Brooklyn College professor examines Islamophobia, Trump

For professor/author Moustafa Bayoumi, the Islamophobic language of Donald Trump is part of a broader “War on Terror culture” that has existed in the United States for more than a decade.

“That means everything from the way the media portrays the War on Terror to the ways laws are drafted to how politicians talk about these things to the ways the culture industry engages them,” he said. “It’s reinforcing this idea of Islam and Muslims and the terror threat.”

Bayoumi, who teaches English at Brooklyn College and has received awards for his books, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and The Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror, spoke Oct. 27 in Lecture Hall 7 about “This Muslim American Life, in the Age of Donald Trump.”

“That’s quite a topic to handle,” Bayoumi said. “There’s something about the United States – it tends to lose its mind every four years. You would think that an election season is the moment in which you would be judging two or more highly qualified candidates talking about their policy positions. That’s not what we are getting. Instead what we have is a show.”

Bayoumi himself had a cameo role in the presidential “show” when his tweet during the second presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton was liked more than 160,000 times in less than 24 hours.

“(Trump) was asked a question about Islamophobia and responded with an Islamophobic answer,” Bayoumi said. “I was sitting at home with friends and wrote ‘I’m a Muslim, and I would like to report a crazy man threatening a woman on a stage in Missouri.’ (TV producer) Shondra Rhimes retweeted me and my phone went (whoosh)! Then J.K. Rowling and Ron Howard retweeted me, too.”

The 2016 presidential campaign has been more about voting against Trump than for Clinton, Bayoumi said.

“We have had an election campaign premised on a kind of vision and xenophobia – particularly out of the Trump campaign – that seems out of the ordinary in politics,” he said.

“We cannot forget that Donald Trump essentially began his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists and criminals,” he added. “His campaign has been focused on denigrating women, mocking the disabled, talking pejoratively about African Americans and – as a fundamental pillar of his campaign – the Muslim ban.”

Despite Trump’s extreme views, it is important to remember that American politics have emphasized the idea of the “Muslim threat” long before Trump earned the Republican nomination.

“Donald Trump is not the exception to the rule,” Bayoumi said. “In many ways, Trump is the culmination of a certain type of politics in this country.”

Bayoumi pointed to Trump’s plan for a Muslim registry by countering that the U.S. government enacted the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) in 2002. In NSEERS, non-immigrant Muslim males from 25 countries were required to register their whereabouts with the government.

“It was an extraordinary, debilitating encounter for many Muslims in this country,” he said of the system that was suspended in 2011. “It is something the general population knows nothing about.”

He also told the audience members about Operation Front Line, in which the U.S. government interviewed 2,500 mostly Muslims in 2004 on suspicions of a plot to disrupt the presidential election.

Presidential elections have also played a role in the War on Terror culture, Bayoumi said. For example, a woman at a John McCain town hall meeting in 2008 accused President Obama of being an Arab. Also that year, the Obama campaign responded to an accusation of the candidate being “a secret Muslim” as a “smear.” In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said he would never offer a cabinet position to a Muslim-American.

In 2002, about one-third of the population admitted to harboring ill feelings toward Muslims, Bayoumi said. That number soon rose to 50 percent, and bumps up during election seasons.

“The use of the Muslim wedge issue is one that we should be very well aware of,” he said.

Clinton’s campaign language has not been helpful either, Bayoumi said. While not as divisive as Trump’s rhetoric, Bayoumi said he has been troubled by some of Clinton’s word choices.

“Whenever Muslim issues are brought up, she says: ‘We need to engage the Muslim community because they are our eyes and ears on the frontline.’ As if Muslim Americans are only eyes and ears.”

Treating Muslim Americans like they have “access to terrorism” is not ideal, Bayoumi said.

“That’s making an assumption – a destructive assumption,” he said. “It is an assumption that has driven politics since 9/11.”