ASPartOfMe wrote:
United Talent Agency Drops Susan Sarandon After Pro-Palestine Comments at New York RallyQuote:
Susan Sarandon has been dropped by UTA after she made controversial comments at a pro-Palestine rally in New York on Nov. 17, Variety has confirmed.
Sarandon said at the rally, “There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” She told protesrs to have conversations with Jewish Americans, who don’t feel safe amid the rise of antisemitism in the country.
I would say that this was an ignorant/insensitive remark, insofar as American Jews (especially outside the NYC area) are no strangers to fear of hate crimes.
In fact, the number of
reported hate crimes against Jews, at least, has long been much
greater than the number of reported hate crimes against Muslims. (I'll dig up stats on this if anyone needs me to.) I suspect that hate crimes against Muslims may be under-reported, due to Muslims being more likely to be afraid of the police. Even so, it is still highly likely that the numbers of hate crimes against Jews are at least equal to the numbers of actual hate crimes against Muslims.
However ....
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Quote:
Muslim-American journalist Asra Nomani responded to Sarandon’s comments in a lengthy post on X, writing “Please don’t minimize the experience of Jewish Americans by sanitizing the hell that it is for Muslims living in Muslim countries and vilifying America for the life — and freedoms — she offers Muslims like my family. Go, live like a Muslim woman in a Muslim country. You will come back to America and kiss the land beneath your feet”.
This seems to me irrelevant. Yes, many Muslim countries are awful places to live. But that's no excuse to treat Muslims badly here in the U.S.A.
Anyhow, looking at Asra Nomani's
long post on X, I notice that she says the following:
Quote:
Let me give you “a taste” of what it “feels like” to be a Muslim in America:
My dad didn’t have to become a second-class indentured servant to one of the many tyrants of Muslim countries that use immigrants from India, like my family, as essential slaves. In 1975, after getting his PhD at Rutgers, he was about to go to Libya — a Muslim country — led by a Muslim, Moammar Qhadafi, to work like a servant with a PhD for a wealthy dictator…but then the phone rang one day and I picked it up…
It was West Virginia University calling, and my dad got a job as an assistant professor of nutrition. He got rejected first for tenure but being Muslim in America meant he got a right like everybody got — his right to appeal and guess what? He won and he became a full professor. That’s what it means to be Muslim in America. You get your full rights, like @DrZuhdiJasser has wished for his family in the Muslim nation of Syria, where a Muslim dictator destroys the lives of Muslims.
Good for her family. But the U.S.A. does have a class of visas (H1 and H1B) that often result in workers being treated like slaves too -- whereas it would appear, judging by the above mention of her father's "Ph.D from Rutgers", that he came here on a student visa.
Be that as it may, Asra Nomani's desire to reform the Muslim world is certainly admirable, but should not be pitted against attempts to improve things here in the U.S.A.
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19 Nov 2023, 9:11 pm
