Rally to Counter Islamophobia Held in San Francisco
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
A major rally was held Sunday (March 31) at the Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco to focus on the impact of the killing of 50 worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand on the seven-million strong American Muslim community.
The rally was addressed by the Mayor of San Francisco, London Breed and Mayor of Belmont Davina Hurt as well as Sam Hindi, theMayor of Foster City. David Chiu, member of California State Assembly, also spoke at the rally sponsored by the Northern California Islamic Council (NCIC) and co-sponsored by more than two dozen Muslim organizations, Islamic Centers and mosques.
Addressing the rally, the NCIC emphasized that while the New Zealand attacks were horrific in their violence, it is imperative that we address the larger context that this violence is occurring within - the Global War on Terror. “This is especially important because there have been attacks on five mosques in the UK and one this past weekend in Escondido, California - which demonstrates just how global violence against Muslims is.”
The rally was aimed at providing a forum through which communities will come together in solidarity and with the goal of understanding how to resist Islamophobia.
Speaker after speaker expressed solidarity with the Muslims in America in the wake of the white supremacist attack on two mosques in New Zealand. The rally was also addressed by interfaith leaders, scholars and social activists.
The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, who is the first African-American mayor in the city’s history, expressed her solidarity with the Muslim community and emphasized that we should celebrate unity and non-violence in this country.
Mayor of Belmont, Davina Hurt, said, “We should give voice to those who are voiceless and stand up for all that is good”.
Among those who addressed the rally was Ahmed Majdi Mohsin, who spent his childhood in New Zealand and whose relatives were among the dead in the Christchurch mosques massacre.
Names of all the 50 people massacred in Christchurch mosques were read to the audience and a one-minute silence was observed to pay homage to the victims.
Sheikh Aladdin El-Bakri, Imam of Saratoga Mosque, in his speech pointed out that Buddhists are killing Rohingya Muslims in Maynamar, Hindus are killing Muslims in India but you never hear about Buddhist terrorism, Hindu terrorism or Christian terrorism.
The rally began with a recitation from the Holy Qur’an by Imam Mujjali. Imam Abu Qadir of the San Francisco Muslim Community Center (SFMCC) also addressed the rally. He proudly mentioned that boxing icon Mohammad Ali and prominent American-African Muslim leader Malcolm X visited this center.
Dr Hatem Bazian, the founder of the Islamophobia Research (a research unit dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims) at Berkeley University, was the keynote speaker on the occasion. He is also Professor of Islamic Law and Theology at Zaytuna College, the firstaccredited Muslim Liberal Arts College in the United States.
In his speech, Dr Hatem Bazian argued that Islamophobia is not a problem of Muslims alone, Islamophobia is a problem for all segments of the society because some are trying to say that America and the world belongs to a particular racial group.
He emphasized that Islamophobia is a type of racism that targets Muslimness as well as any type of Muslimness and it is not exclusively focusing on the Muslims but also those who are perceived as Muslims like the Sikh community, and some of the Latin American community that is also mistaken as Muslims.
Dr Hatem Bazian said Islamophobia has a long history, perhaps going back to 1400 and 1500. “We have to go all the way to the inquisition where Muslims and Jews were expelled from Europe on the notion that to be a European you have to be white and Christian. Even though at the time Europe was Muslim as well as Jewish, especially Spain and Eastern Europe. The inquisition targeted Muslims and Jews so much so that you could not dress as Muslim or Jew. You could not practice your religion publicly. Your synagogues and mosques were destroyed or converted into churches.”
Elaborating on the concept of white supremacy, Dr Hatem Bazian said that to be a pure white, you are a person who should not mix with Muslims or Jews.
He said the 1400 or the 1500 is not an isolated history. “The same type of logic is applied that resulted in genocide. The same type of logic is applied to African-Americans who were brought here as cargo and not as human beings,” he said adding:
“To be white and Christian was the foundation of this new land, the new society where every other group has to go through exclusiveness measures, from native population to African-American and the Chinese exclusion to the Japanese-American internment.”
“We have a long history to understand that when we are arguing against white supremacy we should understand what white supremacy is,” Dr Bazian said adding: Irish were not considered as whites so they had to be made whites. Some of the early Jewish communities were not considered white so they had to be made white through a process of otherisation”.
Dr Bazian said US immigration policy was always based on race and always wanted to manage the demographics based on race; you are accepted if you are the right type of race.
“We want diversity, we want inclusion but not on the basis of losing who we are because God created us to be diverse,” Dr Hatem Bazian concluded.
The rally ended with the Zohur prayer attended by the participants.
