Photograph Source: Ted Eytan – CC BY-SA 2.0
The journey of my prayer rug reflects my own as a Muslim American. It has seen a lot, and despite its fraying fringes, remains resilient as ever.
Praying five times each day is one of the pillars of Islam. Each prayer includes recitations from the Qur’an.
My blue and gold prayer rug was a childhood gift from my late maternal grandmother, or nana as we called her, who brought it from Saudi Arabia. I still remember praying by her side. She taught me to read the Qur’an and would lovingly correct my Arabic.
Wherever I’ve been, I’ve prayed on that same rug. In a world that often leaves me feeling unmoored, my faith anchors me. It’s a sentiment so many Muslims and other people of faith in this country share.
The right to freely practice my religion is enshrined in our Constitution under the First Amendment. It protects this right for allpeople to practice any faith, or none at all, and prohibits our government from establishing an official religion.
You would think members of Congress, who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, would know this. Yet many continue to attack the faith of millions of Muslim Americans, including their own constituents.
Some have invoked “sharia” — which refers to the various rules Muslims follow, like prayer guidance — to preposterously claim that Muslims are trying to “replace” the Constitution. Islamic learning institutions — like the summer school where I first learned the Arabic alphabet in my youth — are a growing target.
When the Islamic Academy in Alabama tried to relocate from the Birmingham suburb of Homewood to a larger building in nearby Hoover, a local Islamophobic campaign ensued, resulting in Hoover city officials voting against the relocation late last year. In response, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) said, “Islamic Indoctrination Centers have NO PLACE in our state.”
Would Tuberville have denigrated Catholic schools, Protestant youth groups, or Jewish summer camps this way?
Unfortunately, Tuberville is hardly alone. Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) recently compared Muslims to dogs and has labeled Muslim officials like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “terrorists.”
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) declared this March that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” That’s not only hateful but ignorant. Among the first Muslims in the U.S. were enslaved West Africans who helped build this country. Despite significant obstacles, many preserved their Islamic faith and were guided by it in their struggle for liberation.
Since then, Fine and Ogles have only doubled down on their bigotry. In a March post on X, Fine wrote “We need more Islamophobia, not less,” while Ogles said Muslims “all have to go back.” Virtually no high profile Republicans have condemned this hateful rhetoric.
This racist fearmongering is a tried and true tactic — a cheap deflection from these leaders’ own failure to respond to their constituents’ actual needs, like affordable housing, health care, and groceries.
But it’s also more than that. The more Muslims are dehumanized, the easier it is for politicians to justify their endless, costly, and immoral wars on Muslim-majority countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran, and the genocide in Gaza. Like clockwork, each new bombing abroad fuels more anti-Muslim racism and violence against my community at home.
Already, Islamophobic social media posts have proliferated since the war on Iran began. The NYPD recently foiled an assassination attempt against Muslim and Palestinian American activist Nerdeen Kiswani. And according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, anti-Muslim discrimination complaints in the U.S. have reached record highs.
Muslims don’t need to defend our existence. It’s the racists and religious bigots who don’t belong in Congress — or anywhere in a free society.
But while hateful politicians spew division, I see more people in this country refusing to do the same. Instead, multi-faith coalitions are uniting around real threats: war, billionaires controlling our economy, the climate emergency, and the alarming erosion of the constitutional rights we hold so dear, including the freedom of religion.
