The Muslim case against Hillary Clinton

Between his comments of banning all 1.6 billion Muslims from entering the United States or advocating that Muslim Americans wear special identification cards, Trump has done more than enough to alienate the American Muslim population of about 3.3 million.

Wajahat Ali, a prominent writer and creative director for Affinis Labs, provided some astute analysis about what it’s like being a Muslim and watching the first presidential debate:

“Each time we, or Islam, is mentioned I want to take a shot of mango lassi [a sweet yogurt drink]; I’ll be in a diabetic coma by 11 p.m.,” Ali wrote in the New York Times. “Now we get Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump trying to prove who is more hawkish on national security. However, only one of these candidates has said he might bar me from entering my own country. Not all attention is good.”

For a majority of Muslim Americans, the presidential race really is a choice between the lesser of two evils. A Pew poll from July found that 70 percent of Muslim Americans lean Democrat, while 11 percent lean Republican.

So, while Hillary Clinton will probably win the Muslim vote, she’s still pushing for policies that will be detrimental to not only Muslims, but Arab Christians and Sikhs as well.

During the debate, Hillary advocated for passing and implementing the “No Fly, No Buy” gun proposal, a measure that would ban those on the terrorist no fly list from buying a gun. Those on the government watch list are overwhelmingly Muslim, and, at this point, there isn’t an appeal process to get off that list.

As a side note, this was one of the few policy proposals that Trump agreed with Clinton on.

When answering Lester Holt’s question about how we should respond to the terrorist threat at home, Clinton said, “I think we’ve got to have an intelligence surge.”

Clinton continued by saying that the benefits of expanding our intelligence are too significant to ignore. The last time the United States had a surge in intelligence came right after we were attacked on 9/11/01 and Congress hastily passed the Patriot Act.

Many critics believe the Patriot Act was one of the worst pieces of legislation in terms of violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of Muslim Americans, particularly one’s right to privacy and freedom from illegal searches and seizures. The government infringed on these rights by conducting wiretaps, obtaining national security letters, and performing searches without notification, among many others.

While Muslims are terrified of seeing, what they believe to be, an anti-Muslim bigot and demagogue get elected, they should be vocal and speak truth to power that Clinton’s policies actually help Muslim Americans flourish in this country, and not further alienate them.

Watch part of the exchange from the debate below: