Yemen, Israel, and Syria v. Clinton

THE ABSURD TIMES

Latuff: You said it.  More of our adventures abroad and don't think Hillary will do better.  If they hate Obama so much, they will love her.

Below is a transcript on things that are at stake in this election, but for our international friends there are a few things to point out.  People in the United States really don't care or take various positions.

Obama is the peace president, believe it or not.  Now this will be difficult to believe given the facts in the transcript below, but it is true.  All along, he had to resist Hillary's more militant and aggressive attitudes while she was Secretary of State.  Now the election seems to have come down, and we do mean down, to a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. 

The idea that a female would be a more peace-loving ruler is conceived against the backgrounds of Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi.  Golda led the war of aggression against several Arab states in 1967 and Ghandi went all out against just about anybody she could find.  The U.S. finally stopped hey only when she insisted that Coca Cola reveal its secret formula.  I know that sound weird, but remember that Alliende was victim of a coup after he tried to nationalize the phone company and coca Cola.  Kissinger was the motivating force against that.

So, here we have the transcript of what we are doing in Yemen.  Donald is busy grabbing pussy and Hillary is busy defending a woman's right to her pussy, so Obama is left with the more serious business of making war on humanity.  The only problem is that Clinton will be much worse.  Trump?  It is not clear what he would do, but one can expect the same subtlety of thought and "strategery" of Bush II and his Oedipus Complex from him. 

One final note: a bill to increase weapons to Saudi Arabia has passed.  Rand Paul and a few Democrats still oppose it, but it will be implemented.  Still, the whole issue is that there are bad optics here.  I wonder what the Calculus will be?

TOPICS

·                                 Yemen

·                                 Saudi Arabia

GUESTS

NASSER ARRABYEE

Yemeni journalist based in Sana'a and founder and president of the media service company Yemen Alaan, or Yemen Now.

SARAH LEAH WHITSON

executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division. She has made numerous trips to Yemen, including a visit this year to examine the impact of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes.

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On Sunday, thousands of Yemenis gathered at the United Nations building in Sana'a calling for an international investigation into the U.S-backed Saudi assault on a funeral. The attack was carried out with warplanes and munitions sold to the Saudi-led coalition by the United States. The U.S. Air Force continues to provide midair refueling to Saudi warplanes. According to the U.N., more than 4,000 civilians have been killed and over 7,000 injured since the Saudi-led coalition bombing began last year. Airstrikes have reportedly caused about 60 percent of the deaths. We go to Sana'a to speak with Yemeni journalist Nasser Arrabyee and Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch.

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TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to see if we can reach Nasser Arrabyee, the Yemeni journalist based in Sana'a, founder and president of the media service company Yemen Now. Nasser, are you with us?

NASSER ARRABYEE: Yes, yes. Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us—you're speaking to us from the capital. Can you talk about what you understand happened, who you've spoken to? And what evidence is there of the U.S. support for the Saudi attack?

NASSER ARRABYEE: Well, no single Yemeni doubt that Saudi Arabia was not the one who did this crime at all, because it is not the first, it is not the last. Saudi Arabia has been committing war crimes since March 26, 2015. So, without doubt, it;s Saudi Arabia.

But let me tell you what is the—what is also the thing. The big criminal is Obama himself. This is how Yemenis see to the situation, because every Yemeni believe that Saudi Arabia would not have done that at all, would not have done a war in Yemen, without the approval of Obama. And it is very clear to everyone that Obama wanted to appease the Saudis after the Iranian nuclear deal. But, unfortunately, he appeased them by the Yemeni blood. And this is a big problem to the Americans. Obama is destroying the values and the principle of America now. Obama is leading the world to the law of jungle. Obama, unfortunately, is doing—is killing Yemen now, killing Yemen. No killer except Obama in the eyes of Yemenis now, because everybody knows Saudi Arabia and what it would do if there is not the approval of Obama.

AMY GOODMAN: Nasser, you tweeted this morning, "Obama Has been killing Yemen humans With Saudi hands for about 20 months now." Also, from The Intercept, they write, "Multiple bomb fragments at the scene appear to confirm the use of American-produced MK-82 guided bombs. One fragment, posted in a picture on the Facebook page of a prominent Yemeni lawyer, says 'FOR USE ON MK-82 FIN, GUIDED BOMB.'" Nasser Arrabyee?

