killed in Iraq. And to many Americans, they're unaware of that. And if they are, it's just a number. You kill a million people, that's just a statistic. But if you know the person who was killed, that's a tragedy. And we don't know Iraqi people, so they remain faceless to us. And even though they talk about radical Islam, that's being, you know, that's running rampant throughout the world, nobody knows which leader we're talking about. So which, which leader of this terrible group are we fighting now? Nobody has an answer. But they want to legislate, you know, foreign terrorist organization legislation that is really designed to keep us American Muslims out of power and disenfranchise us by saying that if we have any association with any groups, that is, we're speaking out against war and we're supporting the independence and liberation of these people, then we are national security threats. And that's what was done with Mahmoud Khalil, the student at Columbia, because he wrote an op ed, the Secretary of State said, you're a national security threat. So where we're going as Americans with this is deeply troubling. But I, as somebody who was born there, still have family there. My family, members of my extended family were killed by Saddam Hussein, and members of my extended family were killed by isis. And they suffered also because of the sanctions. Kids who were having kidney failures could not get anesthesia for operation, so they died with kidney failures. That happened to one of my cousins. So there's just a lot of suffering, but the Iraqis have just become numb to it. And just that sort of just accepted that they just want to have a pause in the wars and in the conflicts and just try to rebuild. So I visited Iraq a couple months ago. My father passed away, so I went for the funeral services there. And we noticed that, hey, they're just trying to rebuild Iraq. More apartment buildings are being erected, more shops, more malls. The art district is being renovated. And so people just want to have A life without war. And so that's what they're going through right now. But more importantly, I think we as Americans have to figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with the people of the Middle East. Because just having either a conflict of war or how our businesses are multinational corporations that you alluded to earlier, how they can make more money from them, that's not going to work for us as Americans. And it's hypocrisy when our political leaders take billions of dollars from Muslims overseas. But when Muslims are successful here, they claim that we're invading and we're infiltrating America. And I think that hypocrisy has to be called out.
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A
Well, I mean, the hypocrisy probably is the most glaring when it comes to Saudi Arabia. If you want to talk about radical Islam, the Wahhabist sort of sect, which isn't even part of real sort of traditional Islamic, it's in Saudi Arabia. The 15 hijackers at 9, 11 were Saudis. And yet Donald Trump is besties with the bone saw emir. And he doesn't seem to have any problem with it. And you've got a lot of Americans who have no problem flying over and doing Liv golf and participating in sort of the sort of dirty business of dealing with Saudi Arabia.
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B
Yes.
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A
Which is basically an American oil company with a crown, you know, and so it's just everything about it and our relationship with them, it really makes the relationship with the rest of the Muslim world seem incredibly hypocritical.
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B
It is. And also that the rest Muslim world is just. Is meaningless.
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A
Is meaningless. Well, and then Qatar is good when they're giving us money and then bad and a terrorist outfit when they're not. It's like it's all transactional based on how much money the oil companies and Trump can extract.
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B
That's right. And geopolitical interests.
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A
Yeah.
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B
If we can use them, they're good. If we can't, they're terrible.
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A
Do you get the sense, just as somebody who, as you said, was traumatized by the two times that we went to war with Iraq, that we're using the same rationale that we use with Saddam Hussein to go to war potentially with Maduro in Venezuela?
- [28:34]
B
Yes, absolutely. In terms of narcotics and the crime there, and then Trump wanting to replace him with somebody who was actually convicted in US Court for doing exactly the same thing. It's just hypocritical. It's mind boggling. But you know, when I was in college, I was actually a member of My first political activity was with a Latin American group called Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador cispis. And that's when I studied on my own, because I was actually studying chemistry at the. But on my own, I drew parallels between US Policy in Latin America and US Policy in the Middle East. It's the same. You prop up certain dictators and as long as they're supporting our geopolitical interests, they're allies, they're friends, they're good. And when they don't, then you replace.
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A
Them.
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B
And you go to war if you have to go to war. And there was just so much corruption. And the level of corruption in the Middle east, as we know, is just mind boggling how much corruption there is. And then you wonder why these are failed states. Because, let's face it, I think the United States and Israel continue to push certain countries. Like that's what's happening with Iran now. As bad as the mullahs are, we want that changed. Well, that's the responsibility of the Iranian people in their elections and supporting the Iranian people. There are ways to have a positive effect for change in Iran without going to war. But instead it's about war, creating a failed state in Iran so that they can't really have any influence in the region. And then the repercussions of the failed state is the rise of militias, more violence. Then we have to block their refugees or any kind of immigration from those countries.
- [30:31]
A
I mean, and ditto Syria, ditto Somalia, ditto. You just go on and on and on. We just keep Nigeria, the latest one, where they're like, ooh, there's oil there, let's disrupt that, create militias. It feels like we're just rubber stamping the same thing over and over again.
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B
And for Nigeria, yes, I care for the Christians in Nigeria and I'm appalled by what Muslim extremists are doing to Christians there. But for the President of the United States to talk about Christians in Nigeria and not even being concerned or mentioning.
