I think we all need to do a better job of using our platforms to educate our fellow Americans about our Muslim neighbors, CAIR Seattles Arsalan Bukhari says.
"I think we all need to do a better job of using our platforms to educate our fellow Americans about our Muslim neighbors," CAIR Seattle's Arsalan Bukhari says. SB

Donald Trump, the president-elect of the United States, has risen to power on campaign promises to enact a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." He's even recommended surveilling and shutting down mosques. Roughly 100,000 American Muslims live here in Washington State.

According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations Seattle (CAIR Seattle) executive director Arsalan Bukhari, the work to protect our Muslim neighbors starts now.

"The responsibility is upon fair-minded leaders and just everyday Americans to publicly and vocally use every opportunity to talk about the lives and contributions of the American Muslims they know," Bukhari said.

He threw out a few examples. "One out of every 18 medical doctors is an American Muslim," he said. "American Muslim women are the second-highest educated religious group in the country."

To Bukhari, the election results don't come as much of a surprise. Last year saw the most anti-Muslim hate crimes on record. Islam, he says, was also the most mentioned religion on primetime news, and most often portrayed in a negative light. "When you have that backdrop of six years of coverage that's that loaded, it's no wonder that the average American was receptive to Trump's message," he said. "I think we all need to do a better job of using our platforms to educate our fellow Americans about our Muslim neighbors."

But Bukhari's worried about executive actions the president-elect may take that target American Muslims. The Southern Poverty Law Center has compiled a list of known anti-Muslim hate groups and individuals advising Trump and other leaders in the Republican party. They include Sen. Jeff Sessions, chair of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee, anti-Muslim activist Walid Phares, and Joseph E. Schmitz, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy.

Three years ago, Republicans in state legislatures seized on anti-Muslim fears and started rolling out pieces of legislation that targeted "Sharia" law, a misguided, hateful effort that ended up criminalizing some Muslim religious practices, Bukhari said. If new anti-Muslim legislative efforts are emboldened in this state by a Trump presidency, he added, the first thing local jurisdictions could do is obstruct these types of laws from passing.