Commentaries on the San Antonio Report present house for our neighborhood to share views and provide options to urgent native points. The views expressed on this commentary belong to the creator alone.
When Gov. Greg Abbott declared the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a terrorist group on Nov. 18, many Texans have been shocked. For Muslims in Texas, particularly these of us who’re civically engaged, the announcement felt much less like an remoted resolution and extra just like the end result of long-standing political scapegoating.
What might appear to be a symbolic gesture to some carries very actual penalties for Muslim communities in locations like San Antonio. It will increase the danger of violence, undermines many years of community-building and distorts the general public’s understanding of who Muslim Texans are and what we contribute to this state.
I write from the angle of somebody who has lived this intersection of religion, id and civic life. Throughout my current run for San Antonio Metropolis Council District 8, I skilled one thing profound about our metropolis. San Antonio is crammed with compassionate individuals who persistently choose others by their character moderately than their race, faith or background.
Throughout neighborhoods starting from Hunters Creek to Babcock North, residents opened their doorways, welcomed dialog and expressed a willingness to pay attention. The heat I skilled from the over 7,000 doorways I knocked on stood in sharp distinction to the fear-based rhetoric that always emerges from larger ranges of presidency.
The constructive picture that many San Antonians maintain of Muslims that I skilled, didn’t seem in a single day. It’s the results of many years of sluggish, regular work by native mosques and Muslim organizations, together with CAIR, the Muslim American Society and the Muslim Youngsters Training and Civic Heart.
These organizations have hosted interfaith dinners, organized charity drives, constructed relationships at neighborhood associations and proven up wherever understanding and dialogue have been wanted. Outreach of this nature will not be glamorous. It’s affected person, incremental and rooted in day by day acts of service. These efforts helped foster the respectful and welcoming attitudes that I encountered all through my marketing campaign.
None of this implies I used to be shielded from all discrimination. There have been moments on the marketing campaign path when Islamophobia surfaced, generally via coded feedback the place individuals brazenly questioned whether or not a Muslim can truly be loyal to America, and different instances instantly, within the type of bodily violence. But even in these moments, what struck me was not the hostility however the way in which compassion outweighed it.
For each discriminatory encounter, there have been many extra residents who mentioned they revered my willingness to run or that they cared about honesty and integrity above all else. Households even provided me water to interrupt my quick as a result of they knew I used to be blockwalking throughout Ramadan. These experiences bolstered my perception that real relationships between communities can overcome even deep-seated fears. Additionally they jogged my memory that these relationships require safety, particularly when highly effective officers threaten to unravel them with careless or inflammatory declarations.
This understanding grew to become much more important because the Israel-Hamas battle and subsequent violence in Gaza unfolded and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza got here to be understood by the worldwide neighborhood as genocide. Throughout the nation, many individuals referred to as on their cities to undertake ceasefire resolutions. Such resolutions wouldn’t have stopped the violence, however they’d have pressured municipalities to articulate an ethical place: that every one lives matter equally, together with Palestinian lives.
As an alternative, in San Antonio, the problem grew to become entangled in political warning. Some metropolis officers privately expressed empathy however hesitated to talk publicly. Others prevented the subject altogether out of worry of backlash. Because the violence escalated abroad, the dehumanization of Palestinians grew extra entrenched and that dehumanization inevitably seeped into native attitudes towards Muslim communities.
That’s the reason the refusal of many metropolis governments, together with San Antonio’s, to take an ethical stance on Gaza was so troubling. The purpose was by no means {that a} Metropolis Council decision may rewrite international coverage. The purpose was that ethical readability expressed domestically can defend weak communities from the unfold of dehumanizing narratives. When native leaders affirm the dignity of all individuals, they assist inoculate their cities in opposition to fear-based divisions. After they stay silent, these divisions deepen.
This issues as a result of world occasions don’t stay distant for lengthy. Historical past repeatedly reveals that when a bunch is dehumanized overseas, members of that group turn out to be weak at residence. The anti-Asian American violence through the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic was fueled by rhetoric about international threats. After 9/11, American Muslims confronted surveillance, discrimination, and suspicion due to narratives originating hundreds of miles away.
These examples illustrate a easy reality: Points that seem international ultimately turn out to be native. Silence from native leaders doesn’t forestall this shift. It accelerates it. And that is exactly why I argue our Metropolis Council should take a transparent public stance now, as a result of acknowledging the humanity of Palestinians and rejecting Gov. Abbott’s declaration is crucial to defending the dignity and security of Muslim communities right here in San Antonio.
The results of earlier inaction grew to become clear as Islamophobia rose nationwide and Muslims in cities throughout the nation started reporting heightened harassment.
This rising local weather types the backdrop for Gov. Abbott’s current declaration. As an alternative of easing tensions, he has escalated them. Labeling CAIR a terrorist group distracts from the group’s lengthy historical past of civil rights advocacy, interfaith engagement and authorized help for Muslim communities.
It additionally invitations the general public to view Muslims not as neighbors or fellow Texans however as potential threats. As soon as a whole civil rights group is painted with such a label, it turns into simpler to focus on particular person Muslim leaders, mosques and civic establishments. The governor is conscious that such rhetoric will increase the danger of real-world violence. Hate crimes spike when elected officers single out minority teams, but he continues to play political video games with the security of Muslim Texans.
In mild of this, San Antonio faces an essential alternative. We frequently describe ourselves as a welcoming metropolis, a neighborhood formed by immigration, religion and a wealthy combination of cultures. These will not be hole descriptions. They’re values that outline how we see ourselves and the way we wish others to see us. However values solely have energy when they’re acted upon.
Cities like Houston, Dearborn, and Los Angeles have traditionally stepped up in moments when Muslims have been focused, making clear that fear-mongering rhetoric wouldn’t outline their native tradition. San Antonio should present related readability as we speak.
Our Metropolis Council doesn’t want authority over international coverage to make a distinction. It solely wants the ethical conviction to say that Muslim residents are valued members of this neighborhood and that makes an attempt to marginalize them are unacceptable.
Management means talking earlier than hurt is finished. It means setting the tone for the way neighbors deal with each other. It means acknowledging the humanity of those that are being focused.
My marketing campaign expertise confirmed me that San Antonio is absolutely able to this type of management at a neighborhood degree. Residents pay attention to 1 one other, present curiosity about unfamiliar experiences, and prolong kindness with no need to be requested. That spirit can information us via this second if our elected officers are keen to amplify it as an alternative of cover from it.
Gov. Abbott’s declaration is not going to make Texans safer. It is not going to defend Jewish communities or another group he claims to be defending. What it’ll do is embolden extremists, silence civic participation and undermine years of bridge-building which have strengthened our metropolis.
San Antonio can select a special path. We will select to reject fear-based politics and affirm the shared dignity of all our residents.
Muslims in Texas are lecturers, docs, small enterprise homeowners, volunteers and public servants. They’re a part of the material of this state they usually should be handled as such. Makes an attempt to marginalize them ought to be met with ethical readability and agency opposition. The way forward for our metropolis might be formed not by those that divide us however by those that decide to unity, equity and compassion. On this second, unity begins with the braveness to talk.
