The following guest post is by Fatima Pashaei, who lives in Manassas, Virginia with her husband, U.S. Marine combat veteran Atif Qarni, and their two sons, Zane and Saber

I was born and raised in the United States in a Muslim household. My siblings and I attended Muslim school until 8th grade and all of the women in our house wore the hijab (Islamic headscarf).

For many religious Muslims, wearing the hijab is viewed as a rite of passage into womanhood. As a precocious young girl, I couldn’t wait to grow up, so I began wearing my headscarf at 10 years old, at the same time as my 12 year old sister.

As a 34 year old, I continue to wear the headscarf even though the rest of my female family members have abandoned the practice.

I recognize that every Muslim woman’s experience with the hijab is not a positive one. Individual histories and personal narratives are complicated, lending for varied attitudes and feelings about the practice. One of my sisters described wearing the scarf as donning a “fat suit” — subjecting one’s self to unnecessary ridicule and attention. Another sister claimed that people were more friendly and treated her better when she wasn’t wearing her scarf. Each sister had a different reason for discontinuing the practice and I wholly supported their decisions. A woman’s sense of agency and self-worth, Muslim or not, should never be discounted.

For someone like myself, who is a product of a white American mother and a Middle Eastern father, I am fully aware that the hijab is the only thing that makes me obviously Muslim. Without the scarf on my head, I easily pass for “white,” as my sisters regularly do.

By wearing the hijab, I choose to openly identify myself as a member of the Muslim community. For me, the hijab is a symbol of pride, not punishment.

Wearing the hijab labels me as an “other” in society and strengthens my feeling of solidarity with other marginalized groups. Specifically, it has made me more sympathetic to the struggles of Blacks, Hispanics, and the LGBT community.

Recently, I came to the realization that Muslims in America are not being discriminated against by Blacks, Hispanics, or other marginalized groups. The “problem” with Muslims is largely a white American issue.

I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood in Washington, DC. In all of the years that I lived in DC, there was not a single instance where I was blatantly discriminated against or mistreated because I wore a scarf.

Sadly, I no longer live in an insulated minority community. I live with my husband and two children in a majority white town of Manassas, Virginia. Our neighbors fly confederate flags and my children go to school with their children. Despite the growing diversity in Virginia, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment abounds. Given the size of the rally that gathered for Trump in Manassas, many faces of which my children recognized from school, I cannot help but think that Virginia is going to be a battleground state in 2016 — not just for Democrats and Republicans — but for American values and the extent to which American Muslims are viewed an integral part of society.

In the last year, Islamophobia has reared its ugly head in the United States and average Muslims like myself are now easy and open targets for discrimination. In the last year, I have had several unpleasant confrontations with white Americans. I have been refused services at my local DMV and by a nurse practitioner in a medical office. When my husband and I traveled to New York City to celebrate my birthday, the concierge at our hotel told us that no rooms were available for us to check-in. We sat for approximately 30 minutes in the lobby and watched as several other families were allowed speedy check-in. After our long wait, we were assigned to room 911.

Institutionalized racism in America is real. It is a struggle that Blacks have been dealing with for hundreds of years and continue to fight today, as evident in the Black Lives Matter movement.

Will this same reality hold true for Muslims in America? I certainly hope not, but history seems to indicate otherwise.

This realization leaves my heart heavy and fraught with worry about the next generation of Muslims in America. I worry that my kids will grow up feeling like second class citizens, despite being second and third generation Americans. I worry that my sons will find themselves lacking, inferior, or worse, unwelcome because they are brown and Muslim in America–not white and Christian.

For Muslim Americans, the battle we fight is not just against terrorists like ISIS, but also against preconceived notions of race and religion in America that continue to divide, rather than unite, our country.

With the Virginia General Assembly cranking up its 2016 session this week, there are a ton of bills being filed (see the Virginia Legislative Information System for a complete list, descriptions, etc. The quality of these bills ranges all over the place, from superb to silly to stupid. Here are a few that jumped out at me from the past few days; note that this list is NOT meant to be comprehensive, so if you have any other suggestions, please leave those in the comments section or email me at lowell@raisingkaine.com. Thanks!

1. I love this bill by Del. Patrick Hope, as energy storage is a fast-growing industry that’s going to be huge (“yuuuge” as Donald Trump would say) in coming years/decades. Time for Virginia to get in on the action!
   


2. Del. Rip Sullivan’s bill should be a no brainer for Virginia legislators, helping to jump-start a clean energy revolution in Virginia, while helping homeowners achieve both cost savings and energy independence — both core conservative values, I’d point out.



3. Excellent bill by Del. Lamont Bagby; the bottom line is once you’ve “done your time,” your right to vote should be automatically restored. End of story.
 