NASSER ARRABYEE: Yes, yes. Well, let me tell you something very important. You know, the problem why—or the reason why we say Obama is killing Yemen, is killing Yemen humans, is simply because Obama or United States, the administration of the United States, is cooperating. And this is announced. This is known to everyone. But it is not only a matter of cooperating with the refuel or with the intelligence or with the logistic things. No. But it is a will. It is Obama will to support the Saudi Wahhabi regime, which means to us is Obama now is supporting the Qaeda, ISIS, because Obama is saying he's supporting the internationally recognized government, the exiled government based in Riyadh now. Obama should know—and I think he knows—that three members, at least—three members, at least, of this government are designated by Obama, by Treasury Department, as global terrorists. I can give you the names now. Three, at least, of this government in Riyadh are Qaeda, ISIS leaders. They are leading their operators here in Yemen, using the American weapons, using the Saudi money. This is what Obama is doing in Yemen. Obama is leading the Americans to the law of jungle and the world to the law of jungle. He is crazy now.

AMY GOODMAN: In June, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon removed the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition from a blacklist of forces responsible for killing children. Ban later acknowledged he was coerced into doing so after the kingdom threatened to cut off funding to the U.N.

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: The report describes horrors no child should have to face. At the same time, I also had to concede the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously, if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many U.N. programs. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and so many other places would fall further into despair. It is unacceptable for members states to exert undue pressure.

AMY GOODMAN: That's U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sarah Leah Whitson?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: The fallout to U.S. and U.N. credibility from this support for Saudi Arabia and its disastrous war in Yemen has been quite severe. Not only is the U.S. implicated in the crimes that are being carried out by the Saudi coalition in Yemen, not only has the U.N.'s credibility been tarnished by basically accepting a bribe to take Saudi Arabia off of this list of shame of worst attackers on children, but now we have the U.S. government standing behind a government, the Saudi coalition, that is carrying out the exact same kind of strikes in Yemen—an attack on a funeral—that extremist groups in Iraq, ISIS, has been carrying out in Baghdad for over a year, and, again, making it very hard for people to tell the difference about who the extremists really are. Finally, the recent vote on—at the U.N. Security Council about a resolution on Aleppo was significantly stymied because the U.S. just could not maintain condemning an attack by Russians and Syrian government forces on civilians, while it's supporting, aiding and abetting very similar attacks that its partner, its number one arms client, is carrying out in Yemen.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Senator Chris Murphy, who's spoken out against the U.S. support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in August. He was on CNN.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: There is an American imprint on every civilian life lost in Yemen. Why? Well, it's because though the Saudis are actually dropping the bombs from their planes, they couldn't do it without the United States. It's our munitions, sold to the Saudis. It's our planes that are refueling the Saudi jets. And it's our intelligence that are helping the Saudis provide their targeting. We have made a decision to go to war in Yemen against a Houthi rebel army that poses no existential threat to the United States. It's really wild to me that we're not talking more about this in the United States. The United States Congress has not debated a war authorization giving the president the power to conduct this operation in Yemen.

AMY GOODMAN: Connecticut Senator Murphy went on to say that Congress can put an end to arms sales in Saudi Arabia, again, speaking on CNN.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: Congress may have a chance to weigh in, in September, because the Saudis need more bombs, and so they need the Congress to reauthorize a new sale of weapons. So Congress can step in and say enough is enough.

AMY GOODMAN: And Senator Murphy said that the perception in Yemen is that the United States is responsible for the war, not Saudi Arabia.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: If you talk to Yemenis, they will tell you that inside Yemen, this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign, this is perceived to be a U.S. bombing campaign. What's happening is that we are helping to radicalize the Yemeni population against the United states.

AMY GOODMAN: Which is exactly what Nasser Arrabyee, our guest, just said from Sana'a. So, he was talking about cutting off the weapons supply back in September. It's now October, Sarah Leah Whitson.

