Source: NPR
Imam Khalid Latif is one of the people profiled in The Secret Life of Muslims, a digital series about Islamophobia. He is also the first Muslim chaplain at New York University.
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guest is the second ever Muslim to serve as a chaplain in the NYPD, Imam Khalid Latif. When he took the job 10 years ago, he was also the youngest person ever to serve as an NYPD chaplain. He’s also the executive director and chaplain for the Islamic Center at NYU. He’s done a lot of interfaith work, and has shared the stage with the Dalai Lama and the Pope and has met with President Obama. Latif’s parents are American citizens who emigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan. Latif is one of the people featured in the new digital series about Islamophobia called “The Secret Life Of Muslims.” The series is on multiple platforms, including Vox, the USA TODAY Network, “CBS Sunday Morning,” the public radio show “The World,” and the “Secret Life Of Muslims” website.
Khalid Latif, welcome to FRESH AIR. So you’ve been working with police officers and with students. Give us a sense of the range of reactions you’re seeing in the Muslim community that you work with to the election and imminent inauguration of Donald Trump, who has proposed a registry for Muslim immigrants and a ban – he’s spoken of a ban on Muslim immigrants coming to America. He’s used the phrase a total and complete shutdown of Muslims coming to the U.S.
KHALID LATIF: You know, I think a lot of Muslims are very scared, and I think they’re valid in that fear. The reality, unfortunately, is such that even leading into the elections we saw a gross increase in anti-Muslim bias and incidents. In New York City, where I live, leading into the elections, just in a matter of weeks you had two imams – religious leaders of a Muslim community in Queens – who were shot in the back of their head and passed away subsequently. Following afternoon prayers, a 60-year-old woman of Bengali descent was walking home one evening in Queens as well with her husband who is asthmatic, and she had moved a few blocks ahead of him to get home quicker to get dinner ready. And he said later at a press conference that I was at that he heard her screaming and came upon her and found her stabbed and had eventually succumbed to the wounds just a couple of blocks away from their home. There was two mothers strolling their babies in Brooklyn who had been assaulted. A woman wearing a headscarf in Midtown Manhattan had been set on fire. These were all things that happened prior to the election.
Categories: America, Faith, Muslims, The Muslim Times, USA