Muslims for Social Justice Condemns Transphobic, Anti-Worker House Bill 2

Muslims for Social Justice condemns trans-phobic, anti-worker House Bill 2 passed by North Carolina General Assembly and signed into law by Governor McCrory on Mach 23, 2016. We stand with our allies to fight transphobia, attack on workers, racism and other oppressions. Here are pictures of protest against HB2 on March 24th, that was led by Black Lives Matter QTPOC (Queer Trans People of Color Coalition).

Here is a statement from Black Lives Matter QTPOC delivered during the protest.

On the anniversary of the passing of Blake Brockington, a Black trans teen from Charlotte, North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory and the North Carolina General Assembly moved to attack working people and create dangerous conditions for women, LGBTQ people, black and brown people, and any workers who experience discrimination or who struggle to make ends meet.

The General Assembly and Governor McCrory chose to criminalize trans and gender nonconforming children and youth, and to scapegoat trans women and other trans people for rape by passing NC HB 2. House Bill 2 bars city and county governments from raising their municipal minimum wage, as well as prohibits anti-discrimination policies that account for gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation. Lawmakers were given only 5 minutes to review the bill and it passed within a 12 hour period without a single trans person of color being allowed to speak. 

This bill reinforces the school to prison pipeline that trans and gender non-conforming students of color already face by making their choice of toilet grounds for suspension or arrest.

This bill rolls back decades of hard-won progress, and will harm our whole state. It undermines municipal democratic control, advancements in anti-discrimination policy, and further prohibits wage increases. This is a direct assault on working families and particularly working women of color who are most likely to be paid poverty wages. LGBTQ folks of color are workers, and we are worth more!

This bill uses trans panic and the scapegoating of trans women to derail real conversations about safety and consent. Trans and queer people are survivors of sexual assault, too. Our safety matters and we don’t make our community safer by threatening others with the brute force of the murderous police or incarceration. If our state is truly concerned for survivors of sexual assault, it will make comprehensive consent and sex education mandatory. This law does nothing to prevent indecent exposure and sexual assault, which are already illegal, but instead prevents local governments from protecting the safety and livelihoods of queer and trans people.

We honor and fight for Blake by affirming that our lives matter. Anti-transgender bias and legislation and persistent structural racism directly impact the devastating rates of suicidality, unemployment, physical and sexual violence, poverty, incarceration and homelessness experienced by transgender people of color.

Trans and Queer people of color demand a living wage and freedom from criminalization and discrimination, in the workplace and in the bathroom.

Tonight, we are calling for a Special Session of the People outside of the Governor’s mansion. For Blake Brockington, for Angel Elisha Walker, for all Black and Brown trans and queer people in North Carolina who have been murdered, disappeared, or incarcerated, it is our duty to speak. It is our duty to demand freedom, to demand a living wage, to demand education, to demand comprehensive health care that is accessible and free of charge.

Signatories:

QPOCC, The Tribe, #BlackLivesMatter North Carolina, Sister Song, Ignite NC, Southern Vision Alliance, Youth Organizing Institute, #BlackLivesMatter Gate City, Workers World Party, SONG NC, Greensboro Mural Project, GenderBenders, Fight for $15, QORDS, Trans Pride in Action, Queer Youth Circus, House daLorde, Movement to End Racism and Islamophobia (MERI-NC), SAFE Coalition NC, LGBTQ Center of Durham, Center for Family and Maternal Wellness

Muslims for Social Justice Statement in the Wake of Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice Verdicts #BlackBrownUnity

As Muslims, as people of color, and as human beings, we cannot afford to be silent in the face of the state violence being levied against Black and Brown people in the United States and abroad. As we mourn Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice, a Black woman and child murdered by police and declared guilty for their own deaths by virtue of the non-indictments of the officers who killed them, it is clear that we are not safe. Black children are shot dead while playing in the park and sleeping on the couch in their own homes. Black women, trans and cis, are murdered, violated, beaten, and disappeared- their names erased from reports in the news. Muslim women survive unspeakable violence at the hands of white supremacists daily. Black and Brown people in the United States are living under siege of a terror state; and yet mass media calls us terrorists.

The prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is reported to have said “Whomsoever of you witnesses an injustice,  let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then let him change it with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.”

Muslims for Social Justice believes that not only is it our duty as Muslims to seek leadership from the women in our community, to raise our voices with and for Black and Brown women, it is imperative to our survival. The United States claims to bomb countries in the Muslim world to liberate the women in our communities. U.S. state agents in Abu Ghraib sexually assaulted Muslim women and men alike. The U.S. military has some of the most heinous records of sexual assault. Police and correctional officers in the U.S. sexually assault Black and Brown women in the streets and in detention facilities every day. Both in the U.S. and abroad, systemic racial and gender assault on Black and Brown people, including (and especially) those who are women, femmes, transgender and gender non-conforming, constitute a regime of state-sanctioned violence that reproduces a culture of policing and repression.

Muslims for Social Justice calls on Muslim communities to support demonstrations for Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Betty Jones, and Laquan McDonald; to speak out against racism and Islamophobia; to uplift the voices and struggles of Black and Brown women; and to organize in our communities against state violence domestically and abroad. Most importantly, it is time for Muslims to take real steps towards building authentic Black and Brown unity and feminist practices within and beyond our communities. It is time to stop giving lip service to Bilal and listing how many Black friends the Prophet (PBUH) had; and it is time to address anti-Blackness and misogyny and show up for each other across nationalities and gender as a daily practice. 

The following are pictures from Tamir Rice/Sandra Bland rally in Durham on January 1st, 2016.

Muslims for Social Justice statement on Palestine

Here is a speech from Ahmad Jitan on behalf of Muslims for Social Justice at Palestine Solidarity march and rally in Durham on 10/30/15.

"As we stand here in solidarity with Palestine, I want to first recognize the land that we stand on.

This is a land that was ethnically cleansed of its indigenous populations by European settlers who saw it as their divine right.

So I want to bring to mind and honor the indigenous people of this land, those who have passed and those who continue to struggle and live in a country that was founded upon their genocide.

A country that was founded to preserve the life, liberty, and property of white, male, land-owners who enslaved Africans to build their promised land.

They try and make us forget the history of this land and the histories of the people who inhabit it. But we have not forgotten, and we know what is going on today is intimately connected to that history. We have not forgotten. We are here. We are proud and dignified.

I’m here today a son of Palestinian refugees, and we are here today to honor and be in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle. A people who have been and are continuing to be ethnically cleansed by European settlers who see it as their divine right.

A country claimed to have been founded as a homeland for the Jewish people but brutalizes, sterilizes, and imprisons them when they are African.

Which is to say, when I say “Free Free Palestine” I know that dream is not possible just when the occupation ends or when there is a Palestinian state. Which is to say, as I struggle for a free Palestine, I must also struggle for the liberation for all people. Here in the United States, in the South, in Durham, NC that means standing in solidarity for the liberation and self-determination of Black people in this country.

It’s necessary not just as an ethical imperative or a theoretical connection, our lives are materially tied.

The tear gas canisters, the guns, the bombs, the walls, that brutalize, terrorize, murder, and displace our communities are funded by the same sources and produced by the same companies worldwide. They share tactics and information in order how to best oppress us.

White supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy are global phenomenons. We each have unique histories and particular struggles, yet we are still connected in our fight for justice.

I’m here with Muslims for Social Justice, a grassroots organization based here in the triangle dedicated to fighting racism, white supremacy, and sexism within as well as beyond the Muslim community. I want to make it clear, for those who still may be confused, that the Palestinian struggle isn’t a religious conflict or a war between Muslims and Jews, but a struggle for self-determination against settler-colonialism. Muslims and Muslim communities, however are under attack. When Israel raids al-Aqsa, they are raiding a sanctuary, a religious and cultural symbol for many Palestinian people.

