A 6-year-old Palestinian American boy, murdered in his Chicago home for being Muslim. Three Palestinian American college students, shot at in Vermont while out for a walk. An Arab American student hit by a car, while wearing a T-shirt with Arabic writing on it at Stanford University in California.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a violent attack against civilians in Israel, there’s been a surge in reports of Islamophobic bias—the largest uptick since Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban in December 2015, according to Corey Saylor, director of research and advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Islamophobia tends to spike when there’s “any media exposure to Muslim-related issues,” according to one 2016 study by the University of Texas at Austin—and that’s been the case in the U.S. since the Israel-Hamas war began, leaving American Muslims afraid for their safety at home as they’re grieving the bloodshed abroad. (The war in Gaza has since killed upwards of 30,000 Palestinian civilians and left many more hungry as famine grips the enclave.)
This is the kind of time when you might expect Democrats—the party that has in recent decades identified themselves with equity and social justice—to recommit to fighting Islamophobia. Instead, they’re allowing Islamophobia to sabotage the judicial nomination of a highly qualified candidate: Adeel Mangi, an attorney from New Jersey, who, if confirmed, would become the first-ever Muslim attorney to sit on a federal appeals court.
In December, at Mangi’s confirmation hearing, GOP senators fired off leading questions laced with racism without a single reference to the nominee’s actual judicial experience. Adding insult to injury, Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, in recent weeks have all publicly said they would vote “no” on confirming Mangi, knowing full well their party’s razor-thin Senate majority means any defections will surely sink his nomination.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementConfirming Mangi would add some sorely needed diversity to our nation’s courts—the federal bench is currently 66 percent white—and a check on biases. A study by the Center for American Progress found that judges belonging to different racial, ethnic, and religious groups use their unique backgrounds and life experiences to shape their rulings, and that it overall has a net positive impact on our judiciary. “Women judges and judges of color have spoken out about gender and racial bias on the courts and led calls for reforms,” said CAP, noting that judges of different backgrounds also enhance the courtroom experience for defendants and lawyers, regardless of their case’s outcome.
And the seat Mangi has been nominated to, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is an especially important bench. It covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, states where banks and other corporations........