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A
Christians in Palestine, right, when they're literally in Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, I mean, make it make sense. Let's talk about Palestine. Because for me, just as somebody who grew up watching Nightline and seeing Bibi Netanyahu when he was in his sort of pundit phase, espoused the same kind of vicious policy he's now adopting as prime minister, and knowing who he is and understanding who he is and how he is, and watching him kind of get away with, not even kind of watching him get away with perpetrating a literal genocide adjudicated by the icj. He is a war criminal adjudicated by the icj. But watching him be feted in Washington by the current president, treated as a completely normal political figure and also treated as a completely normal figure by the previous President, by Joe Biden, by the Biden administration and allowed to begin that genocide under Biden, it feels like that might be the ultimate moral contradiction here for the United States. We're supposed to love freedom, we're supposed to care about free people, we're supposed to care about Christians. There are lots of them in Palestine. What do you make of the symmetry of the Biden and Bush policies on that region?
- [32:23]
B
Yeah, for us, the foreign policy of either Democratic or Republican administrations have been the same. Maybe there's with the Democrats you get to do more cultural understanding forms with them and you go out and try to tweak a policy here or there. But the policies by and large are the same.
- [32:51]
A
Why do you think that is?
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B
Well, I think basically AIPAC and the pro Israel lobbies, for example, just as a small example, I was nominated by Richard Gephardt, who's the House Minority leader back in 1998 to serve on a commission, six month commission to look at counterterrorism policy and try to make it better. And I would have been the first Muslim to serve on such a congressional commission. The Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of American Jewish Presidents and the Zionist Organization of America. And you know, of course aipac, without mentioning, without coming out, was trying to influence Gephardt to rescind my nomination. And he ended up rescinding it. And as a result they had to pick somebody else who was not Muslim to serve on the commission. Just so that. And, and the New York Times headline, written by a friend of mine, Laurie Goodstein, a religion reporter for the New York Times, said that basically the headline is Gephardt Bows to Jews Anger. And that is the fear that many of our politicians are facing. They don't respond to what's right for America, they're just responding to mitigating fear. And that's exactly what Gebhardt did. And so that incident is a microcosm of the whole policy in the Middle east is that. And Zohran's father, I think his name is Mahmoud Mamdani, wrote an excellent book that I think everybody should read. It's called Good Muslim, Bad Muslim. And of course the Muslim, it's like the House Negro and the Field Negro, right? And the Good Muslim is yeah, whatever you want. Here's more money, we'll buy weapons that we don't know how to use, that we don't need to use, but we'll do whatever you need just to be on your good side. But if you oppose, and by the.
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A
Way, we'll use them on people who look like us, Right? Right.
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B
If we use them, we'll use them on our own people. But if instead they oppose like what's happening in Gaza, then they're terrorists and they're the bad Muslim. And that's how we are viewed to this day. It's this binary that you're either good, meaning you hate Islam, you speak out against Islam, and you say Islam is an outdated religion, but let's deal with, let's support whatever you say, Master, or you stand up for what's right and you're going to be accused of being a terrorist sympathizer or bringing Sharia. Even though they don't know what the word Sharia means. It means the way, like in Christianity, it's the way in. There are Jewish laws that Jews observe, which they should, and when Muslims learn how to pray, that comes from the Sharia. When Muslims are told, follow the rule of law, and the rule of law is the constitution that's part of our Sharia, but nobody bothers to try to understand. They just say, well, they're just trying to cover women's faces and chop our hands and things like that. No, we're not doing that. And as you said before, the hypocrisy of it is that you are taking money from those who enable that ideology, but you're blaming us for that problem that is overseas. We're American Muslims. We believe in American Islam. We believe in the Constitution. Yes, we are an imperfect union, but we still believe in that effort to perfect our union. And so we are very important in, in that process. Therefore, look at us as the reference to Islam. Don't go overseas for that reference to Islam.
- [37:08]
A
And specifically, when you look at the Palestinians, I, in my lifetime, I've never seen more empathy. I've never seen any empathy, to be honest, for Palestinian people. My mom and I were kind of alone when I was growing up. We were very pro Palestinian. My father lived in South Africa for a lot of his life, and the South Africans are very much aligned to the Palestinian people. Nelson Mandela spoke about this, you know, extensively. And so that's where we were as a family. But there was not a lot of friends there. I mean, when I went to college or there was a pro Palestinian kind of small community there. But it's not. It wasn't common. Now it seems that the. There's been an ideological shift, not just on the left, but even on the right, where you're seeing now a majority of Americans saying, no, we have more sympathy for the people that are being genocided than for those who are doing it. Israel's esteem in the United States has dropped a lot because of what they've done. What do you make of that shift? Do you think that it'll be meaningful policy wise at some point?
- [38:07]
B
I think it will. Just like the campaign against war in Vietnam or for the civil rights movement or anti apartheid movement. It started on campuses and then it shifted into electoral politics. And so those who protested and who occupied buildings, including Eric Holder, who told me himself he occupied buildings when he was a student, And so many other school officials to go and blame students who are basically speaking out their conscience, which is what they're supposed to do. We teach them about great Americans, great leaders who, who went against the grain and spoke out for what was right and that we should emulate them. And they do that and we punish them by calling them anti Semitic. They didn't buy it. None of them are buying it. And so that energy now is being shifted to electoral politics. And there are many people now who are unapologetically pro Palestinian running for office and many who are now saying, we will not take AIPAC money.
- [39:19]
A
Yeah, that is something that has changed. And by the way, we talked about Zorhan a lot, but he was hectored about Israel. You know, when there was the moment in the primary campaign where everyone was asked, where's the first place you're going to visit if you were mayor? And everyone said, Israel, Israel, Israel. And he said, the Bronx. And he was just like hectored over it and just constantly, even up to his most recent interviews. That's right. Asked to. You sure you don't want to take it back that you're from the Palestinian.