4. Testing cosmetics on animals is barbaric, unnecessary and should be illegal. Thank you Del. Kaye Kory!



5. The no brainer of all no brainers; if you’re in the Terrorist Screening Database, OBVIOUSLY you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm. Duh.




6. Good job by Republican Del. Ron Villaneuva; now if only the rest of his party will listen to him!
   


7. In stark contrast, this bill by Republican Christopher Head is one that needs to be “headed” (get it? heh) off. Blech.



8. This one makes the list simply because of its name. Also, which of the Kilgore brothers was supposed to be the smart one, Jerry or Terry? Or is this sort of like the Bush brothers, where neither is the sharpest tool in the shed?

9. Yet another bad bill by a former favorite of mine, Sen. Chap Petersen (D). Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
 

10. I mean, at least we expect this kind of crap from “Sideshow Bob”…

11. Limiting Virginia’s governor to just one term is absurd, antiquated, counterproductive in a bunch of ways, and should be ended ASAP.

by Lowell

Not that I’m a big fan of Peggy Noonan (to put it mildly), but given that she was primary speech writer and Special Assistant to the Sainted (by Republicans) Great (Ditto) Exalted (Ditto) President Ronald Reagan, she does get a certain amount of respect from conservatives and right wingnuts of all stripes. That’s why I enjoyed reading Noonan’s excoriation of the Republican Party of Virginia in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s the part about the Virginia GOP, you know the guys led by anti-Semitic “jokester” dude John Whit(less?)beck. Enjoy! 🙂

And the GOP is struggling. In Virginia the state Republican Party wants a so-called loyalty oath in the March 1 presidential primary. Virginia is an open-primary state—any registered voter can vote in either primary—but the GOP apparently wants to discourage independents and Democrats from voting for Mr. Trump. So they’ve decided voters should sign a statement of affiliation with the GOP before they get to cast a ballot. This is so idiotic it’s almost unbelievable. When Democrats and independents want to vote in your primary you should be happy. Politics is a game of addition! You want headlines that say “Massive GOP Turnout.” You don’t greet first-time voters with an oath but with cookies, ginger ale and balloons. Ronald Reagan reached out to Democrats in 1984: “Come too, come walk with me.” We still speak of Reagan Democrats.

Of course, keep in mind that this is the same Virginia GOP that managed to throw away a perfectly winnable 2013 election by holding a convention o’crazies to nominate the infamous “extreme team” of Grand Ayotallah Ken Cuccinelli, raving Anti-LGBT bigot and all-around extremist E.W. Jackson and Mark “Criminalize Miscarriages” Obenshain. Even better, they’re going to hold another one of those convention o’crazies in 2017; can’t wait! 🙂 Meanwhile, they’re doing their best to turn the March 1 GOP presidential primary into a public relations disaster that has Democrats jumping up and down with glee. As a progressive who “bleeds Democratic blue,” all I can say is, “please, Virginia GOP, don’t ever change!” 🙂

by Andy Schmookler

In this time of rampant pathology – political, spiritual, intellectual – it is often challenging to try to figure out how other people’s minds are working. There are questions along the lines of What’s the Matter with Kansas. And questions of the kind Paul Krugman consistently raises in his mystification about the perpetuation of “zombie ideas” even among professional economists, who have supposedly been educated in the ethic that allows evidence to disconfirm erroneous beliefs.

And this Friday morning a question arose in my mind after reading a piece included by Lowell in the morning’s news summary. I’m referring to an op/ed piece by Michael Gerson, appearing in the Washington Post under the title, “Trump’s nomination would rip the heart out of the Republican Party.”

With Gerson’s distaste for what Trump represents – e.g. “his angry resentment against invading Hispanics and Muslims [which] add up to a kind of ethno-nationalism—an assertion that the United States is being weakened and adulterated by the other” – I entirely agree.

And I agree that Trump may well damage the Republican Party.

But the way Gerson presents the threat posed by Trump – in which Gerson appears entirely sincere – mystifies me.

What I find mystifying is the way Gerson frames his characterization of Trump’s danger to the GOP. His concern is expressed in terms of how Trumpism is inconsistent with “conservatism,” which he says “at the very least involves respect for institutions and commitment to reasoned, incremental change.” This, without the least hint of irony.

Does Gerson really believe that the Republican Party in which Trump has risen to be the frontrunner embodies “respect for institutions”? What world is he living in?

This is the Republican Party that:

• debased the institution of the Office of Legal Counsel, and the rule of law, with the torture memo
• has sought to prevent the duly-elected president, from the opposition party, from doing his job
• used the filibuster in an unprecedented, across-the-board way, using a mere Senate rule to trump the Constitutional principle in which the Senate operates by majority rule
• threatened to damage the full faith and credit of the United States by using the debt ceiling, in an unprecedented way, to extort concessions
• voted more than sixty times to repeal a law, on which the successful president ran, which Congress passed, which the Supreme Court upheld
• treated an American president with a contempt of scorn never before seen

The list could be expanded at great length.

