HomePoliticsMuslim mayor disinvited from Eid celebration at White House
Don't Be Fooled by Gift Card Scams

Muslim mayor disinvited from Eid celebration at White House

The longest-serving Muslim mayor in the United States was uninvited from a belated Eid al-Fitr celebration hosted at the White House on Monday just half an hour before he was due to arrive, CNN reports. Mohamed Khairullah, mayor of Prospect Park, N.J., said that he believes the retraction was a result of racial profiling.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that at this point, my crime is my race, my religion and my name,” he told CNN.

Soon after he received news of his disinvitation, Khairullah contacted the Council on American Islamic Relations and discovered that he had been put on a “secret list” in 2019. According to NPR, this list is a watchlist that had been leaked earlier this year. The majority of the names on the list are Arab- and/or Muslim-coded—31 percent are “Muhammad” and its variants.

“The fact that the list is mostly Arabs and Muslims, the fact that we have no way to address why we are on the list is definitely profiling and a lack of due process,” Khairullah told NPR. “And that’s why a federal judge deemed that list to be unlawful. However, our federal government continues to use that list despite the fact that it was deemed unlawful.”

During a press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not explain why Khairullah had been disinvited, instead deferring to the United States Secret Service (USSS).

“What I will say more broadly is that – and I can say this, I was in the room – the President was very proud to welcome nearly 400 Muslim Americans to the White House to celebrate Eid yesterday,” she said, according to CNN. “It was a meaningful event, an opportunity to celebrate along Muslim leaders from across the country who were here.”

USSS confirmed that Khairullah was disinvited but also did not provide a reason why. “While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not allowed to enter the White House complex this evening,” USSS chief of communications said, according to CNN. “Unfortunately, we are not able to comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House.”

For Khairullah, this disinvitation is just the latest in a series of incidents over the past few years that have demonstrated how Islamophobia has been institutionalized in the United States. In 2019, he was detained at JFK Airport, questioned about whether he’d met with terrorists in Istanbul, and had his phone confiscated. A similar experience happened in 2021 on a return trip from Canada.

“To be 100% randomly selected every single time I go to the airport is just not a coincidence,” Khairullah told NPR.

While he still plans to support President Joe Biden for re-election (especially considering the list was created in 2019, before Biden was in office), Khairullah made it clear in an interview with the New Jersey Globe that he hopes for a stronger stance against the issue of systemic profiling that resulted in his disinvitation.

“I would like to discuss this topic. I don’t need to be celebrated, I need to be heard,” he said. “Somebody decided to put me on the list. There’s no due process.”

AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc. Follow us on FacebookX, InstagramTikTok and YouTube. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our efforts to produce diverse content about the AAPI communities. We are supported in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to CA vs Hate.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Latest

Worth the Time

Must Read

Regular Features

Latest

Discover more from AsAmNews

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading