The Five “Muslim Hill Day” Policy Issues We Must Keep Pushing
By: The Council On American-Islamic Relations, Cair
Tags: Islam, Capitol Hill, Cair, Palestine, Muslim Americans

Delegates gather for Muslim Hill Day pre-pandemic in 2019.

By Robert McCaw & Ismail Allison, CAIR National

Media outlets are free to re-publish or distribute the commentary below with attribution.

Before the pandemic struck, American Muslims had maintained an annual political tradition for five years straight: uniting on Capitol Hill every summer for National Muslim Hill Day.

Organized by the US Council of Muslim Organizations, the annual event normally brings as many as 500 delegates from across the country together for a day of meetings with congressional offices to discuss policy issues important to the Muslim community.

Although COVID-19 led the cancellation of Muslim Hill Day in 2020, USCMO held the event this year virtually. Over 500 people registered for the event, and over 100 meetings with congressional offices were held.

Although Muslim Hill Day is over, our community must spend the next year advocating for the five key policy issues that delegates raised during the event. If we wish to see our values of justice triumphant in America and throughout the world, we cannot just communicate with our representatives about these issues once a year. We must do so throughout the year.

With that in mind, here are five key issues to keep raising with your representatives and senators:

1. Supporting the Senate Advancement of the House Adopted NO BAN Act, Dream and Promise Act, George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and For the People Act

The events of the past four years have highlighted the need for major reforms in immigration, law enforcement, and voting rights. Four bills addressing these issues have passed through the House of Representatives but have yet to be adopted by the Senate.

The NO BAN act would limit the ability of the president to restrict any class of noncitizens’ entry into the country. It would require specific and credible facts to support a determination by the Department of Homeland Security that a particular individual’s entry would pose a threat to security and public safety. The NO BAN act would prevent the passage of legislation similar to the Muslim and African ban.

The Dream and Promise act would open a path to citizenship to over 2 million individuals in America without legal status. It would provide conditional green cards and work authorization to those who came to the country illegally as children if they met criteria such as the DACA program. Their conditional status could be converted to permanent residency through education, military service, or work experience. Individuals who have received temporary protected status or deferred enforced departure due to conditions such as war or natural disaster in their home countries, would be granted green cards and work authorizations.

The George Floyd Justice in Policing bill would create a framework to prevent and remedy racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. It would limit the use of unnecessary force and restricts the employment of no-knock raids, choke-holds, and carotid-holds. It would create a National Police Misconduct Registry and require the Department of Justice to set uniform accreditation standards, including training on racial and religious profiling, implicit bias, and the duty to intervene when another officer uses excessive force.

The For the People Act would expand automatic and same-day voter registration and voting access. It would limit the removal of voters from voter rolls and require states to establish independent congressional redistricting commissions. It would also improve election security and develop a national strategy to protect democratic institutions. The bill would expand the prohibition on campaign spending by foreign nationals and require greater transparency from campaigns on their finances and spending.

We must continue to support these important reforms. Our immigration, legal, and electoral systems suffer from very serious flaws which reach down to their very foundations. These pieces of legislation represent important first steps in making these systems work for the American people, especially those belonging to marginalized communities.

2. Creating a State Department Islamophobia Envoy Position

We are living in a time of rising Islamophobia. From America to Europe to India, Muslims are being targeted with intimidation and violence. A 2021 UN Human Rights Council report found that over 10,000 Islamophobic incidents were reported in America between 2014 and 2019. The number of anti-Muslim hate groups increased by 197% between 2015 and 2016. In India last year, mob violence inspired by the Modi government’s Islamophobic rhetoric and policies killed 36 Muslims.

In China, Uyghur Muslims are facing a genocide. The government of Myanmar is also conducting a campaign of genocide against the Rohingya Muslims. Over 25,000 Rohingya have been killed and over 700,000 have been forced to flee their homes. According to the 2021 UNHCR report, over 130,000 Rohingya are being held in internment camps where they are subjected to abuse.

It is for these reasons that Muslim delegates and activists called on elected representatives to support the Combatting International Islamophobia Act. The bill would establish a State Department Islamophobia envoy position. The envoy would be responsible for monitoring and combating Islamophobia at home and abroad, a role similar to that of the State Department’s anti-Semitism envoy. It is essential that the establishment of this position be more than a symbolic gesture by the Biden administration. Global Islamophobia is a real threat that must be addressed seriously.

We must continue to advocate for a better response to Islamophobia. It has been allowed to proliferate and do harm to Muslim communities around the world. If we do not step up the fight, more innocent people will suffer.

