Joe Biden speaks to Muslims urging their support
While President Trump is ignoring the needs of Muslims and allowing his policies on Muslims to be distorted and twisted, Joe Biden is leading a positive campaign to appeal to Muslims to win over their support. A recent video by Biden quotes an Islamic Hadith on standing up to what is wrong.
By Ray Hanania
Democratic Presidential candidate Joseph Biden is taking the Muslim American community seriously, circulating a video her recorded on Youtube quoting a popular Islamic Hadith.
Biden recites, “Hadith from the Prophet Muhammad instructs, ‘Whomever among you sees a wrong, let him change it with his hand. If he is not able, then with his tongue. If he is not able, then with his heart.”
The video is a contrast to President Donald Trump who has vilified Muslims, marginalized Muslim news media, especially the Arab American media, and refuses to narrow his incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric calling for a ban on Muslims from predominantly Muslim nations.
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, courtesy of the Joe Biden presidential campaign website
Trump’s own misrepresentation of his policies on Muslim immigrants is intended to appeal to the racist segment of his conservative base which vilifies Muslims. In reality, although Trump has banned immigration — now restricted — of Muslims from about a half dozen predominantly Muslim countries, there are more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries in the world whose citizens are not prohibited from entering America’s shores.
While Biden is appealing to Muslims, Trump continues to allow his racist advisers to vilify Muslims making no effort to clarify his true personal views.
There are more than 7 million Muslims in America, but only 25 percent are Arabs from the Middle East. The largest majority are African American Muslims, followed by Muslims of Pakistani and Asian origin.
Biden, however, is following the same racist anti-Arab path as has Trump refusing to acknowledge Arab Americans and treating them as if they are all supporters of terrorism.
The appeal to “Muslims” by American politicians has allowed those politicians to marginalize and ignore the needs of Arab Americans, on the racist belief that all Arabs are Muslim. But the reality is that of the nation’s nearly 5 million Arabs, more than 65 percent are Christian Arabs.
Biden and Trump will face-off in the Tuesday, November 3, 2020 General Election. Biden’s running mate is Kamala Harris, who has been criticized for her anti-Arab and especially anti-Palestinians views. Biden and Harris have declared themselves many times in the past to be “Zionists” and dedicated supporters of Israel. Trump has led the helm embracing a series of racist anti-Arab policies including declaring occupied Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and proposing a peace plan that undermines the Two-State Solution and giving Israel a strategy to pretend to embrace peace while pushing to expand the illegal racist settlements.
Both Biden and Trump oppose the BDS movement and support Israel’s illegal racist settlements leaving Arab American voters will little real choice between the two except th emotions fanned by the anti-Arab racist news media which favors Biden.
Click HERE to Read an analysis by the author in the Arab News Newspaper about the difficult choice Arab American sface: “U.S. Presidential Election a Dilemma for Arab Americans.”
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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