- [39:46]
B
Eric Adams had to go to Israel after the election, municipal election, to say.
- [39:51]
A
He was happy to serve the Israeli people.
- [39:53]
B
Yeah, I worked for you.
- [39:54]
A
He worked for you. That's weird.
- [39:56]
B
I did what I did for you. Or something to that effect.
- [39:58]
A
Yeah, it was weird.
- [39:59]
B
It was astonishing.
- [40:00]
A
It was odd.
- [40:01]
B
Very odd. Now, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, here's the people again. They've been around for thousands of years, like Palestinian Christians, literally 2,000 years. And so they're told at some point that the land that you've lived on for hundreds, if not thousands of years does not belong to you anymore. You need to leave. And it's happening to this day now. It's in the West Bank. It just keeps spreading. And they're suffering violence, and then when they rise up against that violence, they're called the terrorists.
- [40:38]
A
Correct.
- [40:41]
B
And that's the cuckoo ness of our counterterrorism policy, is that you're not allowing people to speak their conscience to articulate what their aspirations are, to do what we Americans are proud about as Americans. You know, the Declaration of Independence and the founding charters of our country. And they're doing the same thing. And if they're violent, if it's violent against civilians, it's wrong. But resistance is legitimate, is allowed according to international law against occupation. But you can't have a conversation about that right now.
- [41:22]
A
It's interesting because, you know, the history of the United States, of course, is that the people who were here for thousands of years when they would fight back against colonialism, they were also called terrorists and they were deemed killable. You can kill as many of them as you want because they were denying you God's vision for you.
- [41:40]
B
Having the land, manifest destiny.
- [41:42]
A
The manifest destiny of the Europeans to have the land. And I think that sometimes when people talk about the Middle east, they think you're excluding the longtime existence of Jewish people on the land because there have been Jewish people there, but the ones who were coming from Europe are coming from Europe and there are people there. And they were including Jewish people there. That's right. But there were also a lot of Christian and Muslim Arab people there. They were already there.
- [42:08]
B
But the Christians, you know, an interesting footnote to that is the Christians of Jerusalem have the holy church there. And they decided that the one who's going to take care of the church, who that owns the keys to the church and opens it every day would be a Muslim family. It was that kind of trust that the Christians there had with Muslims, and it was that kind of trust that Jews had with Muslims before the creation of Israel and before the rise of political Zionism in the region. Even in our own history, there are stories of Islamic leaders saying, what happened to the Jews? Oh, they were wiped out by the Romans. Well, then let's bring them back. Because they have much to do with the Holy Land as Muslims do. That's the whole idea of Islam, that there's no such thing as Judeo Christian or excluding Islam from monotheism. It's Judeo Christian, Islamic, it's Abrahamic. And then for all the people, every religion is important for one main reason, and that is to restore and defend the human dignity of every human being, even if they have no faith. That's what we're losing in the religious community right now. It's become dogma, it's become weaponized. And so that's the extremism that we're dealing in all faiths right now. But because the grossest demonstrations of that come from the Middle east because they use, because they don't have weapons, they use individuals as weapons and commit suicide bombings, for example, as if they had the only problem where. Whereas Israeli extremists and white nationalists, they don't have to do anything because you got the governments that are going and prosecuting wars against people that they deem uncivilized or heathens or don't belong there. And we need to have a more robust and sophisticated conversation about how we're dealing with the problem of extremism.
- [44:31]
A
Well, indeed, in Israel they do have a history of the Irgun and the Stern gang. We've talked about it a lot on the show. That people sort of wipe out their.
- [44:39]
B
Terrorists, became leaders, became prime ministers.
- [44:42]
A
That's exactly right. Are you a one state solution guy or a two state solution guy? When it comes to Palestine, I lean more to.
- [44:48]
B
First of all, it's whatever the Palestinians want.
- [44:50]
A
Absolutely. Very true.
- [44:52]
B
It's not my job to dictate onto them what they want. But I see the two state option just not feasible anymore. It's just now half of Gaza is gone and even the other half, they're trying to make it so you can't live there.
- [45:11]
A
Well, half the west bank is. The occupied west bank is gone too. I mean, the settlements are just exploding across Gaza.
- [45:16]
B
They're kicking people out of Jerusalem to this day. So I see it as a one state solution that if we're a secular democracy, why can't we support secular democracies elsewhere? And so we should allow for Jews, Christians and Muslims to live together peacefully and whatever model they come up with, then we accept that model. But I don't see a two state solution being feasible anymore because the Israelis have made it. So it's impossible.
- [45:50]
A
Yeah. Let's talk about Impact. Why do you feel, why did you feel that there needed to be an organization like Impact and talk about the founding and talk about where it came from?
- [46:00]
B
Sure. So I was, before that I was ready to graduate from high school. My dad sat me down and he goes, you know, I want you to choose the major in college that you like the most because then you'll be the best at that choice. I Said, great. And so the next night he. He sat me down again and he goes, okay, so what have you decided? Are you gonna be a doctor or an engineer?
- [46:26]
A
It sounded like we had very similar pairings.
- [46:28]
B
I think it happens a lot.
- [46:29]
A
It didn't say lawyer because that was usually in the mix.
- [46:31]
B
Yeah, now it's lawyer.
- [46:33]
A
Okay.
- [46:33]
B
But I tried to do it to both. Didn't like it. Worked as an engineer for two years, left it, and became a full time activist at the Islamic center of Southern California. And then from that, the Muslim Public Affairs Council was born in 1988. So it's been 37 years. And the idea was we need to engage the rest of society more. Islam is not a religion for Muslims alone. We call our prophet a mercy to humanity. So if he's a mercy to humanity, what are we doing with humanity? We can't be in our own bubble. We cannot become ghettoized in our own communities. So get out there and start engaging communities. There's a beautiful verse in the Quran that I think is what MPAC aspires to. It says, good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with that which is good and much better, so that the one with whom there is enmity becomes as if he is your closest and warmest friend. So I believe religion promotes social conversion, not necessarily theological conversion. That's between the person and God. That's sacred. It's not my job to tell the person what religion they want to ask me about Islam, I can tell them. But other than that, a person should be free to choose what they want. So we felt that there need to be engagement, there needs to be reform within our own community in terms of how we approach Islam. Because the way it's working in the Middle east is not working. That's why we're here. That's why we're American. And we believe that American Islam can have a positive influence on world Islam, just like American Catholicism or American Jewry had a positive influence on their respective faiths. And that's what the Muslim Public Affairs Council works on, is to engage the larger society, to be involved in issues of importance for America as American Muslims, as people of faith, from our own faith, and to work in developing American Muslims so that they can be better citizens. Because we don't see any dissonance between being a good American citizen and being a good Muslim. In fact, to be a good Muslim, you have to be a good American citizen. And we believe that for us, we're being great citizens when we follow our faith.
- [49:03]
A
So let's talk About a few areas where, you know, where impact can make a difference and where American Muslims are striving to make a difference and in some cases succeeding and in some cases being in some ways blocked. Let's talk about Hollywood. You guys recently had a fabulous gala. I was very sad that I did not make it. I made it virtually that it was in Hollywood. And Hollywood is one of those places where the best and the worst, right? You've got some incredible Muslim filmmakers who are making great strides. But then you also have these just stereotypical horrific depictions, particularly after 9 11, that just wouldn't quit. What's the state of Muslims in Hollywood?
- [49:39]
B
I mean, I think it's a lot better, especially with the work of our common friend, one of my most trusted staff members, directors, vice president, senior vice president of the Hollywood Bureau, Suhadu Beidi, who has connected people, who has educated Hollywood executives about Islam, who has brought the brain trust of Muslim scholars also to Hollywood so that they can see for themselves and learn for themselves what Islam is all about and. And trying to promote more opportunities for Muslim stories, our narratives to be part of the stories in Hollywood. And this is. Obviously, we're still at the beginning of this, and there's a long ways to go, but compared to where we were, you know, when I was growing up, where, like you said, it was just, you know, one negative stereotype, one villain after another, that we now feel that people are listening, people are open to incorporating a Muslim perspective, especially when they have Muslim characters that they're writing about or filming about. So we feel that there's been a lot of progress there. And the two areas that MPAC works on are public opinion and public policy. And you can't change public policy until you have a handle on public opinion. And Hollywood has the best opportunity in terms of having an impact on public opinion.
- [51:30]
A
Has the anti DEI wave that has hit Hollywood in a way that almost makes me feel like their whole George Floyd era, Black Square era was fake. Because it's really hit hard on African American filmmakers particularly. Has there been the same kind of impact, negative impact for Muslims?
- [51:50]
B
Well, I mean, it's sort of like it was hard for us in the beginning. Yeah, it's a little harder now, but relatively speaking, it hasn't changed that much because it was always a struggle for.
- [52:00]
A
Me and it was always bad.
- [52:03]
B
Beggars can't be choosers, as they say. So we're used to it. And therefore, I believe Muslim artists, there's more resilience. And so they're out there working so empac, really our job is just to open doors for them and connect people so that those who are making decisions in Hollywood at least have Muslims as part of their decision making apparatus. So I think there's been tremendous improvement with the work of the Hollywood Bureau and there's a lot more to do obviously. And now it's not just Hollywood, it's also Silicon Valley and tech and artificial intelligence. So we're now getting into that arena and discussing how AI will influence narratives in the future. But it's always been the same and I think for every community. How do we control our own narrative rather than have somebody control it for us? Talk about us instead of talking to us. How do we have more self representation in media? How is it that the. For example, a very small example. Why is it that many Christians don't know that Muslims believe in Jesus? Everywhere I go to a church and here's the verse that says Mary, Virgin Mary talks about how can she have a child, no man has touched her and God says, no, if I will it. The angel tells Mary, if God wills it, it will be. And so when I show them the verse, they go, oh, we didn't know that you guys believed in Jesus. Yeah, we believed in Jesus as long as, you know, from the beginning of our faith. And in fact there's a whole chapter on Mary in the Quran and Jesus after Moses is referenced throughout the Quran. So there's a lot to be done in terms of educating people about Islam. And you know, we say Alhamdulillah, praise be to God. We have a lot of Muslims, we don't need more Muslims between you and God. But we're not here to convert, but we're here to promote understanding so that we can have a peaceful coexistence.
- [54:15]
A
I mean, I think sometimes people do forget when they say Abrahamic they mean Abraham was the father of all the children of Ishmael as well as the, you know, those are the forefathers of Judaism and Christianity. Isaac. So he's kind of both of their.
- [54:28]
B
Fathers, both Ishmael and Isaac. And Islam respects both and looks at them equally and that it was to Abraham that God had promised everything. And it was to those people at that time. You can't just say, well, I am a descendant of Abraham and therefore I own that land. The Quran says the people who have claim to Abraham are those who actually follow what he did.
