News from the Week of April 21st

This week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report revealing that the Muslim Ban increased violence and anti-Muslim discrimination across the United States. The CAIR report recorded 464 incidents pertaining to the ban and highlighted that hate crimes against Muslims rose 15 percent last year. “Like any person in America, irrespective of religion or race, American Muslims deserve to be treated with dignity, fairness, and respect.”

In hijabs and Girl Scout vests, a group of Kansas Muslim girls are working together to help people understand who they truly are. Their troop leader shares that many people have never met a Muslim, so girls are going out into the community to get to know their neighbors. “I want people to know about my faith and know that we are all the same from each corner, and we are all the same on the inside,” one says. “There is nothing really different between us and them."

Photographer Lynsey Addario is highlighting the diversity of America’s Muslim community by telling their stories. Addario shares, “I have always believed that it is important to be inquisitive, to ask questions, to educate oneself about the unknown. I think so much hatred and misunderstanding stems from ignorance and arrogance, and that is a shame.” From photos of sisters who hold black belts in taekwondo, to picnickers in Texas wearing cowboy, Addario’s images challenge prejudice and break down stereotypes.

Former director of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, continues to speak out against Trump’s immigration ban. This week, Hayden explained that the ban not only has a tragic human cost but it also has disastrous strategic effects. He argues that the order plays perfectly to terrorist’s recruiting and proselytizing themes. “Beyond the precedent that we all feared—the rejection of empiricism, inductive reasoning, and decision-making bounded by objective reality—we all knew that the executive order landed unevenly on the world’s most unfortunate.”

The low-wage labor market is now feeling the effects of historically low refugee resettlement rates. The labor market is difficult, but refugees are willing to take jobs usually spurned by the average American. It is becoming increasingly clear that the United States needs refugees, much more than some care to admit.

Refugees are taking their cooking skills and turning them into success stories. Yara, a Syrian refugee, is creating job opportunities for arriving refugees in Belgium. Her business, From Syria With Love, has gone from street-food cart to catering juggernaut and can now to feed up to eight hundred people at a time. Yara enjoys using her skills to benefit those around her. She
explains, “It’s a feeling that you are contributing, it gives you purpose. That makes you feel good, that you’re not just a burden but you can give back somehow.”