It is hard to see how anyone could do further damage to the Republican Party’s “respect for institutions” than has been done by the entire party over the past fifteen years.

Does Gerson really see the Republican Party as somehow still holding on to the ideals of Edmund Burke, as his article suggests?

The other embodiment of the Republican foundation, aside from Burke that Gerson brings in is Abraham Lincoln. The GOP is the party of Lincoln, Gerson says, who stood for tolerance vs. bigotry and inclusion vs. exclusion. Here he brings in the value Lincoln placed on “human dignity” and “compassion.”

Of course, Trump is expressing the opposite of all that. But does Gerson really think that today’s Republican Party has any connection at all with those Lincolnian values? Is it not as clear as could be that the main base of the Republican Party lies in precisely those political and cultural precincts that went to war against Lincoln to protect the wealth, power, and bigotries of the slaveholders?

Gerson wants to refute those liberals who say that “Trumpism is the natural outgrowth, or logical conclusion, of conservatism or Republicanism..” I don’t know if there are any liberals who make that claim. I surely do not.

Trump is not the natural outgrowth of conservatism, but he is the natural outgrowth of the fundamental betrayal of those conservative values that today’s Republican Party has been enacting –under the banner of “conservatism” – for nearly a generation.

I get it that Trump represents a danger to the GOP. But I find myself asking: Can Mr. Gerson really believe that the those fine values he discusses have anything to do with today’s Republican Party, with or without Trump?

As always, raving right winger, bigot and Ted Cruz endorser E.W. Jackson has no sense of self awareness, irony, or…just plain sense. Yep, the guy who spends his days berating LGBT people, Muslims, immigrants, Barack Obama, the Black Lives Matter movement and many other African-American leaders is out with his “Five Most Racially Divisive People of 2015” list.  I bet you’ll never guess who this Ted Cruz-endorsing theocrat put on this list.

*Dorian Johnson, a close friend of Michael Brown whose account of Brown’s killing “helped inspire the protest chant hands up, don’t shoot.” According to Jackson: “The protests and riots that ensued were based on that false narrative, picked up by racial activists, and amplified by the willing media, sports celebrities, Hollywood actors, and Democrat politicians, especially the Congressional Black Caucus. There was only one problem. It was a bold, damnable, and dangerous lie.” Of course, Jackson misses the broader (and very important) point:

“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” is not just about Mike Brown, or Ferguson,or police shooting unarmed black people. “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” is about a fundamental question that gets to the core of what this country stands for. It’s a question that’s been open to debate since long before Darren Wilson shot and killed the unarmed Brown four months ago: Do black lives matter, and if so, how much?

*“Barack Hussein Obama.” According to crazy EW, who is pathologically obsessed with President Obama (perhaps just a wee bit of jealousy there, given that Obama has accomplished about a gazillion times more in his life than “Bishop” Jackson): “When the unrest in Ferguson surfaced, the President deployed his deputy race-baiter, Attorney General Eric Holder to the scene, who only stoked the flames.” Utterly ridiculous, of course. EW goes on to claim, bizarrely and yet again falsely, that he has “never heard [Obama] quote the line in the Pledge of Allegiance that says, ‘one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.'” Except that a quick search of YouTube finds this example, this example, and this example and…well, you get the idea; Obama recites the Pledge of Allegiance, including the “one nation under God” line, all the time. But yeah, it’s a favorite trope of racists – in this case repeated by EW Jackson – to claim that President Obama refuses to recite that line, because he’s not really American or whatever. Gack.

*Hillary Clinton, because – among other ridiculous “reasons” cited by crazy ol’ EW, she supposedly “adopted a Kwanza theme for her Twitter brand, even though most black Americans do not celebrate this made-up holiday.” Uhhh…alrighty.

*The Black Lives Matter movement, which drives crazy ol’ EW even crazier than he already is. According to Jackson (note that most of the following is either outright false or wildly exaggerated/distorted/warped):

They have ignored black-on-black crime. They have disrupted the normal lives of innocent Americans who have no responsibility for their grievances. And they have equated opposition to the LGBT movement with injustices they claim are being perpetrated against young black men. In short, the Black Lives Matter movement is an abomination that does nothing but engender hostility against the very people the black community needs to protect them and preserve some semblance of order—cops.

Uh….no. Anyway, just another day in the life of 2013 Virginia GOP nominee for Lt. Governor, and current Ted Cruz for President endorser, “Bishop” E.W. Jackson.