Funny how that works; a Muslim woman wearing a hijab attended a rally for Donald Trump in Reno on Sunday and found, much to her chagrin, that people treated her like a normal human being.
Writing in The Guardian, Kaddie Abdul, after first hyperventilating by calling the experience of Rose Hamid, a fellow hijab-adorned Muslim at a Trump rally, “horrifying,” reluctantly admitted of her own experience, “Nothing bad happened to me at the rally: there were some hard stares and dirty looks, but no outright rude behavior. I spoke to several lovely people and had the type of informative and substantive discourse that one should expect at a political event.”
Of course, Abdul still had to rip Trump supporters, adding, “It was good to see that the bullies and thugs who have been fixtures at several other Trump rallies had taken the day off; maybe they were just too shocked to say anything directly to me.”
Abdul noted that she bravely “drove overnight through a blizzard and fog, but I arrived safely,” then made sure to point out the supposedly xenophobic crowd and the garishness of Trump merchandise: “Many people in line did double-takes, or their heads snapped around to gawk at me (almost to the point where I thought they would snap off), but I was permitted to stand in line and wait as about a half dozen vendors peddled a motley array of Trump merchandise around us.”
Oh, how patient she was; a vendor approached her as she was standing in line and supposedly announced that he was selling “Bomb The Hell Out Of Isis” T-shirts. Abdul snipes, “Apparently, the desire to kill people is considered trendy fashion at a Trump rally.” But she proved herself the better person; “I looked back at him, shook my head, smiled and read my Qur’an as I patiently waited for someone to engage me in civil conversation.”
So where’s the kicker? How can Abdul reconcile the politeness of the crowd with her own inherent superiority? Here: “What differentiates me from many of the Trump supporters I met this weekend is that their concerns for our future have led to an overwhelming need to see all of our problems as someone else’s fault.”
“It was good to see that the bullies and thugs who have been fixtures at several other Trump rallies had taken the day off.”
Kaddie Abdul
Unlike the Islamists who blame the rest of the world for rejecting the fundamental tenets the Islamists believe in, one would suppose.
Near the end of her piece, Abdul manages to wax self-congratulatory while deriding Trump supporters yet again: “Yes, what I did could have been dangerous: the Trump campaign, like many movements, has been dogged by its share of mischief makers. The thugs and bullies who have hurt other dissenters are a small, but very real, part of the ultra-nationalism that vague, implausible rhetoric like Trump’s attracts.”
Although she acknowledges that she learned from the experience, the constant sniping at Trump supporters and the preening display of tolerance for lesser mortals likely means that it’s only a matter of time before Abdul’s tolerance for non-Muslims wears out.