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Mm-hmm. And there was a remarkable vote in the Senate, which was defeated, to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but there were more votes in support for it than ever could have been imagined. So, clearly, there is a shift and a reconsideration. And, of course, most importantly, on Saturday, the State Department announced that it was going to review what it called its drastically reduced support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen. So, clearly, the administration is feeling the heat.

We need an international investigation, a true, impartial investigation, to understand what is happening with these airstrikes and to hold those responsibility to account. And I think the U.S. Congress has a major role to play, not only in suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but in forcing this administration to tell us exactly what sort of assistance it has been providing and what its involvement has been in every single one of the unlawful strikes that we've documented. There are answers that the U.S. government, that the National Security Council, the State Department, owes the American people as to what exactly it's doing in terms of its support for this war in Yemen. And it's only given very vague and cryptic answers.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is President Obama doing this?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Well, as your guest said and as the administration has itself repeatedly conceded, this war in Yemen is the price of the Iran deal. The Yemeni people are paying the bill for Saudi being very upset about the Iran deal. And I think the administration calculated that this would be a very short war, that the Houthis would be quickly dislodged, and they could befriend and win over the Saudis. What they didn't count on, and what we've seen time and again in the region, is that the war unfolds into a massive disaster and the U.S. in way over its head.

AMY GOODMAN: Nasser Arrabyee, we have 30 seconds. Your final message to the American people from Sana'a, from Yemen?

NASSER ARRABYEE: The final message is that the—we want to salute the American heroes, despite all the war crimes of Obama, because there are a lot of people who—I mean, the Americans, all the Americans, we respect them. We know that they are with us. Human Rights Watch and the senators like Chris Murphy and Rand Paul and a lot of senators, they are heroes. We respect them. We salute them. We know they are going to rescue the values and the principles of America against Obama. Obama is misled. Obama is bylined by Saudi dirty money. Saudi dirty money is destroying the principles of American values of America. They should stop Obama and every official who does not know what's happening in Yemen now.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just ask—let me ask Sarah Leah Whitson, very quickly: Last month, the U.S. Senate approved a billion-dollar arms deal to Saudi Arabia; is there any chance this might be revoked, if there are concerns that the U.S. itself is involved with war crimes?

SARAH LEAH WHITSON: Absolutely. Even if the deal itself is not revoked, delivery can be suspended, delivery can be delayed. And we've already seen the U.S. government, for example, suspend the transfer of various weapons during the courses of various wars. So they can absolutely suspend this. And I think the U.S. government knows that, really, the time is up for this war and its support.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, so let's see some of the moderators of the debates ask the presidential candidates these questions. Sarah Leah Whitson, thanks so much for being with us, from Human Rights Watch. And, Nasser Arrabyee, thank you for joining us from Sana'a, Yemeni journalist based in Sana'a, founder and president of the media service company Yemen Now. This is Democracy Now! We'll be back in a minute.

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PUSSY TRUMP

THE ABSURD TIMES

PUSSY TRUMP AND ELECTING A PRESIDENT IN THE U.S.

BY

HONEST CHARLIE

The Republican Nominee

On Twitter today, I logged on to see what the news was.  The usual sources were talking about Yemen, Ukraine, Jeremy Corbyn, Israel's attacks on unarmed and homeless Palestinians, you know, unimportant stuff.  One source even had the nerve to ask "Why is the media talking so much about pussies? What about the attacks on Yemen?"

I had to explain that this is not what our elections are about.  Issues of importance are not discussed, as they do not make good television.  They lower ratings, and hence commercial prices.  Also, they are uncomfortable to the ruling class here, what with the Ukrainian hacking of E-Mails (surprised?) and release,

and other embarrassing items.  (The sorts of things Sanders supporters cared about or the Green Party.)

            No, they care that Donald Trump was taped saying he'd grab women's pussies.  That makes good TV.

            Other Republicans do not want to be seen with him right now.  He was supposed to meet and appear with Paul Ryan, our Speaker of the House, but was told not to come and Ryan's only comment was "there is an elephant in the room."  (He did not observe that the elephant was shitting as well.)

            At the same time, Donald appeared outside of Trump Tower to give a wave to his supporters.  I think Jerry Springer was also there to recruit participants for his television show.

