Ms. Magazine—We remember Nawal El Saadawi, the renowned Egyptian feminist, physician, writer and activist, as our charismatic and outspoken mentor, from her arrival in Seattle in 1994 to teach at the University of Washington.
Jadaliyya—In a series of unprecedented moves, President Biden has included six Arab Americans in his administration; partnered with Arab Americans; increased the refugee admission cap; explicitly named the problem of anti-Arab bigotry and committed to end it, and ended the Muslim Ban. Yet rather than quickly deeming these as “victories” for Arab American communities, we need to look beyond individual policy stances or political slogans. Instead, we need to explore the root causes of the problems that Biden claims his partnership with Arab Americans will address and ask ourselves to what extent the Biden administration is committed to unraveling the underlying systems that maintain anti-Arab bigotry or the structures that make policies like the Muslim Ban possible. A “root-cause” approach allows us to envision structural changes that can ensure not only an end to anti-Arab bigotry but also a world where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism become unimaginable.
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Ms. Magazine—The lack of COVID-19 protections in prisons show officials believe that inmates are less than human, that they do not deserve to be protected from death like everyone else, and that their lives do not matter.
The Chicago Reporter—Shortly after his inauguration, President Joe Biden reversed former President’s Donald Trump’s Muslim Travel Ban, stating those actions are a stain on our national conscience.” This stance aligns with that of the tens of thousands of protesters who, at the time the first Muslim Travel Ban was enacted in January 2017, took to the streets and to airports across the country with slogans such as, “We are all Immigrants,” “Standing with Muslims against Islamophobia,” and “Stop Hatred against Muslims.” To be sure, the Muslim Travel Ban is a racist policy. It seeks to keep out or deport people perceived to be Muslim based upon the racist assumption that “they” are violent potential terrorist enemies of the U.S. nation. The ban was an executive order that prevented individuals from primarily Muslim countries, and later, from many African countries, from entering the United States.