- [54:52]
A
And there's the small matter of him being from the land of Ur, which is not where Palestine is, it's kind of Iran, Mesopotamia. Yeah, yeah, so there's that whole thing, too. He might have been an immigrant. So, you know, we're all. Imagine. Exactly.
- [55:05]
B
Prophets were immigrants.
- [55:06]
A
There you go.
- [55:08]
B
What would Moses have done if he weren't accepted when leaving Egypt?
- [55:12]
A
Right.
- [55:13]
B
And it's astonishing that people have that level of ignorance or just they deliberately exclude. And I think all of our scriptures talk about it, that God said one thing and then men. It's usually men. Sorry about that. But it's usually us men who wipe it out, or we distort it to mean something else. And actually the opposite of what God intended. As if God wants war or God wants women to be oppressed, or God wants certain people to be chastised as heathens and so on and so forth. And I think this is the problem of extremism that we're dealing with in all of our faiths. And at some point, we have to say that we the people are the ones who own the property of scripture. The property of the scripture belongs to the people, not to one guy that we're waiting for revelation to tell us what it means.
- [56:14]
A
It's a good reason to keep religion out of politics. And don't even get me started on the Ethiopian Bible, because it will blow people's minds. We'll be here for another hour.
- [56:20]
B
And I agree. Keep religion out of politics. That's why we have an establishment clause.
- [56:24]
A
That's it.
- [56:24]
B
And I agree. We should not have America influenced by one religion over another and worse, one ideology of a religion over other ideologies of other religions. Because you have Christians who are very much against what's happening by a lot of the Christian fundamentalists. And they see when Christian fundamentalists believe that it's okay to kill Palestinian Christians so that they can see the second coming of Christ. It's mind boggling.
- [57:00]
A
It is odd. Ted Cruz. Sorry, I didn't mean to name him Ted Cruz. Yeah. Let's talk about something a little closer to my home here, which is the media, the news media, which is one of the places you talk about talking about folks without having them in the room. Ta da. The media. I mean, there are some great Muslim journalists. There's Ayman Moyuddin, obviously, there's Ali Velshi. And I've just named, I think the only two. There are not. There are more, but Rula Jibril is fantastic when she can get.
- [57:28]
B
A lot of them are on social media now, like Mehdi Hasan.
- [57:30]
A
Mehdi Hassan obviously is brilliant, but he had to really found his own thing in order to do Dean Obadallah. Who's doing in amazing radio. But we can name them on two hands, right? The numbers who actually get booked and get on national networks. That is a problem when there's so much conversation about Muslims, but there are not enough people that are actually able to speak on behalf of the community, and not even speak on behalf of the community, just represent the community. How do we change that?
- [57:59]
B
Well, I mean, I think a lot of responsibility is on our shoulders as Muslim organizations to create mechanisms where young Muslims find opportunities to enter the field and are supported by our community, because nobody's gonna do it for us. Yes, you have talent like Mahdi Hassan or Aman, but that's the exception that proves the rule that, okay, unless you have that kind of talent, you're not going to make it. No, we just want people, like you said, just when there's a conversation, can you just invite a Muslim who may not be running an organization or any dignitary, but just somebody who understands the sentiment of the Muslim people to be part of the conversation? And that can only be done through institutional work. And that's why institutions are important for this work. And part of the challenge in the American Muslim community right now is that a lot of money is being sent overseas for relief. So they see babies that are suffering from famine or people who have limbs cut off or homes destroyed. So immediately your impulse is, let's send money overseas, or they build a school or they build another mosque. But when it comes to building programs to get young Muslims to enter the field of media, it's still low on the totem pole in our community. So there's a lot of work to be done there. And also there's a lot of resistance, obviously, when you go to the established media and say, can we get time? Can we even meet with your. Your editorial board? We used to be able to meet with editorial boards. Now we. We don't have that same success, that same kind of engagement.
- [59:45]
A
Yeah.
- [59:46]
B
And more people are turning towards social media. So you have individuals who are becoming social media influencers. And so a lot of attention is being spent on them. But I believe that you still have to work on in areas like the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, cnn, Fox News, msnbc. You still have to have a presence in that area because millions of people are following them. You were talking about the Palestine issue, how there's been a shift of the American public on that. Most of the shift is happening with people under 30, but the older you get, and those are the people that are usually watching those Network television or running them. Or running them.
- [60:36]
A
Can we talk about. And they're sort of seeing Hasan Piker, who I think is a brilliant streamer who is really making a difference in the social media sphere. But recently Bari Weiss, who is the substacker, former New York Times writer who didn't fit in so well over there, left there, created a substack where essentially she's basically battling against wokeness and inclusion and all the things that upset her. She is now running CBS News and it appears that she and the Ellisons, who are her employers, who bought out Paramount. Part of their purpose is to shut down what we were just talking about, to shut down this shift in sentiment toward the Palestinians and to shut down criticism of Israel. That's what it is, essentially feels like. And that's what it seems the reporting supports. What do you make of what does feel like an attempt by a handful of billionaires to shut down that shift?
- [61:33]
B
Yeah, these are people that are promoting themselves as thought police. And that's exactly what was happening, been happening to many of us all these years, is that we are told what is acceptable language and what is unacceptable to them. And I think there are others, I can't name them exactly, but I've been watching these lectures that people have been giving in so called liberal forums saying we have to take cell phones away from teenagers because they're watching too much TikTok or they're following Instagrams of people from overseas and so all they see is dead people in Gaza and that's hurting our cause, our political cause. So let's figure out a way where we can take those cell phones away from them.
- [62:22]
A
It's so amazing that the argument is we have to take the phones away rather than we have to stop the killing of the babies. Right.
- [62:30]
B
That's one side. The other side is Muslims are invading America to take away our freedoms. So let's take away their freedoms right now.
- [62:38]
A
Right.
- [62:38]
B
And the freedoms of anyone else so that we can stop that. It's hypocrisy. It's ridiculous.
- [62:48]
A
Well, the Van Jones joke about dead babies.
- [62:50]
B
Dead baby, dead babies.
- [62:51]
A
But the thing about it is the backlash against him when he said that, the backlash against this former Obama, I believe she was in the comms department of the Obama administration where she's essentially saying, oh, these children are simply being warped by bad video. We'll get them back on Israel's side by side, removing the video. That is a sentiment that, as you said, it does prevail among the establishment and also the people like Bari Weiss, who's not the establishment, she's sort of the new establishment, the new thought police. But it means that the shift to Palestinian, to at least empathy for Palestinians, is real.
- [63:27]
B
It is.
- [63:27]
A
They're just terrified of it.
- [63:29]
B
Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, when you see what's happening in Palestine, it's devastating, it's depressing. And as an American, I'm just disgusted that my government financed the genocide and protected war criminals. And actually they're complaining about how to get food there, but at the same time, they're sending weapons to kill more people there, which is ridiculous. On the other hand, the sentiment for a free Palestine for the Palestinian people has skyrocketed among the American people. And we have to figure out a way to tap into that potential within the American public and create movement to effect change with these media outlets and with our policymakers.
- [64:19]
A
Well, I mean, as somebody who's leading an organization whose goal is to impact, as you said, policy as well as culture, do you worry that these billionaires consolidating so much of the media, including social media, will shut down that kind of a conversation?
- [64:33]
B
I mean, it is happening. They are doing it. They're attempting to do it. I don't think it will work because people are finding out alternative methods of getting information, and they know what's happening now. Before, you didn't know before you had CNN and the New York Times and that was it. And whatever they said. And quite frankly, what I was really impacted by in a negative way in 1991 is that I didn't see any of the media challenging than George Herbert Walker Bush at that time against what he was. There was no, there was no debate. 2003, there was actually more debate. They went ahead and did it, but there was more scrutiny in some ways. There was no scrutiny in 1991. So when I see what's happening today compared to what I witnessed in 1991, it's actually an improvement. It's the same tactics by those, by the powerful, because they see their power and their wealth being threatened by the people. And more people are aware of that. And more people are just not buying the same old lines that, you know, they're terrorists. That's just all that means now is I disagree with you. I disagree with you. You're a terrorist.
- [65:54]
A
Yeah.
- [65:55]
B
And it's in religion they say, I disagree with you, you're an infidel. You know, and the same thing is happening in politics now. And we have to call, call, call it out for what it is. It's A lie. And it's an attempt to continue their monopoly on power. And they're doing that by continuing to oppress people and trying to foment a movement that will end up in more land grabs in the region to build their villas and resorts and make more money. And so people are seeing that for what it is.
- [66:36]
A
What is MPAC working on now that you can give us a sneak peek about? What is your next mission?
- [66:43]
B
Well, you know, in general, our work is to get a handle on national security policy. Because when you look at national security policy, it singles out Muslims as the only religion that has a problem with violence. And that's been a bias of western culture all these years. As if there are no Hindu militants, no Jewish extremists, no Christian nationalists that we should be worried about.
- [67:08]
A
Who are 70 something odd percent of the violence.
- [67:11]
B
70% of the violence. And they're international.
- [67:13]
A
Yeah.
- [67:14]
B
It's not a. Because. Oh, that's domestic terrorism. What does that mean? It means they're white nationalists, usually because even among white nationalists, white supremacist violence, it's become international. A lot of the, the hate rhetoric starts here in America. It gets exported to Europe and people act on it. Or what happened in New Zealand?
- [67:40]
A
Yes. The bombing of that mosque.
- [67:43]
B
Yeah, the bombing in New Zealand mosque. Yeah.
- [67:45]
A
Or the shooting up. I believe he shot it.
- [67:47]
B
Oh, that's right, he went in and shot it and livestreamed it. So it's international, but they do not want to designate it as part of foreign terrorist organizations. Only Muslims are part of the foreign terrorist organization designation. Why is that? Well, if you're a foreign terrorist organization or suspected of such, then you don't have any civil liberties. Then the government can conduct surveillance on your community, they can seize your assets, they can denaturalize people, arrest people without probable cause and all that from the Patriot act and they continue and they'll go after our charities. So it's not about really fighting terrorism. And is it going to make us more secure? No. And as Benjamin Franklin said, those who are willing to sacrifice civil liberties for temporal safety deserve neither. And that's what's happening to us, unfortunately. So we're working on national security.
- [68:53]
A
And.
