Dedicated little piece of work, ain't she?
Muslim American Voices from the White House
Posted on 02/24/2017 1:30:38 AM PST by T-Bird45
In 2011, I was hired, straight out of college, to work at the White House and eventually the National Security Council. My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman––I was the only hijabi in the West Wing––and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and included.
Like most of my fellow American Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump vilified our community. Despite this––or because of it––I thought I should try to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump Administration, in order to give the new president and his aides a more nuanced view of Islam, and of America's Muslim citizens.
I lasted eight days.
When Trump issued a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat.
The evening before I left, bidding farewell to some of my colleagues, many of whom have also since left, I notified Trump’s senior NSC communications adviser, Michael Anton, of my departure, since we shared an office. His initial surprise, asking whether I was leaving government entirely, was followed by silence––almost in caution, not asking why. I told him anyway.
I told him I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim. I told him that the administration was attacking the basic tenets of democracy. I told him that I hoped that they and those in Congress were prepared to take responsibility for all the consequences that would attend their decisions.
He looked at me and said nothing.
It was only later that I learned he authored an essay under a pseudonym, extolling the virtues of authoritarianism and attacking diversity as a “weakness,” and Islam as “incompatible with the modern West.”
My whole life and everything I have learned proves that facile statement wrong.
My parents immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh in 1978 and strove to create opportunities for their children born in the states. My mother worked as a cashier, later starting her own daycare business. My father spent late nights working at Bank of America, and was eventually promoted to assistant vice president at one of its headquarters. Living the American dream, we’d have family barbecues, trips to Disney World, impromptu soccer or football games, and community service projects. My father began pursuing his Ph.D., but in 1995 he was killed in a car accident.
I was 12 when I started wearing a hijab. It was encouraged in my family, but it was always my choice. It was a matter of faith, identity, and resilience for me. After 9/11, everything would change. On top of my shock, horror, and heartbreak, I had to deal with the fear some kids suddenly felt towards me. I was glared at, cursed at, and spat at in public and in school. People called me a “terrorist” and told me, “go back to your country.”
My father taught me a Bengali proverb inspired by Islamic scripture: “When a man kicks you down, get back up, extend your hand, and call him brother.” Peace, patience, persistence, respect, forgiveness, and dignity. These were the values I’ve carried through my life and my career.
I never intended to work in government. I was among those who assumed the government was inherently corrupt and ineffective. Working in the Obama White House proved me wrong. You can’t know or understand what you haven’t been a part of.
Still, inspired by President Obama, I joined the White House in 2011, after graduating from the George Washington University. I had interned there during my junior year, reading letters and taking calls from constituents at the Office of Presidential Correspondence. It felt surreal––here I was, a 22-year-old American Muslim woman from Maryland who had been mocked and called names for covering my hair, working for the president of the United States.
In 2012, I moved to the West Wing to join the Office of Public Engagement, where I worked with various communities, including American Muslims, on domestic issues such as health care. In early 2014, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes offered me a position on the National Security Council (NSC). For two and a half years I worked down the hall from the Situation Room, advising President Obama’s engagements with American Muslims, and working on issues ranging from advancing relations with Cuba and Laos to promoting global entrepreneurship among women and youth.
A harsher world began to reemerge in 2015. In February, three young American Muslim students were killed in their Chapel Hill home by an Islamophobe. Both the media and administration were slow to address the attack, as if the dead had to be vetted before they could be mourned. It was emotionally devastating. But when a statement was finally released condemning the attack and mourning their loss, Rhodes took me aside to to tell me how grateful he was to have me there and wished there were more American Muslims working throughout government. America’s government and decision-making should reflect its people.
Later that month, the evangelist Franklin Graham declared that the government had “been infiltrated by Muslims.” One of my colleagues sought me out with a smile on his face and said, “If only he knew they were in the halls of the West Wing and briefed the president of the United States multiple times!” I thought: Damn right I’m here, exactly where I belong, a proud American dedicated to protecting and serving my country.
Graham’s hateful provocations weren’t new. Over the Obama years, right-wing websites spread an abundance of absurd conspiracy theories and lies, targeting some American Muslim organizations and individuals––even those of us serving in government. They called us “terrorists,” Sharia-law whisperers, or Muslim Brotherhood operatives. Little did I realize that some of these conspiracy theorists would someday end up in the White House.
Over the course of the campaign, even when I was able to storm through the bad days, I realized the rhetoric was taking a toll on American communities. When Trump first called for a Muslim ban, reports of hate crimes against Muslims spiked. The trend of anti-Muslim hate crimes is ongoing, as mosques are set on fire and individuals attacked––six were killed at a mosque in Canada by a self-identified Trump supporter.
Throughout 2015 and 2016, I watched with disbelief, apprehension, and anxiety, as Trump’s style of campaigning instigated fear and emboldened xenophobes, anti-Semites, and Islamophobes. While cognizant of the possibility of Trump winning, I hoped a majority of the electorate would never condone such a hateful and divisive worldview.
During the campaign last February, Obama visited a Baltimore mosque and reminded the public that “we’re one American family, and when any part of our family starts to feel separate … It’s a challenge to our values.” His words would go unheeded by his successor.
The climate in 2016 felt like it did just after 9/11. What made it worse was that this fear and hatred were being fueled by Americans in positions of power. Fifth-grade students at a local Sunday school where I volunteered shared stories of being bullied by classmates and teachers, feeling like they didn’t belong here anymore, and asked if they might get kicked out of this country if Trump won. I was almost hit by a car by a white man laughing as he drove by in a Costcoparking lot, and on another occasion was followed out of the metro by a man screaming profanities: “Fuck you! Fuck Islam! Trump will send you back!”
Then, on election night, I was left in shock.
The morning after the election, we lined up in the West Colonnade as Obama stood in the Rose Garden and called for national unity and a smooth transition. Trump seemed the antithesis of everything we stood for. I felt lost. I could not fully grasp the idea that he would soon be sitting where Obama sat.
I debated whether I should leave my job. Since I was not a political appointee, but a direct hire of the NSC, I had the option to stay. The incoming and now departed national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had said things like “fear of Muslims is rational.” Some colleagues and community leaders encouraged me to stay, while others expressed concern for my safety. Cautiously optimistic, and feeling a responsibility to try to help them continue our work and be heard, I decided that Trump's NSC could benefit from a colored, female, hijab-wearing, American Muslim patriot.
The weeks leading up to the inauguration prepared me and my colleagues for what we thought would come, but not for what actually came. On Monday, January 23, I walked into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with the new staffers there. Rather than the excitement I encountered when I first came to the White House under Obama, the new staff looked at me with a cold surprise. The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.
The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing. As one staffer serving since the Reagan administration said, “This place has been turned upside down. It’s chaos. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.” This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism––legally questionable executive orders, accusations of the press being “fake,” peddling countless lies as “alternative facts,” and assertions by White House surrogates that the president’s national security authority would “not be questioned.”
The entire presidential support structure of nonpartisan national security and legal experts within the White House complex and across federal agencies was being undermined. Decision-making authority was now centralized to a few in the West Wing. Frustration and mistrust developed as some staff felt out of the loop on issues within their purview. There was no structure or clear guidance. Hallways were eerily quiet as key positions and offices responsible for national security or engagement with Americans were left unfilled.
I might have lasted a little longer. Then came January 30. The executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries caused chaos, without making America any safer. Discrimination that has existed for years at airports was now legitimized, sparking mass protests, while the president railed against the courts for halting his ban. Not only was this discrimination and un-American, the administration’s actions defending the ban threatened the nation’s security and its system of checks and balances.
Alt-right writers, now on the White House staff, have claimed that Islam and the West are at war with each other. Disturbingly, ISIS also makes such claims to justify their attacks, which for the most part target Muslims. The Administration’s plans to revamp the Countering Violent Extremism program to focus solely on Muslims and use terms like “radical Islamic terror,” legitimize ISIS propaganda and allow the dangerous rise of white-supremacist extremism to go unchecked.
Placing U.S. national security in the hands of people who think America’s diversity is a “weakness” is dangerous. It is false.
People of every religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and age pouring into the streets and airports to defend the rights of their fellow Americans over the past few weeks proved the opposite is true––American diversity is a strength, and so is the American commitment to ideals of justice and equality.
American history is not without stumbles, which have proven that the nation is only made more prosperous and resilient through struggle, compassion and inclusiveness. It’s why my parents came here. It’s why I told my former 5th grade students, who wondered if they still belonged here, that this country would not be great without them.
Big deal. We had a muslim in the White House, and we lasted 8 years.
This is a very young woman, who was given a seat on the NSC staff (and yet the left went crazy when they found out that a much older, more experience marine would have a seat — because it was Bannon).
