Islam Hates Us? Sweetie, I am “Us”

Last updated on: March 10, 2016 at 12:44 pm by Nancy Qualls-Shehata

Islam Hates Us? Sweetie, I am “Us” 2016-03-10T12:44:52-05:00 Nancy Qualls-Shehata

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As Salaamu Alaikum and hello all.

You would think with the amount of time Donald Drumpf spends with his foot in his mouth that he wouldn’t manage to spit out so many verbal faux pas. I guess that he manages since he is able to talk out of both sides of his face at once.

His latest bout of verbal effluvium was the statement that “Islam hates us”. And of course, that is not true. There are over one billion Muslims on the planet, and a very large percentage of them love and are addicted to Western culture. Their jeans, their hair, their favorite singers and TV shows. Muslims from all over the world come to the US to live or study or work. Islam hates us? Hardly. Check out the video – this is the entire interview he did with CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

And here I stand, straddling two worlds. American. Muslim. Do I hate me? No, I’m pretty happy with myself. Assuming by “us” the Donald means that Muslims hate the American way of life, I have to say I don’t hate parts of it. I LOVE Aldi. I mean, being able to go in there and buy a cart full of groceries without breaking the bank is something that makes me very happy. I love donuts. I love WaWa coffee.

I love the guy over in the next neighborhood who has turned his entire yard into a suburban garden. I love my across the street neighbor who kept an eye on four of the kids one time when hubby and I had to take their brother to the ER for an impressive head laceration. I love people who help the poor and who don’t pollute and who chain themselves to fracking wells in protest. I love everyone who donates water to the people of Flint Michigan. I have a lotta love for “us”, informed by my religion, Islam, and by the common humanity we share.

If you want me to enumerate the stuff that I hate about this country, well, I can do that too. I hate income inequality. I hate lead in the water in Flint, water pollution on Native American reservations, lead paint in poor housing projects, runoff from pig farms and chicken factories that kill the Chesapeake Bay wildlife. I hate the KKK, domestic violence, workplace violence, gun violence that takes the lives of civilians and law enforcement officers. I hate our foreign policy. I hate drone strikes that kill celebrants at weddings. I hate our unquestioning support of the apartheid state of Israel. I hate the fact that we don’t offer family leave to new parents. I hate that we have so many people still uninsured or underinsured. I hate that people are not getting paid a living wage. I hate that college can be so expensive that it puts you in debt for decades. I hate speed traps. I hate that fancy restaurant food made with liquid nitrogen that looks like abstract art and couldn’t feed a gnat. I hate having to clean the litterbox every day.

So, yeah, I hate a lot of things. This country has tilted way too far over to the side of anger, fear, hatred, and freedom without responsibility. I hate the rhetoric that breeds animus.

I hate certain individuals, but I’m not even going to name them because I’m not consumed by my hatred. It exists, I acknowledge it, but I don’t wallow in it. I use it as a springboard to do good works, to connect with people who share my values whether they are Muslim or not. So even my hatred empowers me and does not embitter me. So all you people that I hate, you do you. I’m busy being an American Muslim.

#IamUs

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