- [68:53]
B
These issues that are facing us and affecting us every day. The other area is our First Amendment. So we have a center for the First Amendment and speaking out and defending students and demanding that trumped up charges against them be dropped. And we've been successful with a few cases at Harvard, at UCLA and other places where we're able to work on these cases from a political perspective and then bring legal support for it and support the students there. And there have been amazing students who now have moved on to do even greater work because as I said before, anyone that's involved in a protest movement on campus, immediately they are a leader and they're not going to stop leading. And they're a leader as a student when they're students. And they'll be a leader in politics if they go into a political arena or a leader in immigration, or a leader in civil society or social services. So these are leaders that we want to keep track of and support. But it starts with first and foremost defending the First Amendment, that if we espouse this, you know, that we're a country, a free society, then we cannot compromise the First Amendment on that. And then the other area is where a lot of the anti Muslim animus emanates. And who are these people? What are they trying to do? Because it's not really about religion. They couldn't care less about religion, to be honest with you. It's just a power grab and trying to frame us so that they continue to hold on to power. And so we're studying them and we're studying their origin and what their goals are and then developing a strategy to counter that. So those are just some of the things that we work on. And then on our extra time we deal with communities and everything that comes with community organizing, which is fun.
- [70:53]
A
And she's probably already on your radar, but Representative Roman in Georgia, who's running for governor is a very interesting, she's an interesting character. She's like a young Mamdani esque progressive voice who should have been the speaker at the dnc. No one in Kamala world will admit it, but if they put her on that stage, she might have won.
- [71:17]
B
You know, I'm a Democrat and I just, I can't believe that my own party would not allow a Palestinian speaker. It's just a shame.
- [71:26]
A
Yeah.
- [71:27]
B
And I hope that the Democratic establishment wakes up because if not, I think people will just, there will be no motivation and we'll deal with 2016 and 2024 all over again.
- [71:40]
A
You know, there's a, the sense in the world is that, you know, Cory Booker or Senator Booker is going to run for president. He's very, very pro aipac, you know, and I don't believe that anyone with that pro AIPAC of a, of a history, if they maintain it can be president. I just don't think it'll happen. I think that the Democratic voter is done with that, and I think so are most Republican voters. So word of the wise.
- [72:04]
B
Yeah. And that's why the Democratic Party should cut ties. Cut ties and also get to speed. Get up to speed on what's happening with the Democratic base. The Democratic base is exactly what you said. They don't want to have anything to do with AIPAC money. They don't want any foreign government.
- [72:23]
A
They don't want any foreign government money or foreign government support. I mean, and I think I would say the same about the governor of California who was sort of a little bit questioning, you know, he wasn't clear on whether or not he would divorce napac. It's an interesting separation or dichotomy between the people who are seen as sort of the leading contenders. You know, Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, you know, that are, you know, Mark Kelly, I think, who's a brilliant politician in many ways, but they're all still in that 90s era. AIPAC is a good guy. Time warp, right. They don't seem to have caught up.
- [72:55]
B
They're dinosaurs. And Chuck Schumer is leading from behind.
- [72:59]
A
So he still has not endorsed Mamdani, which I find just bizarre.
- [73:03]
B
It's bizarre, but I think in time it will change. And like I said, no foreign government should have any influence on our lawmakers, on our president, on any of our politicians. I mean, when Donald Trump brags about Miriam Edelson.
- [73:20]
A
Yeah.
- [73:21]
B
Is it her name?
- [73:24]
A
The donor? One of his biggest donors.
- [73:27]
B
Biggest donors. And that's why, you know, he moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And that's why he's going to go ahead and do this land grab.
- [73:38]
A
Yeah. Maybe don't admit. Yeah, like, maybe don't.
- [73:41]
B
But he. Yeah, he just. He's blunt. He's blunt about it.
- [73:45]
A
Yes, he is that.
- [73:46]
B
And no foreign government should have that kind of influence on our country. And.
- [73:51]
A
And I will note that AIPAC would say they are American citizens. They don't work for a foreign government, but it is a foreign lobby. I mean, if we're being honest, they're not lobbying. They're lobbying for a foreign government to have favor with the American government. That's still kind of the same thing.
- [74:03]
B
I believe also the people who supported Mamdani in New York, many of them were Jewish Americans. So this idea, a lot of them, if you speak out against Israel, you're anti Semitic, that doesn't work anymore.
- [74:13]
A
Tell that to the Jewish protesters for Palestine. I like to close these interviews with some positive questions. Yeah. My first question has nothing to do with politics or Culture, but it has to do with culture. What's your favorite musical? What's the best musical?
- [74:26]
B
Oh, gosh.
- [74:27]
A
If you like musicals.
- [74:29]
B
I don't really follow musicals, to be honest with you. So you're.
- [74:33]
A
I've stumped you. I finally stumped you. Ok. Yeah. Do you have.
- [74:36]
B
I mean, I remember being at musicals, but I can't remember the titles of those musicals. I have attended musicals.
- [74:43]
A
Have you seen Wicked for Good yet?
- [74:44]
B
No.
- [74:45]
A
Okay, then I won't say. I won't nominate that one. The Wiz is the answer. Everyone knows now.
- [74:50]
B
I spend too much time following American football.
- [74:53]
A
Okay, what's your favorite? Who's your team?
- [74:54]
B
The Packers. Green Bay Packers.
- [74:56]
A
Oh, you said that like. Of course the Packers.
- [74:59]
B
It's America's team.
- [74:59]
A
It's America. No.
- [75:01]
B
Yeah.
- [75:01]
A
Well, I mean, they are kind of.
- [75:03]
B
It's a small market.
- [75:04]
A
It's a small market. That's true.
- [75:05]
B
Owned by the community.
- [75:06]
A
And it's owned by the community.
- [75:06]
B
They will never move.
- [75:07]
A
Yeah.
- [75:09]
B
Vince Lombardi's name is on the super bowl trophy.
- [75:11]
A
Okay. You're selling it. You're selling it.
- [75:13]
B
So that's America's team.
- [75:15]
A
I got you.