She claims to be a strong independent woman who had something important to offer, showing that a black muslim american could also be a patriot.
Instead, she showed she was weak, and also ignorant. Ignorant because she bought into the left narrative about the travel ban. Weak because when confronted by people who disagreed with her, she ran away looking for a safe space.
This is pretty much what you would expect from recent college graduates, who were protected from having to deal with anything controversal, or to learn to defend their positions.
She was left totally incapable of handling disagreement.
And by leaving, she contributed to the “lack of diversity” that she was complaining about.
I prefer Tequila! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyl7GP_VMJY
Dedicated little piece of work, ain't she?
Muslim American Voices from the White House
This woman’s tale creeped me out.
I think most people will find it creepy, except The Atlantic’s ‘true believers’.
, I stayed on at the National Security Council in order to serve my country>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
By leaking classified info. to the Muslim Brotherhood?
This is likely one of the sordid leak sources , and now that she stands a good chance of being cauught , she m akes herself a darling of the left and bails because she cannot serve her Umma before the country anymore?
Hers are not the actions of a person who “serves my country.”
Muslims don’t have a country. They have their ummah. It’s a worldwide emptiness where every one of them has to live according to sharia. The imam tells them when to wash, when to pee and when to pray to allah. They are nothing but drones of the pedophile pirate mohammad. May she have her genitals mutilated and become some bearded, dirty night-shirt wearing fanatic’s fourth wife.
And return to that mohammadan paradise where-ever she, or her ancestors came from. Then she can wash her hair in camel urine.
swatcha gunna do? Fly more aircraft into buildings? Set off some roadside bombs? Capture a bunch of Christian women and use them as sex slaves? Go to Syria and join ISIS?
She's a beotch of the first order, give her an humanitarian award and install her at the UN as a human rights advocate...she's so toxic I'm sure we will see more of her.
http://thearabdailynews.com/2014/05/20/white-house-rumana-ahmed-leaving-post-new-assignment/
White House Rumana Ahmed leaving post for new assignment
By Ray Hanania
Rumana Ahmed, Office of Public Engagement, White House. Photo courtesy of the White HouseRumana Ahmed, who was named as the head of a new White House initiative to reach out to American Arabs and American Muslims, will be leaving her post at the Office of Public Engagement, headed by Valerie Jarrett.
A statement released by Ahmed offered few details raising concerns among American Arabs and American Muslims about her fate and also the fate of the initiative which was only launched last March. (Click here to read the original story.) Ahmed was an executive assistant to Jarrett.
Ahmed’s statement read:
“It’s been an honor serving in the interim role as the liaison to the Muslim American and Arab American communities in my official capacity within the Office of Public Engagement (OPE). Today is my last day with OPE before I return in a month in a different capacity with another office here at the White House.”
Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President B...
Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
No information has been released yet on the new assignment or why the transition will not begin for another month.
Before her appointment to the Office of Public Engagement, Ahmed served as a senior analyst in the Office of Presidential Correspondence, working under President Barack Obama. Prior to joining the White House Staff, Ahmed worked at the Department of Commerce Office of Policy and Strategic Planning.
Ahmed is originally from Maryland and she has her degree from George Washington University in International Affairs concentrating on International Economics and Development.
Click here for more information on the Office of Public Engagement.
Ahmed is the only individual on the Office of Public Engagement’s 21 person staff with direct knowledge of American Arabs and American Muslims. She may be the only Muslim on the staff, but that could not be confirmed. Colleague Yohannes Abraham, who also works on the staff, is Ethiopian.
The new office reflects the deep commitment that President Obama and Jarrett have to diversity and the inclusion of minority groups that are traditionally ostracized because of extraneous politics and international conflict, such as Arabs and Muslims.
(Ray Hanania is a former award winning Chicago City Hall reporter and political columnist. He is managing editor of The Arab Daily News which seeks to be the newspaper of record for American Arabs. www.TheArabDailyNews.com.)
Hey wench, 0bama was the one who selected the seven countries. Idiot.
What that means to me is that she got around and obtained as much classified info that she could, and sent it on to the Muslim Brotherhood, or worse, to Iran, depending on whether she is Sunni or Shia.
Interesting little gadfly. I would almost bet she is not in the USA now.
AllahWahoo Whackbar!
Golly; I wonder why...
...as exemplified by Arabs and Muslims.
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