Biden is showing complete disregard for Arab and Muslim lives

We’ve been horrified by the images emerging from Gaza of children buried and killed under rubble, houses of worship bombed (including Saint Porphyrius Church), and family members crying out for their lost loved ones. It damages our faith in our country’s leadership that President Joe Biden has not only given a green light to these tragedies but is seeking to escalate the war with an additional $14 billion in weapons for Israel — while making no efforts or calls for de-escalation or ceasefire.

It’s time for President Biden to heed the demands of the public and call for a ceasefire and de-escalation of this violence and pursue a long-term plan to address the root causes of the conflict.

We grieve for the 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas. We condemn the killing of civilians and believe the targeting of civilians is never justified. The Hamas attacks have understandably traumatized and hurt many people around the world. We also grieve for the over 6,700 Palestinians dead, including 2,600 children, who have been killed by the Israeli military over the last three weeks. The trauma and hurt from those deaths have also affected people around the world.

Yet the Biden administration’s response to this tragic violence indicates that the president does not equally value Muslim lives, or those of Arabs who find themselves lumped in with Muslims. What did the 2,600 dead Palestinian children do to have their futures violently snatched from them? Does our government simply label them as terrorists and disposable? Why doesn’t President Biden care enough for them to stop the horror when the power is fully in his hands? It is difficult to put into words the sorrow and pain we and our communities feel seeing the scale of suffering compared to the Biden administration’s indifference.

We can only draw one heartbreaking conclusion: The Biden administration doesn’t see Muslims for our full humanity.

This is not new to us. In the years after 9/11, the Bush administration dragged the United States into two large-scale wars in predominantly Muslim countries on shaky pretenses, without regard for the horrific loss of civilian life and destruction that would ensue. Half a million civilians have been killed in those wars, with many millions more injured and whose lives are changed forever. That suffering hardly seems to register in the U.S. but will be felt for generations.

And we all know why no one cares — because Muslim lives have had little value to our policymakers. Many American Muslims supported the Democratic Party over the last two decades because we hoped a Democratic president would see the humanity of people like us, but we’ve been sorely disappointed with President Biden’s continued apathy.

This isn’t the first time President Biden has displayed disregard for Muslim lives. It was shocking to see the callous way he handled and bungled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while claiming that “Afghans forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” This denied the reality that in addition to 2,300 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan, 66,000 Afghans lost their lives fighting alongside American forces over the course of 20 years. President Biden displayed no appreciation for those sacrifices. Two years later, the haphazard withdrawal has left many dedicated Afghan allies in the United States to try to survive in limbo with no legal status in place.

To American Muslims, this cuts us to the core. Most of us voted for and supported President Biden because we believed his campaign promises of equality. But bombing people, callously disregarding their futures and leaving them to death and devastation that he would never wish upon European nations illustrates the racist logic that underpins his current policy.

Early on in his presidency, Biden showed support for the Muslim community, such as promising to end Trump’s Muslim Ban, which he did. The American Muslim community thought — or hoped — they could trust his approach to Muslims as fair and balanced. We call upon the Biden administration to again instill that faith and trust by correcting course and treating Muslims around the world as human beings, with the same aspirations and the same rights to life as anyone else.

Muslims don’t deserve to be killed, have their communities bombed and to be relegated to an uncertain future. Muslim lives and cultures are diverse, beautiful, artistic and meaningful. Militant and terror organizations or bad governments should not condemn entire populations to destruction, the same way white supremacists who have gone on mass shootings in Buffalo, New York or El Paso, Texas don’t represent all white Americans.

During his 2020 campaign, Biden told us the election was a “battle for the soul of our nation.” Now it seems our souls are hurting more than ever. We hope President Biden changes course.

Assemblywoman Sadaf Jaffer represents the 16th Legislative District in the New Jersey General Assembly and is a researcher and lecturer in South Asian Studies at Princeton University. Freshta Taeb leads the Refugee Interventionist Program at Cornerstone Family and Marriage Intervention and is on the board of directors of the Afghan-American Foundation.