"Pussy? Where's the pussy?"

The U.S. Election -- Facts and Positions?

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Our Next President?

From what I have seen lately on "social" media, I gather there is a great deal of confusion on the part of intelligent, but somewhat less inured, people than amongst the unthinking.  There was even a few thoughts that Donald Trump would be better at foreign policy than Hillary Clinton, for example, as if it was possible to figure out anything of substance in this election.  So, this is a humble attempt to clarify what is going on in our election.  I need to give some background, however.

You have to think of a time when things meant more sense.  Start with something as simple as coffee.  That's right, believe it or not, it is as good a place to start as anywhere.  I was introduced to it one day when I simply felt very lethargic and my favorite cola did not work very well.  One cup and I felt more alert instantly, or at lease within a few minutes.  It is rather a bother making it and brewing it, and buying it ready made was a bit expensive, but at least it made sense.  All of a sudden, I started to hear about "Decaf" coffee.  What the hell?  It is the caffeine that provides the stimulation.  Why go to all the trouble of making it and also drinking the warm stuff if there is no caffeine in it?  It was better for you. Well, screw that – I'll just skip it, thank you.

So, what else? Skim milk.  Yes, go from 5% to 2% and from 2% to less.  So what do they do with what they removed?  They make butter and stuff like that, I suppose, but it really tastes like wet white stuff.  Forget it.

Diet Cola, Diet beverages of all sorts, no caffeine in your soda, actually, nothing in your soda.  One advertised only one calorie in an entire bottle.  Great! If you have to only consume 2,000 calories a day, you can drink 2,000 bottles of diet soda each day?  Something is wrong here.

Well, we also have diet news and diet elections.  How about Hillary Clinton wanting regime change all over and invading Iraq and Libya and killing the leaders?  Nope, let's focus on her deleted e-mails.  Benghazi? Well, never about what the hell we were doing there in the first place, but why we didn't send troops there afterwards when the same that happened to Gaddafi happened to our soldiers and other functionaries.  Yes, that's the real issue.  It is all Putin's fault.  Diet foreign policy.

"THIS IS WOLFGANG BLITZKRIEG WITH BREAKING NEWS – VLADIMIR PUTIN IS PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA.  HE IS ARMED AND CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS"

Er, thank you, Wolf, for that excellent example of our news today.  Diet news.

Syria is a far more complicated issue.  One of the candidates, the Libertarian, was asked what he would do about Aleppo.  He asked "What is Allepo?"  Later, he was asked which foreign leader he had the most respect for.  He could not think of one.  He did say Peres, but was informed that he had died.  The question of how many Palestinians he killed or Oslo was not even touched.  If the guy can't think of a foreign leader, why ask him further questions? You would have to ask diet questions.

Trump, however, has the answers, many of them, in fact.  "Knock the crap outta them!"  Is my favorite strategy.  Others are "Ban all Moslems from entering the country," soon replaced by a mélange of variegated drivel of other strategies.  Punish women who have abortions, but don't, actually he meant punish the doctors, well, not really, just so we punish somebody!!!!  He was against The Iraq intervention, but then there is no record of his so doing.  That's O.K., he has a Doctorate from Trump University.  Women are fat pigs and can't be a 10 if they have no breasts, but he only means that about Rosie O'Donnell.  Really, if you are taking this guy seriously, you've been on diet lemons too long.

Now Jill Stein of the Green Party does seem to know what she is talking about and actually makes sense.  For this reason, there is no way she will be allowed to become President. 

Our news media talk seriously about the "spoiler" candidate.  Now seriously, how is it possible to spoil this diet election?  It can't be done.  It is already spoiled.  To say not voting or voting for a third party candidate is a vote for Trump is patently ridiculous.

To take Clinton seriously, one has to think that she will not appoint another Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.  Otherwise, it is impossible to draw a distinction.    

Not that it makes any sense to bring in any substance to this discussion, I can not pass by the opportunity to post a transcript about education or the lack or it as it pertains to Islamophobia. 

