Muslims in America were horrified this week to received recorded calls asking them to press one if they are Muslim and two if not.
In the current climate of fear created by the election of islamophobe Donald Trump as US president, the communications were a source of alarm. Trump has previously claimed “Islam hates us” and called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the country.
His election has been followed by a series of Islamophobic incidents, including verbal abuse, incidents of hijabs being ripped from young women and graffiti on mosques. The phone calls were particularly off-putting given Trump's suggestion in November last year that he would implement a Muslim registry. The proposal has been floated again in various forms by his team following the election victory.
The poll was not, however, a creeping implementation of the database, but rather a well-meaning survey by a Muslim NGO. Emerge USA is a charitable organization that works to support the Muslim American community, and its activities include educational events and voter initiatives.
The organization offered clarification in a press release, saying that the calls are part of a post-election poll in order to gauge Muslim opinion, which had been scripted a month before. They added that “it was not anticipated that the poll would be released at the same time as a Muslim registry proposed by President Elect Trump”. They apologized and reported that the survey has been suspended and the questions adjusted, following the confusion.
Others spread reassurance on social media:
'Emerge USA was conducting the poll, and an anti-Islam group was not using the organisation's name as a disguise.'
— *Dr Barkat SOOMRO* (@DrBarkatSoomro) November 24, 2016
While the alarm might seem a little melodramatic, the power of the anti-Islamic rhetoric spread by Trump and his team should not be underestimated. Last week a Trump campaigner wrote on Facebook that she does "not want any type of Muslims in our country, period”.
Indeed, following Nazi salutes and rhetoric at a meeting in support of the President-elect,the American Holocaust Museum has made clear in a statement that “the Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words".
This could well apply to Islamophobia too: with so much anti-Muslim sentiment coming from the future leadership of the country, it is not hard to imagine how attempts to record information about Muslims could be misinterpreted as the beginnings of state-endorsed oppression.
RA
