I Was a Muslim in Trump's White
House
曾經任職歐巴馬政府國安會的穆斯林員工，表示為何她在川普就任第八天，選擇離開國安會體系，以及分享她在國安會任職時的心路歷程。
Rumana Ahmed Feb 23, 2017
In 2011, I was hired, straight out
of college, to work at the White House and eventually the National Security
Council. My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country
stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman––I was the only hijabi in the
West Wing––and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and
included.
Like most of my fellow American
Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump
vilified our community. Despite this––or because of it––I thought I should try
to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump Administration, in order to give the
new president and his aides a more nuanced view of Islam, and of America's
Muslim citizens.
I lasted eight days.
When Trump issued a ban on travelers
from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no
longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not
as fellow citizens, but as a threat.
The evening before I left, bidding
farewell to some of my colleagues, many
of whom have also since left, I notified Trump’s senior NSC communications adviser, Michael Anton, of my departure, since we shared an office. His initial
surprise, asking whether I was leaving government entirely, was followed by
silence––almost in caution, not asking why. I told him anyway.
I told him I had to leave because
it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day
under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I
stand for as an American and as a Muslim. I told him that the administration
was attacking the basic tenets of democracy. I told him that I hoped that they
and those in Congress were prepared to take responsibility for all the
consequences that would attend their decisions.
He looked at me and said nothing.
It was only later that I learned he
authored an essay under a pseudonym, extolling the virtues of authoritarianism
and attacking
diversity as a “weakness,” and Islam as “incompatible with the
modern West.”
My whole life and everything I have
learned proves that facile statement wrong.
My parents immigrated to the United
States from Bangladesh in 1978 and strove to create opportunities for their
children born in the states. My mother worked as a cashier, later starting her
own daycare business. My father spent late nights working at Bank of America,
and was eventually promoted to assistant vice president at one of its
headquarters. Living the American dream, we’d have family barbecues, trips to
Disney World, impromptu soccer or football games, and community service
projects. My father began pursuing his Ph.D., but in 1995 he was killed in a
car accident.
I was 12 when I started wearing a
hijab. It was encouraged in my family, but it was always my choice. It was a
matter of faith, identity, and resilience for me. After 9/11, everything would
change. On top of my shock, horror, and heartbreak, I had to deal with the fear
some kids suddenly felt towards me. I was glared at, cursed at, and spat at in
public and in school. People called me a “terrorist” and told me, “go back to
your country.”
My father taught me a Bengali
proverb inspired by Islamic scripture: “When a man kicks you down, get back up,
extend your hand, and call him brother.” Peace, patience, persistence, respect,
forgiveness, and dignity. These were the values I’ve carried through my life
and my career.
I never intended to work in
government. I was among those who assumed the government was inherently corrupt
and ineffective. Working in the Obama White House proved me wrong. You can’t
know or understand what you haven’t been a part of.
Still, inspired by President Obama, I
joined the White House in 2011, after graduating from the George Washington
University. I had interned there during my
junior year, reading letters and taking calls from constituents at the Office
of Presidential Correspondence. It felt surreal––here I was, a 22-year-old
American Muslim woman from Maryland who had been mocked and called names for
covering my hair, working for the president of the United States.
In 2012, I moved to the West Wing
to join the Office of Public Engagement, where I worked with various
communities, including American Muslims, on domestic issues such as health
care. In early 2014, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes
offered me a position on the National Security Council (NSC). For two and a
half years I worked down the hall from the Situation Room, advising President
Obama’s engagements with American Muslims, and working on issues ranging from
advancing relations with Cuba and Laos to promoting global entrepreneurship
among women and youth.
A harsher world began to reemerge
in 2015. In February, three young American Muslim students were killed in their
Chapel Hill home by an Islamophobe. Both the media and administration
were slow to address the attack, as if the dead had to be vetted before they
could be mourned. It was emotionally devastating. But when a statement was
finally released condemning the attack and mourning their loss, Rhodes took me
aside to to tell me how grateful he was to have me there and wished there were
more American Muslims working throughout government. America’s government
and decision-making should reflect its people.
Later that month, the evangelist Franklin Graham declared that the government had
“been infiltrated by Muslims.” One of my colleagues
sought me out with a smile on his face and said, “If only he knew they were in
the halls of the West Wing and briefed the president of the United States
multiple times!” I thought: Damn right I’m here, exactly where I belong, a
proud American dedicated to protecting and serving my country.
Graham’s hateful provocations
weren’t new. Over the Obama years, right-wing websites
spread an abundance of absurd conspiracy theories and lies, targeting some
American Muslim organizations and individuals––even
those of us serving in government. They called us “terrorists,” Sharia-law
whisperers, or Muslim Brotherhood operatives. Little did I realize that some of
these conspiracy theorists would someday end up in the White House.
Over the course of the campaign,
even when I was able to storm through the bad days, I realized the rhetoric was
taking a toll on American communities. When Trump first
called for a Muslim ban, reports of hate crimes against
Muslims spiked. The trend of anti-Muslim hate crimes is ongoing,
as mosques are set on fire and individuals attacked––six were killed at a mosque in Canada by a self-identified
Trump supporter.
Throughout 2015 and 2016, I watched
with disbelief, apprehension, and anxiety, as Trump’s style of campaigning
instigated fear and emboldened xenophobes, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes.
While cognizant of the possibility of Trump winning, I hoped a majority of the
electorate would never condone such a hateful and divisive worldview.
During the campaign last February,
Obama visited a Baltimore mosque and reminded the public that “we’re one
American family, and when any part of our family starts to feel separate … It’s
a challenge to our values.” His words would go unheeded by his successor.
The climate in 2016 felt like it
did just after 9/11. What made it worse was that this fear
and hatred were being fueled by Americans in positions of power. Fifth-grade students at a local Sunday school where I
volunteered shared stories of being bullied by classmates and teachers, feeling
like they didn’t belong here anymore, and asked if they might get kicked out of
this country if Trump won. I was almost hit by a car by a white man laughing as
he drove by in a Costco parking lot, and on another occasion was followed out
of the metro by a man screaming profanities: “Fuck you! Fuck Islam! Trump will
send you back!”
Then, on election night, I was left
in shock.
The morning after the election, we
lined up in the West Colonnade as Obama stood in the Rose Garden and called for
national unity and a smooth transition. Trump seemed the antithesis of
everything we stood for. I felt lost. I could not fully grasp the idea that he
would soon be sitting where Obama sat.
I debated whether I should leave my job. Since I was not a political appointee, but a direct hire of
the NSC, I had the option to stay. The incoming and now departed national
security adviser, Michael Flynn, had said things like
“fear of Muslims is rational.” Some colleagues and
community leaders encouraged me to stay, while others expressed concern for my
safety. Cautiously optimistic, and feeling a responsibility to try to help them
continue our work and be heard, I decided that Trump's NSC could benefit from a
colored, female, hijab-wearing, American Muslim patriot.
The weeks leading up to the
inauguration prepared me and my colleagues for what we thought would come, but
not for what actually came. On Monday, January 23, I walked into the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building, with the new staffers there. Rather than the
excitement I encountered when I first came to the White House under Obama, the
new staff looked at me with a cold surprise. The diverse White House I had
worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.
The days I spent in the Trump White
House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the
Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s
chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican
leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at
authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the
press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and
assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security
authority would “not be questioned.”
The entire presidential support
structure of nonpartisan national security and legal experts within the White
House complex and across federal agencies was being undermined. Decision-making authority was now centralized to a few in the West
Wing. Frustration and mistrust developed as some staff felt
out of the loop on issues within their purview. There was no structure or clear
guidance. Hallways were eerily quiet as key positions and offices responsible for
national security or engagement with Americans were left unfilled.
I might have lasted a little
longer. Then came January 30. The executive order banning travelers
from seven Muslim-majority countries caused chaos, without making America any
safer. Discrimination that has existed for years at airports
was now legitimized, sparking mass protests, while the president railed against
the courts for halting his ban. Not only was this discrimination and
un-American, the administration’s actions defending the ban threatened the
nation’s security and its system of checks and balances.
Alt-right writers, now on the White
House staff, have claimed that Islam and the West are at war with each other. Disturbingly, ISIS also makes such claims to justify their
attacks, which for the most part target Muslims. The Administration’s plans to
revamp the Countering Violent Extremism program to focus solely on Muslims and
use terms like “radical Islamic terror,” legitimize ISIS propaganda and allow
the dangerous rise of white-supremacist extremism to go unchecked.
Placing U.S. national security in
the hands of people who think America’s diversity is a “weakness” is dangerous.
It is false.
People of every religion, race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and age pouring into the streets and
airports to defend the rights of their fellow Americans over the past few weeks
proved the opposite is true––American diversity is a strength, and so is the American
commitment to ideals of justice and equality.
American history is not without
stumbles, which have proven that the nation is only made more prosperous and
resilient through struggle, compassion and inclusiveness. It’s why my parents
came here. It’s why I told my former 5th grade students, who wondered if they
still belonged here, that this country would not be great without them.
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