A Muslim-American's Open Letter to Donald Trump

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I write this open letter to you as a Muslim American whose loyalty to the United States is at least as unwavering as your obstinacy in insisting that we are the enemy.

Here's the truth, Donald.

150 years after the Civil War, we are locked in another kind of conflict that is yet again revealing the values that define us as Americans. What you have consistently and conclusively proved is that, in every sense of the word, you fall short of these values.

Let me set the context. 

On April 30, 1864, during the dark days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, wrote to his general, Ulysses S. Grant to inspire him and rally his troops to preserve the Union. "You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this," wrote Lincoln, "I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster, or the capture of our men in great numbers, shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may God sustain you." 

Contrast this with your own mocking disdain of veterans like Sen. John McCain, a fighter pilot who endured horrific torture during the Vietnam War. "He's not a war hero," you claimed. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured."

But nowhere has your disrespect for soldiers who sacrificed their lives for our country, and their families, been more stark than in your wanton battle of words with the parents of fallen soldier Captain Humayun Khan, killed in the line of duty in Iraq in 2004.

At the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia in July, Khizr Khan, father of Humayun Khan, outraged by your proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, demanded to know if you have ever even read the U.S. Constitution. "You have sacrificed nothing and no one," he told you in front of thousands of delegates and hundreds of thousands more watching.

When Khizr Khan pulled out a copy of the Constitution from his pocket and offered to lend it to you so you would know what words like "liberty" and "equal protection of law" mean, you knew it would be one of the most iconic moments in this momentous election. 

You had to respond.

And so you did, in the only way you know how; through a combination of misogyny, ignorance, bigotry, arrogance and vindictiveness that has become your trademark. 

You aimed your derision first at Ghazala Khan, wife of Khizr Khan, who stood silently by, an image of her late son displayed above the crowds before her, as her husband listed your glaring failings.

You insinuated that she was an oppressed woman who was not allowed to speak. "His wife, if you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say," you said.

You compared your “sacrifices” in building your business empire to that of Ghazala Khan, a Gold Star Mother, someone who you, in your bigoted ignorance, could never imagine would roar back against your insinuations. 

In an opinion piece in one of America's leading newspapers, she explained that she was silent because she was still traumatized by her son's death. Her husband did indeed ask her to speak but she simply couldn't, and it didn't matter because, as she wrote, "whoever saw me felt me in their heart."

Still, despite your shameful rhetoric and woeful shortcomings, it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate your candidacy. Psychologists tell us that in uncertain times some people are drawn to demagogues who promise them certainty. It was so with Mussolini and it was so with Hitler. 

And one of the fundamental lessons of statistics is that the improbable can happen because the improbable is not impossible.

But I say this with confidence that a majority of Americans will reject your message of hate and intolerance. They will find you wanting in thought, action, habit and character, as defined by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny."

Donald, come November you will come to understand the wisdom in these words. 

Until then, I want you to know that I join not only my fellow Muslim Americans, but all minorities and mainstream Americans -- white, black, brown, rich, poor, religious, atheist, struggling, striving -- in rejecting your politics of hate and bigotry, and in upholding the values that have made this nation what it is today.

Egypt's Unfinished Revolution

That seems to be the verdict of the majority of Egyptians at the fall of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically-elected president of Egypt a year ago.

Although the country is in a state of flux and the future remains uncertain, two lessons stand out from the fall of Morsi.

First, democracy in name only cannot be a substitute for the rule of law and the welfare of the people. Morsi rode the wave of support ordinary Egyptians extended to the long-repressed Muslim Brotherhood after the tyranny of Hosni Mubarak. But he turned out to be another Mubarak in disguise, authoritarian, intolerant, incompetent, given to blatant cronyism and oblivious to the sufferings of Egyptians. As the opposition, Muslim Brotherhood did well in providing public services where the state failed. (We must acknowledge that the Brotherhood is the most successful Non-Governmental Organization in Arab history). As the party in power, however, it focused exclusively in solidifying its control through paranoia (ratcheting up blasphemy prosecutions, for example), while failing miserably to address soaring unemployment, economic stasis, chronic food and gas shortages, collapse of tourism and other industries and most significantly, in sustaining the hope that the Arab Spring had awakened in the hearts of Egyptians three years ago.

Second, religion as a tool of statecraft not only does not work, it demeans religion. The clergy has shown time and again in every country where it ascended to power that it does not understand how a modern society functions and what it takes to unleash the creativity of its people. The self-styled custodians of religion think God is exclusively on their side and if hunger and unemployment afflict the masses, it’s a small price to pay so long as their souls are saved. What arrogance! By forcing the Brotherhood from office, Egyptians have rejected the party’s false premise and made clear they will not be manipulated in the name of religion.

Egyptians are calling the fall of Morsi and his party a coup by popular demand. The army, long the national villain, is being praised for its intervention and for its promise to hand over the reins of power to a more enlightened democratically-elected government of checks and balances soon.

There are misgivings, and rightly so, about the intention of the generals but two words should inspire confidence about Egypt’s future: Tahrir Square. Egyptians have crossed the Rubicon. The army, the power broker until now, knows that if it veers from its promise, the Nile will turn red with the blood of protesters who will again mass in millions in the historic Square. There is no going back to square one.

Adly Mansour, a judge and the interim president, called upon all parties, including the Brotherhood which still enjoys about 25 percent of the voting public, to unite for the common good of the country. As Morsi was being deposed, General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, chief of the armed forces, gathered prominent opposition and Coptic Christian and Muslim leaders to announce a new roadmap for Egypt’s future that include the rewriting of the constitution for a more tolerant and inclusive government than what the Brotherhood had dictatorially orchestrated.

It now appears (although denied by several sources) that Mohamed ElBaradei, 71, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, has become the interim prime minister. Whoever gets to hold the reins of power, however, must turn lofty declarations  into deeds. Otherwise, the Tahrir revolution will continue, even if radicals try to subvert it through violence.

The Arab Spring began on December 17, 2010, with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia. There are many in the West who bemoan the glacial rate of progress in Egypt and other Arab nations since the Arab Spring. We will do well to look into our own history.

The Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776, for instance, contain this oft-quoted and stirring line: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Unfortunately, the new republic began by keeping most of its African-American population enslaved, for whom “inalienable rights” became a bitter and deathly irony. It took almost a hundred years and a terrifying Civil War before Abraham Lincoln could issue his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves. (That’s why some scholars contend that the Civil War was the unfinished business of the American Revolution). It took another hundred years and the Civil Rights movement before Lyndon Johnson was able to pass the Voting Rights Act through Congress on August 6, 1965, outlawing discriminatory voting practices that effectively kept African Americans disenfranchised.

And if anyone thinks that progress cannot be rolled back in the West, consider this: On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The Act made illegal the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, moral tests and economic intimidation to deny the ballot to African Americans. By a 5-4 decision, however, the Court ruled last month that this particular provision, enacted almost half-a-century ago and considered the crown jewel of the Civil Rights movement, cannot be enforced any longer!

If this isn’t regress, what is?

Back to Egypt, the world’s oldest nation state. That dictators and generals in that region have seen, or are beginning to see, the handwriting on the wall is already a milestone by any historical criterion. Progress maybe glacial, and sometimes may even regress, but the inexorable tide of history, aided by the instant reach of social media and the Internet, is slowly but surely moving Egypt forward. Is it too far-fetched to imagine that Egypt may even have its own Nelson Mandela soon?