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring in Nazia Kazi, our fourth roundtable guest, professor of anthropology at Stockton University. Her latest article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Teaching Against Islamophobia in the Age of Terror." And as we have this discussion and all that took place this weekend in our neighborhood here in New York City in Chelsea, two bombs being placed here—one went off, 29 people injured. Then, in New Jersey, I think it was a backpack of some pipe bombs found outside an Elizabeth, New Jersey, train station. Actually, it was homeless men who found the backpack and told the police what they saw inside—wires and pipes. And also what happened in an area of New Jersey where there was going to be a race for Marine families, and the bomb went off in a trashcan, and it was only because the race was late that nobody got hurt. But, Nazia Kazi, your response?

NAZIA KAZI: Yeah, so, as an educator and someone who spends a lot of time in the university classroom, I get to see firsthand the ways in which a lot of our young people understand terror. You know, most of them have grown up in the so-called terror age, post-9/11. And the bad guys, to put it so simply, have been Osama bin Laden, ISIS, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. And there is very little nuance, quite often, in their understanding of these global realities.

One of the things I find in the university classroom, and I talk about it in this piece, is the really puzzling coexistence of a deep hawkishness and a systemic ignorance. So, on the one hand, students will have very strong opinions about what the U.S. needs to do globally, but actually have very little knowledge about the histories of, say, Muslim-majority countries. And I take very seriously the fact that these things coexist. I think that the war against terrorism, the U.S. war on terror, would not have been possible without a deep, public anti-intellectualism. In other words, there's kind of a systemic ignorance that the war on terror needs, it requires, in order to operate. Many of my students have been fed these binaries about the free world and the unfree world, you know, peace-loving people and terrorists, and have accepted these binaries wholesale. And the job for us as educators is to really—what I argue, is to insert critical thinking as a terrorism prevention tool, you know, a way of thinking past these simplistic binaries, and thinking geopolitically, historically and contextually, making connections between U.S. racism domestically and imperialism abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break and then come back to this discussion. Professor Nazia Kazi teaches anthropology at Stockton University. She's speaking to us from Philadelphia. Dr. Debbie Almontaser is head of the Muslim Community Network. She's the founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International [Academy]. Haji Yusuf is with us in Minnesota. He's with #unitecloud in St. Cloud, Minnesota. And Ramzi Kassem is a CUNYSchool of Law professor. Stay with us.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump responded to the weekend attacks by lashing out at Muslim immigrants and refugees, calling them a "cancer from within," while Democrat Hillary Clinton said Trump is helping ISIS to recruit more fighters. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called for the New York bombing suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, to be treated as an "enemy combatant" rather than be treated as a civilian suspect. "The idea that they should all be collectively punished … is, frankly, racist. And that's what we should call it," says lawyer Ramzi Kassem with clients held in Guantánamo. "The notion that we should generalize ... military detention, extrajudicial imprisonment is not only absurd and runs against U.S. and international law, but it is the practice of totalitarian regimes."

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TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We're broadcasting from Chelsea, from New York City, that actually has just opened up in the last 12 hours on 23rd Street between Sixth and Seventh, where the bomb went off. The police, while there, have now opened the street, and TV crews and vans are all there continuing to film. We are having a roundtable discussion about the bombings in New York and the stabbing attack in Minnesota, the bombings in New Jersey, as well. And I want to return—to turn to the response of the major-party candidates, of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, who responded to the weekend attacks by lashing out at the Muslim immigrants and refugees, calling them "a cancer from within," suggested American security forces should follow Israel's example in racial profiling. He said this during an interview on Fox News.

DONALD TRUMP: We're going to have to hit them much harder over there, and we're going to have to find out—you know, our police are amazing. Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are. They're afraid to do anything about it, because they don't want to be accused of profiling, and they don't want to be accused of all sorts of things. You know, in Israel, they profile. They've done an unbelievable job, as good as you can do. We're trying to be so politically correct in our country, and this is only going to get worse. This isn't going to get better. And what I said is, you have to stop them from coming into the country.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me play Donald Trump, a little more of what he had to say, and Hillary Clinton's reaction.

DONALD TRUMP: These attacks and many others were made possible because of our extremely open immigration system. From 9/11 to San Bernardino, we have seen how failures to screen who is entering the United States puts all of our citizens—everyone in this room—at danger.