- [75:16]
B
You know, other places, you know, fine.
- [75:20]
A
They're fine.
- [75:20]
B
Other cities can buy championships, but the packers, it's all about the community. And I've been a Packer fan since the 60s.
- [75:29]
A
Well, that is. Cause I dumped my team. I used to be a Denver Bronco fan, but I. You know, because I lived in Denver and it was kind of. That was the religion. You want to talk about religion? That was the religion. But I really like Baltimore now.
- [75:40]
B
The Ravens.
- [75:41]
A
Yeah.
- [75:41]
B
Yeah.
- [75:42]
A
I like them. I like the city. I love the mayor. I think he's a brilliant mayor. And I just like the city. And I like the vibe, the Baltimore vibe.
- [75:48]
B
I like the Ravens, too.
- [75:49]
A
I think I'm gonna adopt them as my new team.
- [75:50]
B
Yeah, I think they're a good team, the Packers.
- [75:52]
A
It's a good. You made a good sale on it.
- [75:53]
B
Yeah. We'll see a Packers, Ravens, super bowl sometime.
- [75:56]
A
So you might have answered right.
- [75:57]
B
Inshallah.
- [75:58]
A
Inshallah.
- [75:58]
B
Inshallah.
- [76:00]
A
What gives you hope? I forget my second question. It's usually, what gives you hope? What was it, Jason? I usually ask, what gives you hope? Oh, what gives you hope? What gives you joy? Duh, it's my name. What gives you hope? What gives joy?
- [76:13]
B
What gives me joy?
- [76:13]
A
I forgot my own question.
- [76:15]
B
Well, right now, what gives me joy is three grandchildren that I've been blessed with and we'll have another grandchild in March now.
- [76:25]
A
Are you a G. P.A. a pop pop? Like, what do they call you?
- [76:29]
B
Jiddu.
- [76:29]
A
Jiddu.
- [76:30]
B
That's Arabic for oh, I love that.
- [76:31]
A
That's so cute.
- [76:32]
B
So they call me Jiddu. And so I spend as much time as I can with them. And nowadays, you know, to keep our kids, you know, to live in Los Angeles, they need all the help they can get. So we're. I'm working at mpac and then I'm a babysitter, you know, but I enjoy it. I love it. And, you know, it's also a way of reconnecting with our kids that way. So I'm really going through that joyous occasion with the grandchildren. And I'm also, you know, worried about their future, so. Makes our work even that much more important. And then what gives me hope? I think what gives me hope is people like you, I'm serious. Not because you're here, but people who are just willing to listen and being a true journalist by covering the landscape and then coming up with conclusions instead of having your conclusion and then trying to figure out how a report can just reinforce your preconceived notions. So that gives me hope. There are more journalists like you and. And America's future, America's youth, American democracy has always been cherished, and that's because the American people have always managed to move away from injustices and from wrongdoings, whether it's abroad or here, as long as they were informed. And young people are becoming more informed and they're resisting the attempt to being brainwashed because, you know, these people in the establishment, they just want to brainwash them and they're claiming that these youth are ignorant.
- [78:27]
A
Yeah, it's full gaslighting.
- [78:29]
B
Yeah. And my argument to them is these young people know more about what's happening in the Middle east today than Americans knew anything about Iraq. When we went to war against them in 1991 or 2002, they knew nothing.
- [78:43]
A
I mean, I used to say, I dare anyone to look at a map of the world and point to Iraq. They couldn't do it.
- [78:50]
B
No. No, they couldn't. They don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran. They don't know the difference between Iran and.
- [78:54]
A
They call it Iraq and Iran, which is actually my bugaboo.
- [78:56]
B
Yeah.
- [78:56]
A
Yeah.
- [78:57]
B
It really drives me up the wall sometimes. They don't know the difference between Israel and Islam. I mean, it's mind boggling how people just don't know anything because they just hear things and they go, okay, that's bad. Or that's good.
- [79:09]
A
And that's it.
- [79:10]
B
That's all they, that's, that's, that's all that matters to them. But we are developing a much more sophisticated American educated group of young people and I think that's, that gives us hope.
- [79:26]
A
It's the one good thing about social media.
- [79:28]
B
Yeah.
- [79:29]
A
And you know, things like TikTok is that people are actually to your point, these young people know a lot more about the Middle east, about Islam. They are actually curious and interested and they have instant access to information. No matter what the bad guys and the broligarchs try to do to stop them, they're still getting the truth.
- [79:47]
B
That's right.
- [79:47]
A
And I appreciate you. You give me hope and you've given me joy by being here with me today. Thank you very much.
- [79:53]
B
Always good to be with you, Joy.
- [79:54]
A
Thank you. Thank you to Salaam Mariadi as well as Sue Obaidi and the whole team at the Muslim Public Affairs Council. If you want to learn more about their amazing work, just go to mpac.org that's mpac.org thanks for watching and we'll see you on the next Joy Read show. And again, don't forget to like and subscribe. Getting back to the basics grassroot level, let me dig a little deeper with the shovel Plenty can't tell the forest from the trees and I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in the dark Injustice anywhere it's a threat to justice and everywhere let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap a party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.
- [80:38]
B
It's tax season and at LifeLock we.
- [80:41]
A
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- [80:50]
B
Now here's another big number.
- [80:52]
A
100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it.
- [80:59]
B
Guaranteed.
- [80:59]
A
One last big number.
- [81:01]
B
Save up to 40% your first year.
- [81:03]
A
Visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply.