“This particular case is going to the heart of the American fundamental right to politically dissent, to express your beliefs,” said Sahar Aziz, a Rutgers Law professor and author of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom. “And when you belong to a group that’s not afforded those beliefs at equal levels as everyone else, that’s evidence of discrimination against that group — but also a threat to those American values.”
Flip the situation to a member of any other marginalized group speaking in support of human rights and progressive values, such as Black Lives Matter, and the illegality of Abulhawa’s termination and its violation of her civil rights would be undebatable, Aziz said.
And yet in her case, it is perceived as debatable — which Aziz said is due to anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment that is pervasive in the American mainstream, resulting in the significant denial of rights to the members of those groups compared to the majority.
“The most vulnerable person in America in terms of having their civil rights denied outright or circumscribed is a Muslim Arab who defends Palestinian rights,” she said. “They are confronting Islamophobic stereotypes, orientalist Arab-phobic stereotypes, and anti-Palestinian racism all in one; in a country whose foreign policy is to blindly and unconditionally support Israel’s state policies and practices, even if those practices and policies violate international human rights. That’s why people like [Abulhawa] are sitting ducks.”
Read the full article in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.