HILLARY CLINTON: We know that a lot of the rhetoric we've heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists—in particular, ISIS—because they are looking to make this into a war against Islam.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called for Ahmad Rahami to be treated as an "enemy combatant" and placed in indefinite military custody rather than be treated as a civilian suspect. It's interesting. I heard a counterterrorism expert today on television saying that's exactly what ISIS wants, to be treated as a military force—they have enemy combatants—and not to treat him simply as a criminal. Can you talk about this, Ramzi Kassem? What does this mean?

RAMZI KASSEM: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to move past both sides of this conversation, as exemplified by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Most of the conversation goes through the security lens, and so Donald Trump is arguing that Muslims are a threat to security, and Hillary Clinton is arguing that we shouldn't discriminate against Muslims because that would endanger our security, as well. So, in other words, there's this instrumental approach to Muslims, where we're just a pawn in a larger security game, in a global security game. And so, I think we really have to move past that discourse. What we're talking about are American Muslims, some who have been here for generations. Islam is not new to America. These people belong here. This is their home. The idea that they should all be collectively punished and Muslims in the future should be prevented from coming here because one Muslim happened to do something criminal is, frankly, racist. And that's what we should call it, and it shouldn't be debated as some kind of policy proposal. So I think that's our starting point.

Then, when you move on to labels like enemy combatant and even the label of terrorism itself, these are labels that really impede understanding. They blind us to other possible understandings of these acts of violence, ranging from the personal to the political to the psychological. As long as we're obsessing over who to call an enemy combatant, who to label a terrorist, we're preventing ourselves from gaining a deeper understanding of whatever the phenomenon is. And actually, I should say "phenomena," plural, because whatever drove that young man, if he did do it, in Minnesota to whatever he did is going to be different from what drove the individual here in Chelsea to plant these bombs. And so—and so, I think, really, our understanding, going to, you know, what Nazia was saying, we have very real blinders on in this country that are preventing us from gaining a real and meaningful understanding of what is happening domestically and what is happening internationally. As someone who's represented Guantánamo prisoners for over a decade, I can tell you that the notion that we should generalize that practice, generalize these legal practices—military detention, extrajudicial imprisonment—is not only absurd and runs against U.S. and international law, but it is the practice of totalitarian regimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Nazia Kazi in Philadelphia at Stockton University, your response to what Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had to say, and also on the point you're making in your article "Teaching Against Islamophobia in the Age of Terror"?

NAZIA KAZI: Sure. So my response to both of these candidates responding to the events of this weekend, I mean, I think when we talk about immigration to the U.S., we need, in public discourse, a much wider conversation. I mean, if we're talking about Somalis in Minnesota, we can't fall back on these clichéd notions of immigrants coming here for a better life. We have to really ask about the conditions that lead to migration. And when we're talking about Somalia, that means talking about U.S. military intervention, real political and economic policies that lead to this type of migration. So that's absolutely critical.

And the other thing we need to be aware of in this moment is, any time things like this happen, we see this space opened up for Muslim Americans to represent themselves, to speak up. This roundtable might be an example of that. And usually what happens is one of two really tragic outcomes. One is that Muslims will repeatedly condemn ISIS. And two is that Muslim Americans will sort of wrap themselves in the American flag and position themselves as these quintessential patriots. And what happens when we engage in these type of conversations is a real diversion from the issues at hand, when we ought to be talking about the increasing role of militarization of daily life in the U.S. or the ramping up of our military apparatus abroad. And it is really the classroom that could become a space for this type of engagement.

AMY GOODMAN: Debbie Almontaser, you have been dealing in your own family with attacks on your family. You yourself aren't now taking public transportation.

DEBBIE ALMONTASER: That's been for the last couple of days, Amy, and it's just, you know, being cautious, given that this attack took place right here in the city. And so, I made the decision, the conscious decision, not to travel in public transportation. But again, you know, yesterday, I was in the middle of the city in City—near City Hall. It was fine. Sometimes, you know, I have this sense to overreact, as well as others, and it's justifiable and understandable. But we can't live in fear. And this is something—this is something that I'm constantly telling members of my community, is that we can't live in fear, that we're part of this society, that we need to live our lives, and we need to be unapologetically Muslim and continue contributing to society, whether it's in our professional field or in our communities, volunteering and doing things that we've been doing. And so, that's one thing that's really critical.

