Omar Suleiman

And so we don't find ourselves welcomed by the left, which has a hostility towards religion in most left spaces and most liberal spaces.

Right.

So the Muslim community is in its nature conservative for what that's worth, right?

It's a conservative community.

It's a community that has certain orthodoxies and practices that would make it disagreeable in its nature and its practice to many on the left.

And many on the right just see us as a group of foreigners and a threat in that regard.

So, yeah.

We find ourselves in this awkward place.

There's also the presence of sort of the pro-Israel dominance of both parties.

The foreign policy of both parties is detrimental to Muslims globally.

The securitization of the Muslim community in the name of countering violent extremism.

Unfortunately, the Muslim community has had both Republican and Democratic administrations just run over its rights.

So we find ourselves kind of in this awkward space, right?

We are a religious community that's also a minority.

The racialization of the Muslim community sort of robs us of who we are and how we get to engage them with different platforms and different peoples around us.

So we find ourselves in a very awkward place.

I don't think representation is everything.

I think that representation can actually be detrimental sometimes because you can have people that...

uh, represent you, but that don't actually represent your, your, your priorities as a community, as a faith community.

So we don't want to be tokenized as a community, right?