Bicoastal Bitterness
She was selected as the valedictorian who would address the graduating class at a prestigious west coast private university. The announcement about her selection noted her accomplishments while “graduating with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide” and noted “she has studied how technology, immigration and literacy affect the type of medical care people receive”.
But, on April 15th, the university reversed its decision. She will not deliver the valedictorian speech on May 10th to an audience of about 65,000.
On the other side of the country, at the country’s capital, back in November, President Biden nominated a well-qualified man for the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He “is a veteran litigator unanimously rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association”.
But, months later, his confirmation is all but sunk. The President now faces “a painful choice between withdrawing the name … or trying to overcome the opposition at the risk of losing the chance to fill the crucial post before the November elections.”
What is common to the west coast valedictorian and the east coast judicial nominee?
Here are their names: Asna Tabassum and Adeel Mangi.
What unites them is not the fact that their names begin with A.
Tabassum is a South Asian-American and Muslim.
Mangi is a South Asian-American and Muslim.
It is not the “South Asian-American” that has dogged them though.
If confirmed, which increasingly looks unlikely, Mangi would become the first-ever Muslim attorney to sit on a federal appeals court.
Tabassum is the first from her family to attend college and, while I am unable to confirm this, she might be the first USC valedictorian who is Muslim.
Mangi, born and raised in Pakistan, studied law at Oxford University, then immigrated to the U.S. at 22 years old to attend Harvard University. He began practicing law in the U.S. and became the youngest associate to make partner at the New York law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. He worked on historic cases, including a landmark wrongful death lawsuit of a mentally ill Black man at a New York maximum security prison, which led to a $5 million payout to the victim’s family and required cameras and microphones to be installed throughout the prison.
Mangi also successfully fought for mosques to be built in New Jersey after their permits were denied, a case that earned a $3.25 million settlement and involved Donald Trump’s Justice Department. Mangi has also been a fierce advocate for immigrants, joining a coalition of different faith groups in advocating for keeping DACA, and the LQBTQ+ community, writing an amicus brief defending Title VII.
Sounds like the kind of resume that I would like to see in a judge.
But, apparently not so for some US Senators.
“Do you believe that Jews are colonial settlers in Israel?,” asked Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. “Do you condemn the atrocities of the Hamas terrorists?,” asked Republican Sen. Ted Cruz."
And three Democratic senators have announced that they would not vote for Mangi.
NYT reports:
Republicans have stood by their criticism and accused Democrats of trying to install “radicals” to lifetime appointments on the bench. …
If Republicans remain united against him, as expected, and the Democrats cannot be persuaded to change their position, Mr. Mangi would lack the votes to be confirmed.
In a public statement, Asna Tabassum writes:
I earned my graduate degrees from USC. I am terribly, terribly disappointed with USC’s decision with safety as a facade. The university’s provost writes:
To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech. There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period.
Yeah, right!
I am terribly, terribly disappointed that three Democratic senators have lined up along with Republicans in opposing a well-qualified and accomplished lawyer who happens to be Muslim.
In September 2010, the NYT ran a piece with a headline that says it all: American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?
I had blogged about it, which is why it was easy to track it down. The Asna Tabassum and Adeel Mangi developments echo the same sentiments even in 2024.
The following was my column that was published in the local newspaper in June 2016, as it was becoming clear that the racist rapist could win the election.
Understanding ‘others’ essential in today’s world
(For The Register-Guard: June 8, 2016)
My childhood classmates came from diverse religious backgrounds. This included Farooq and Yasmeen, among others, who were Muslims. Of the teachers, I still recall Yusuf Ali, who was the machine shop instructor. Thanks to India’s diversity, and to life in an industrial setting, we Hindu kids went to school with Muslims and Christians, and even my highly religious and orthodox grandmothers did not worry about “traditional values.”
As a kid, I did not know that there were Muslims in America. When the name of a boxer, Muhammad Ali, appeared in the newspaper, The Hindu, I assumed he was one of our people who had moved to America.
In the grainy black-and-white news photographs more than four decades back, Ali easily looked like one of us — only immensely more handsome. When my brother and I fought, much to our mother’s displeasure, we sometimes imagined that we were boxing like Ali, though neither one of us knew anything about the sport.
As a fresh-off-the-boat student, I made friends for the first time ever with a student, Siddiqui, who was from India’s arch-enemy — Pakistan. Toward the end of my first year of graduate school, when I was getting introduced to life here in America, I was amused by the sight of my classmate John — a white skateboarding dude — practically worshiping a basketball player named Kareem.
Even while the mullahs of Iran were always in the political crosshairs, the Iranian-Americans in Southern California went freely out and about — and were seemingly one of the more prosperous groups, too. In those early years of my life in America it seemed as though nothing was said or written in public that was against Islam and Muslims.
After such a healthy head start in my life in the old country and then in this adopted home, it shocks me to no end now when I hear or read virulent anti-Muslim remarks, especially from those seeking or holding elected office. The anti-Muslim rhetoric makes a mockery of the noble idea of freedom to practice religion — a freedom that has been a foundational principle of the United States.
While neither Farooq nor Yasmeen lives in the United States, I think of those old schoolmates when very serious people make yet another anti-Muslim comment. I recall how Siddiqui and I shared the foods that we made as struggling graduate students. When we know people and have developed meaningful relationships with the “other,” it becomes difficult to tolerate sweeping statements that condemn hundreds of millions of Muslims because of a minuscule minority that bombs and kills.
Muhammad Ali’s death provides us with yet another context for learning about Islam, and about Muslims in America.
Islam in America is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran, which provided him with more than a passing familiarity with the religion and its practices.
Researchers estimate that between 15 percent to 30 percent of slaves were Muslims. One of those was Omar Ibn Said, whose life-story has been well documented. Imagine the double whammy of being a slave who was also a Muslim, after having been raised in what is now the West African country of Senegal!
Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday, is another opportunity to get to know the religion and its faithful. For a month, most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims will fast from sunrise until sunset, to remind themselves about the mortals that we humans are and about the fragility of life without food and water. This fasting alone, which humbles the rich and the poor alike, ought to trigger the curiosity of those who harbor only suspicions about the “other.”
One of the challenges in this rapidly globalizing world is for us to understand the “other.” While in centuries past it might have been easier for people to spend an entire life fully within their own respective tribes, we live in a world in which mixing of people and ideas is the norm, not the exception.
It is also clear that the momentum of globalization will not slow down — it will only pick up more speed. This requires all of us to broaden our horizons. To borrow from the late Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s “Where the mind is without fear” — a poem Yasmeen, Farooq and I read in school — we need to create a world of freedom that has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls. It is difficult work to create such a heaven right here on Earth, but is an effort worth pursuing.