3. Recapturing Diversity Visas Lost Due to the Muslim and African Ban

In 2017, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, which barred individuals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States. The executive order was revised by three presidential proclamations, the last of which included Chad, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, and Tanzania on the list of banned countries.

The discriminatory Muslim and African ban stopped thousands of diversity visa lottery winners from entering the country. Travel bans imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic prevented tens of thousands more diversity visa lottery winners from moving forward in their application processes.

The Muslim and African ban was reversed by the Biden administration, but the current law stipulates that diversity visa lottery winners’ applications are only valid for one fiscal year. This means that those who were issued a visa or started their interview process while the Muslim and African ban was in effect had their applications voided and must start the entire process over.

USMCO delegates sought to put an end to the racist and Islamophobic impacts of the Muslim and African ban. They lobbied officials to support the Keeping Our Promise Act, a bill that would reopen the diversity visa process to the 40,000 winners impacted by the Trump administration’s discriminatory policies from 2017 to 2021. It would require the State Department to reissue the diversity visas not honored due to the Muslim ban. The act would also allow an estimated 36,000 individuals to resume their application processes if they were interrupted due to the Muslim and African ban or COVID-19 restrictions.

Because of Trump’s bigoted immigration restrictions, thousands of people fleeing war and poverty were blocked from entering America. The irony is that many of the crises from which these people sought to escape were themselves the products of American foreign policy. We must continue to support immigration reform and combat the legacy of the previous administration’s unjust policies.

4. Support for Palestinian Human Rights

Israel’s brutal attacks on Palestine last month resulted in the deaths of 256 Palestinians, including 40 women and 66 children, and the wounding of almost 2,000 Palestinians, including over 400 women and 600 children. 72,000 Palestinians have been displaced. In response to Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, the USCMO is calling on elected representatives to stand up in support of Palestinian human rights.

Muslim delegates and activists urged Congress and the Biden administration to co-sponsor the “Defending Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act,” which would ensure that US tax dollars are not by the Israeli government to detain Palestinian children; unlawfully seize, appropriate and destroy Palestinian property; forcibly transfer Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, or annex more Palestinian land.

The USMCO also urged elected officials to end weapons transfers to Israel. Israel uses weapons obtained from the United States to commit war crimes and violate the human rights of Palestinians, actions that go against the Foreign Assistance and Arms Export Control Acts. The USMCO called on Congress to reject Israel’s request for an additional $1 billion in military aid and stop all contracts, sales, and deliveries of weapons to Israel.

Muslim activists and delegates also urged representatives to place sanctions on Israel, end the US-Israel free trade agreement, shut down US-based organizations supporting Israel’s war crimes, and ban imports from illegal Israeli colonies. Elected representatives were also called on to vocally support current and future investigations of Israeli war crimes by the International Criminal Court, and to support the liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people.

Our support for the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people, suffering under the yoke of Israeli apartheid and occupation, cannot end. We must continue putting pressure on our elected officials and advocating for an end to American support for an oppressive, expansionist entity that continually refuses to adhere to international standards on human rights.

5. Support the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

As mentioned before, China is conducting a genocide against the Muslim Uyghur people and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang. Over 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in government-run concentration camps where systematic torture and rape are widespread.

A US Department of Labor report found that thousands of Uyghurs have been forced to work in Chinese factories. A 2020 report by the Newslines Institute found that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been forced to pick cotton for China’s massive textile industry. China’s appalling and barbaric policies have been recognized by both the Biden administration and the US State Department as genocide.

But mere recognition is not enough. The United States actively oppose the Chinese Communist Party’s holocaust. USCMO advocates lobbied elected officials to push for the adoption of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a bill that would ban the import into the United States of goods produced by forced labor.

It would also impose property and visa blocking sanctions on individuals and entities facilitating the forced labor of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorites, and require all securities issuers that have engaged with entities involved in activities such as the building of detention facilities to disclose all such engagements. The Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force and the State Department would develop strategies to address forced labor in China and report them to Congress.

We cannot allow China to continue its genocide and enslavement of the Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities. We must continue supporting the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and push our government to adequately respond to this assault on humanity. History is watching, and if we do nothing, we shall be recorded on the wrong side of it.

We are not just advocating for issues relevant to our own communities. We are pushing America to live up to its own ideals both at home and abroad.

We demand an end to our government’s assistance in war crimes and atrocities that violate international law. We demand our government fight the proliferation of hatred and bigotry throughout the world. We demand an end to the oppression, discrimination, and disenfranchisement. To support these demands, sign our action alert.

If American Muslims want to live in a country that upholds justice here and advances justice abroad, we must always continue to work for it.

Robert McCaw is the Government Affairs Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization. Ismail Allison is a researcher with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a recent graduate of Howard University.