#toolateobama

Yesterday, February 3, 2016, President Obama visited his FIRST U.S mosque after seven years in office. People around the country praised, adored, gushed, applauded him on this “historic” move. Though his words are welcomed at a time when Islamophobic rhetoric is at an all time high, as he aimed to unite and affirm the presence of Muslims in America, it would be naive to ignore the impact of foreign policy, unwarranted surveillance, and racial profiling that have contributed to the criminalization, marginalization, and other-ing of entire Muslim communities. 

It would be naive to ignore the number of deportations (2 million+) of immigrants, including Muslim families, administered under his leadership. 

It would be careless to forget the number of bombs dropped on Muslim majority countries by the U.S just in 2015 (23,000). 

It would be unacceptable to dismiss the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia by drone strikes administered by U.S foreign policy (3,500+)— 90% of which were NOT the intended target.

As Zahra Billoo tweeted, “could [Obama] visit a village that he drone bombed in Pakistan the day before?”

Why are Muslims praising a man who mocks and demonizes their very presence? It is naive to ignore the ways in which America’s foreign policy affects perceptions of Muslims in America. It is this very foreign policy that fuels the Islamophobic climate in which we find ourselves in. The very reason that Muslims are seen as terrorists is because of the War on Terror that views all Muslims as suspects, criminals, with the capacity to be radicalized.

When a nation criminalizes, demonizes, and devalues a people, when we speak about the deaths of civilians as a mere statistic or “regretful casualties” to attain the expulsion of terrorism, we perpetuate a culture of dehumanization and marginalization of a whole people.

Drone strikes that have hit weddings, homes, killed children, and last year, killed 19 civilians (including patients and children) in a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan — in which the U.S military justified this atrocity by reminding the American people that they were “targeting individuals who were threatening the force”, diminishing the innocent lives lost by labeling them as “collateral damage”, devaluing their lives to inevitable chess pieces in a war that seems to destabilize the region more and more. A war in which we respond to terror by producing more terror into the world. And yet a visit and a “thank you” is supposed to blind us into gratitude? When Obama won’t even meet with the victims of his authorized drones?

Nothing can erase the pain, terror, and Islamophobia that has been afflicted onto Muslim communities by U.S foreign policies.

These are the lived realities of Muslim communities. You beautify us with your words, but you kill us with your drones.