Islamophobia, Then and Now

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As we mentioned earlier in the show, in the context of the New York State Governor's race, since July, a petition on change.org has been circulating asking Mayor Mamdani to stay away from this Friday's 25th anniversary commemoration of the 9-11 attacks. It was started by Giovanni Galante, saying his name right, Galante or Galante, who lost his wife Grace in the attacks. And on Tuesday, it passed 100,000 signatures. That's not to say these are all family members.

It's impossible to know how many are just people who feel hatred toward Muslims, to be frank, or politically opposed to Mayor Mamdani in various ways, as opposed to 9-11 families themselves, or what percentage of 9-11 families feel this way. But former Governor Pataki, who was in office at the time as governor, has joined the call. Mamdani does say he's going and that the day should be about the families. Some other families, as I say, say he should be there. But this is how far some of the rhetoric goes. This is former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor at the time of 9-11.

SPEAKER_2 (1:30)

Take us over. This is not, they want to be just another religion.

They want to dominate us. That's what they're taught from the day they begin their extremist religious education. Mamdani is a clear supporter of that.

Brian Lehrer (1:49)

Rudy Giuliani on Newsmax's Sunday agenda this week, the mayor can answer for himself, but he's not the only Muslim in New York hearing this and feeling feelings about it. My next guest grew up Muslim in a small town in Indiana, was a teenager on September 11th, and many of you know her work because she went on to cover the White House for NPR. In a new piece for the Atlantic, she argues that 9-11 changed more than airport security, a change to Americans think of as one of us, and 25 years later she says it's gotten worse, not better. It's Asma Khalid, co-host now of the BBC's The Global Story, as well as a former NPR White House correspondent. Her piece in the Atlantic is called Islamophobia Has Corroded American Values.

Asma, it'll be great to hear your voice again. Welcome back to WNYC.

Asma Khalid (2:45)

Thank you. It's always wonderful to join you. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer (2:48)

Let me start with what we just heard. Giuliani saying Muslims, and it's not clear to me from that short clip, whether he meant all Muslims as a group or most Muslims or a particular faction of radical Muslims, but saying they want to quote, dominate us, take us over.

They don't want to just be another religion.

Asma Khalid (3:10)

Brian, I was struck by that comment because of how familiar it sounds to me now, which I would say is rather an unfortunate thing to say.

Over the last, I will say couple of years, I've begun to hear this argument amongst some, I would say on the far right, elected officials. It's an argument I would hear as I listened to many hours of my home state governor, the lieutenant governor who's been very vocal about his criticism of Islam, which is that Islam is not a religion, it's a political ideology. Brian, I had never heard this argument being made before as a child. I think is an extraordinarily dangerous argument to make because it takes Islam out of the bounds of freedom of religion. That's what I heard echoes of in listening to Giuliani, this idea that Islam is somehow different than other religions. It was expounded upon in depth in a beautifully written, I think, recent article that the New York Times did out of Texas because lawmakers in Texas have increasingly begin to make this argument as well. It is a different approach towards Islam than we have seen in the past, and that is that Islam is not, in their view, a religion, it's a political ideology and so therefore should be outside of the bounds of how we would deem freedom of religion for all Americans.

Brian Lehrer (4:23)

Of course, we remember the first Trump administration and the way he campaigned in 2016 after some individual incidents of terrorism in the name of the religion and what was his response to have a complete and total ban of any Muslim from anywhere in the world coming in no matter their political beliefs.

Asma Khalid (4:46)

That was indeed what we heard during that first term and over time, that ban evolved.

The Trump administration's argument was that they were then focusing on specific countries, of course, many of those countries had Muslim majorities. I think what is so striking to me now-