It’s a tactic we see by white supremacists here in the states. In just the past three weeks, six black churches were burned to the ground in the St. Louis area. This is not a coincidence. When they see you fighting for your freedom, they terrorize you by targeting your places of worship, congregation, and community. Your places of safety and security.

Islamophobia has been around since the founding of this country, when the first Muslims who made it to this continent were enslaved Africans.

Today, Islamophobia fuels global wars on “terror” and justifies the expansion of the surveillance and police state here at home in order to protect us from “foreign invaders” and “sharia law.”

In the face of all this, I take hope that I am not struggling alone. I take hope in the ancestors who have paved the way for our struggle and I take hope in the many many leaders of our movement who continue to pave the way toward justice and freedom."

Muslims for Social Justice Statement on AME Massacre

Muslims for Social Justice is deeply shocked and saddened at the murder of nine worshippers at the historic Black church - Emanuel African Methodist “Mother Emmanuel” Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015. We pray for the victims of this unbelievable tragedy. While authorities have called it a “hate crime”, we emphasize that this was a white-supremacist and terrorist attack. The murderer's picture donning Apartheid South African and racist Rhodesian regime flags indicate his allegiance to the racist ideology. Based on news quote from a survivor, terrorist yelled “You rape our women. You're taking over our country. You have to go,"” before he killed his victims. The terrorist reportedly left a survivor unharmed so she could recount the story of his terror to others. The Charleston massacre is a continuation of more than two hundred years of attacks, lynchings, shootings, bombings and burning of Black sacred spaces - historical tactics deployed by white supremacists to terrorize Black communities. One has to be reminded that the date of this massacre, June 17^th, 2015, coincides with the 193^rd anniversary of slave rebellion plot orchestrated in the same church by black leader Denmark Vesey.

The Charleston massacre comes at the heels of a global racist assault where Haitian descendants in the Dominican Republic are being forcefully deported from the country where they have lived for generations. Haiti was founded after a slave rebellion that had deep resonance on the U.S. South. Mr. Vesey had plans for a slave rebellion to free slaves in the US South and migrate to Haiti in 1822. That slave rebellion was crushed by the slaveholders and Haiti was punished by imperialist forces for centuries. The ugliness of white supremacy in the U.S.A. and the plight of the Haitians in the Dominican Republic reinforce the need for a global movement against racism.

In the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims for Social Justice believes Muslims should increase resolve to ending white supremacy and all forms of oppression. We support a call by the Muslim chaplain and activist Kameelah Mu'Min Rashad that Friday, June 19, 2015, should be a day when imam and khatibs throughout the USA should deliver khutbahs (Friday prayer sermons) that include prayer for Mother Emmanuel AME Church victims and moblize all Muslims to become an active part of the #BlackLivesMatter and anti-racism movement. We also urge Imams and khateebs to elaborate on the history of slavery and racism in the USA, especially the 150^th anniversary of ending of slavery (Juneteenth) that will be commemorated on June 19, 2015. This history is also relevant in the USA since slaves were the first to celebrate Ramadan in this nation. We believe there is a need to go beyond education and practical steps are needed to end all vestiges of racism within the non-Black Muslim community and in the broader non-Muslim community.

Muslims for Social Justice has launched a series of forums to challenge the twin evils of Islamophobia and racism in the USA. We plan to offer workshops on racism and Islamophobia in the future. We call on Muslim community to join us in challenging white supremacy in all its forms, whether murders of black and brown people by police, school-to-prison-pipeline, prison-industrial-complex, environmental racism, gentrification or the war on poor. It is essential to merge our struggles, ranging from Palestine freedom, justice for Rohingya Muslims, Islamophobia in the USA to #BlackLivesMatter movement and ending all forms of oppression in the USA. 

“O ye who believe, stand out firmly for justice". Sura An-Nissa, verse 135