From WNYC
Islamophobia and Muslim hate crimes have been on the rise since President Trump was elected in 2016, reaching higher numbers than during the immediate aftermath of September 11th. Throughout his time in politics, President Trump has only fueled these divisive flames.
Since Trump’s election, the number of Muslim candidates running for office has also risen, with at least 90 Muslims candidates running for positions in the 2018 mid-term election, up from just a dozen in 2016.
Last week, the Muslim Caucus held a conference they called the Muslim Collective For Equitable Democracy in Washington D.C. The conference was billed as the first national gathering of Muslim politicians.
But just three presidential candidates spoke at the conference. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was the only candidate who came in person, and Senator Elizabeth Warren and Washington Governor Jay Inslee joined by livestream. Many of the caucus’s organizers expressed discontent that their reliably Democratic-voting members are being overlooked by the party and taken for granted.
The Founder and President of the Muslim Caucus Ghazala Salam and Arsalan Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer and senior research fellow for the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University, a research project on Islamophobia, joined The Takeaway to discuss these issues.
Listen to Interview Below:
