Farah Pandith, an academician and the first ever special representative to the Muslim communities for the U.S. Department of State, says the presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump, especially around the issue of terrorism, is one of the “most destructive chapters that will take a very longtime to get behind us.”
In an interview with Radio Boston Oct 12, Pandith said that people all over the world are observing what is happening in the U.S, and the kind of language that are coming out of this country.
“There are three important things that concern me around the rhetoric that Mr. Trump has used about Muslims and about immigrants. The first is that everything that has said bolsters what terrorist groups are peddling – that we Americans are against Islam and against Muslims,” Pandith, who has served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said.
“The words that he has chosen to use, the rhetoric, the sentiment, the way he describes the religion and those who follow it, add to the rhetoric of the extremists’ narrative,” Pandith, who is also an adjunct senior fellow at Council of Foreign Relations, said. That is dangerous for us because it is going to mean decades for us to push back that we are not at war with Islam,” she said in the interview.
Asked by the interviewer if election of Clinton may undo the effects of the Trump rhetoric, Pandith, who has not so far officially endorsed either candidate, said it was unlikely. “Words matter and they stay with us. We can’t expect that if she wins the election, it will be like he was a bad guy and what he said does not matter. It is not like that,” she said.
Islam had been present in the U.S., she said, since the time of President George Washington as many slaves who came from Africa were Muslims. “So, to understand our own history with regard to Islam it is essential to understand that Muslims have been part of our nation since the beginning.”
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