And I really appreciate what Nazia is talking about, because just today there was an op-edthat was published in the Gotham Gazette that I had actually written about using the classroom as a place for teachable moments and to make sure that we address racism and bigotry, and, given the number of hate crimes that have taken place locally and nationally, how important it is for teachers to establish a caring and nurturing environment where children could feel free to speak their minds and know that their fellow students are there to support them and that they're allies and upstanders, versus being bystanders, when something happens in the school cafeteria or the schoolyard.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it's interesting, one of the things that have come out in the last 24 hours about Ahmad Khan Rahami is that years ago his sister filed a complaint with the police around domestic violence. And we're finding this so much—now, she recanted that, but in a number of these cases—that the first signs are violence within the family, whether it's Omar Mateen attacking his wife, who shot up the Pulse nightclub and led to so much pain and misery, that actually it is taking domestic violence seriously at the beginning that might be preventative.

DEBBIE ALMONTASER: It certainly is. And the thing that's disturbing, Amy, is that what we see constantly is when we see that there are mental health issues that are brought up, immediately that narrative is changed. And so, for example, right here in New York City, I was very perturbed by the notion of some of our elected officials saying we're not calling this a terrorist attack. Why aren't we calling it a terrorist attack? It is a terrorist attack. When someone seeks to terrorize people by putting bombs anywhere, that is terrorism. And so, waiting and holding back on it, as if to say we're waiting to see if it was a Muslim, therefore calling it a terrorist act, is really unfortunate, and it really puts American Muslims in a position that makes people wonder, "Is Islam inherent to violence and terrorism?" And that's not the case. And it's really important for us to work very hard in changing that narrative and changing the language. When something does happen, we have to call it what it is. Whether it's a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, anyone who does anything in the name of violence against people, we need to call it out.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask our guest in Philadelphia, Nazia Kazi, how you use the classroom to teach against Islamophobia.

NAZIA KAZI: Yes. This is kind of an evolving strategy as I develop ways to relate current events that are happening in real time to a classroom. And I think one of the things is to really regard these tragic events as teachable moments, as moments to really get our students to pause and deliberately reflect upon the nature of our—the world around us. A perfect example of this was last year when the Paris attacks happened. A really fruitful classroom conversation took place about why there was a Facebook solidarity filter with the French flag, but not one with the Lebanese flag. And that led to a really remarkable conversation about race and the value of white victims, really.

I also think that, as I said earlier, we need to inject critical thinking into the dialogue. We need to get away from sort of knee-jerk vengefulness—right?—and think very broadly about the U.S.'s role as an imperialist superpower. I mean, my students are surprised when they learn about, you know, everything from Iran-Contra to what you said at the top of the show about white phosphorus being supplied to Saudi Arabia. And these types of moments in the classroom really lead to a way more fruitful dialogue than just clichéd notions about Islam being a religion of peace or Muslims worshiping the same God as Christians and Jews. It leads to a far more fruitful conversation when we begin to think geopolitically.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramzi Kassem, final word?

RAMZI KASSEM: You know, my hope, again, in the coming week—and I'm sure my hope's going to be dashed—is that this time lawmakers and policymakers won't come out with harebrained proposals to reform our way our immigration laws are implemented and that this time law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the NYPD won't descend on entire communities rather than conduct their work in a more targeted fashion. But again, I'm sure that my hope is going to be dashed. Time and again, every time something like this happens, be it in New York or overseas or elsewhere in the United States, there's no shortage of people, dozens of people, who will come into our offices at CLEAR saying, for example, that they're being approached for questioning by the FBI, even though they have no connection to what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. We'll continue the conversation. I want to thank Ramzi Kassem, CUNY law professor; Nazia Kazi, who is at Stockton University; Debbie Almontaser, thanks so much for joining us. And I want to thank our guest in Philadelphia, Haji Yusuf. Thanks so much.

Professor Calls for Fighting Systemic Ignorance That Leads to Islamophobia in the Classroom

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