Dear Friends, Assalamu Alaikum,
We write as American Muslim activists, leaders, and organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, in solidarity with the Asian American community. Our hearts go out to our Asian American siblings, who are as much a part of the American Muslim community as they are of other faith groups.
In recent months we have seen, once again, some of our fellow Americans cling on to racism, xenophobia, and hatred as a response to fear. STOP AAPI Hate, a project of the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council and Chinese for Affirmative Action, has received over 1,500 reports of verbal harassment, shunning, and even physical assault, tied to anti-Asian bias.
We know this experience well, as a community still reeling from the civil rights violations and Islamophobia which followed the 9/11 terror attacks. During these times of difficulty, it is our shared responsibility to uphold the values of compassion, love, selflessness, and service. Those values call us to protect and support one another from the hysteria, scapegoating, and violence of racism.
We are outraged at those that would fan the flames of racism and xenophobia as a solution to a public health crisis. Communities of color have been fighting against the same forces of racism and hate for generations. Before there was a Muslim Ban, there were countless Chinese, Japanese, and Asian Exclusion Acts. Before there was violence against Arab and South Asian communities, there was and is continued violence against Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples.
Asian Americans are being asked to “prove their American-ness and loyalty” to the American way of life, a sentiment that Muslims are often asked to do in social and political spaces. Bigots have accused Asian Americans of being the source of the COVID-19 spread in this country. This is both inaccurate and irrational. But this racism has nonetheless led to harassment and violence targeting our Asian American neighbors. Loyalty tests and hate must be rejected.
Our collective communities have sacrificed too much, and struggled too much, to allow this kind of rhetoric and logic to be normalized and endured.
As such, we condemn in the strongest terms possible, the targeting of Asian American communities through rhetoric or violence.
We have a moral responsibility to be courageous. While this virus does not discriminate based on race or income, our country’s various systems do. Immigrants, people of color, and low-income families are more likely to be unable to access proper healthcare should they contract the virus. The multiple layers of systemic and interpersonal racism we are witnessing call on us to be strong in our solidarity with and support for one another.
Building power in our communities is about deep care, deep love, and a deep commitment to justice. This means that we must be willing to speak up against what is wrong, hateful, and unprincipled. We strongly support our Asian American neighbors, and we urge members of the American Muslim community to fight back against racism and xenophobia by being present for one another, speaking out, actively engaging in allyship, and by making a commitment continue to condemn this rhetoric wherever we see it.
Our liberation and our movements are interconnected, and we will continue to protect and support each other.
In solidarity,
CAIR San Francisco Bay Area