Umm Muhammed Umar

The National Communications Director for the Council on American Islamic Relation’s (CAIR), Brother Ebrahim Hooper, spoke to Radio Islam on the America Report.

CAIR has welcomed the US State Department report on China’s disinformation campaign on the Uighur genocide. China has gone to lengths to conceal the genocide of the Muslim Uighur population. Brother Ebrahim said that it was clear from the report that China is waging a massive disinformation campaign to target anyone who brings up Uighur genocide, and the targeting of other Turkic minorities in China. He said, “It (China) has the power of a massive state, and it uses that power to target individuals and organizations, and to spread disinformation.” He added that the United Nations report on human rights violations in China hadn’t been expected to deliver much, because the UN seemed to be going soft on the Uighur genocide, but that CAIR would respond to the report.

American Muslims are largely successful in business and the workforce. There are many American Muslims that are amongst the best in their field in the US. They are patriotic, with a number of Muslims serving the US armed forces, in the navy, in various forms of government, including local government, as well as the judiciary. However, Islamophobia is worse than ever. Brother Ibrahim said that there has been a change in overt Islamophobia since the backlash following the 911 attacks. He said, “now people are starting to see the real threat to our society, which is white supremacy. And I think that’s an encouraging sign.”

CAIR is to join the NIAC panel discussion on discriminatory closures of bank accounts belonging to Muslims, Middle Easterners and anybody else who is deemed to be even a vague threat. Institutions that had been doing legitimate work for many decades, all of a sudden have their bank accounts closed down, or individuals who have travelled to some part of the world where they even have family to prove why that person was there, return to find their assets frozen. Brother Ibrahim said that this was one of the forms of backlash from the 911 attacks. He said, “I think this was one aspect of that in terms of we had things like the Patriot Act that impacted how banks and other institutions interact with American Muslims.” He said, “And a lot of times, being institutions will say, ‘better be safe than sorry’, and then they’ll close an account, or they’ll do some other action that discriminates against American Muslims or even those perceived to be American Muslims.” He said that Islamophobia was a legacy that CAIR was trying to deal with, and the panel was just one way to inform people about what was going on with that situation. He added that CAIR had been successful over the year years in changing perceptions of Islam and Muslims and that it was no longer the case that when some Muslims did something wrong anywhere in the world, Islam got blamed for it. He said, “I think that attitude is changing. And I think that’s one of the main things that, it’s a bright spot in terms of Islamophobia.”