A Muslim woman was escorted from a Donald Trump rally on Friday night, after she stood silently behind the Republican frontrunner wearing a shirt that read: “Salam, I come in peace.”
Rose Hamid, who was also wearing a hijab, said people near her in a crowd of more than 6,000 people in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were kind to her until she began her protest.
“My purpose for going there,” Hamid said, “is I have a sincere belief that if people get to know each other one on one then they’ll stop being afraid of each other and we will be able to get rid of all of this hate in the world, literally.”
She and an unidentified man stood when Trump said Syrian immigrants should not be allowed into the US. Both were wearing yellow star-shaped badges that bore the word “Muslim” and were intentionally reminiscent of the yellow badges Jewish people were forced to wear under Nazi rule.
They were then escorted out of the venue.
Hamid said that before her protest, people sitting nearby had spoken with her and shared popcorn. Once she stood, though, the crowd around began to chant “Trump, Trump”. Hamid said one person accused her of having a bomb. Reporters said they heard people making “ugly” comments all around the rally.
Trump, whose rally in Burlington, Vermont on Thursday was repeatedly disrupted by protesters, has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US, a policy he introduced in South Carolina in December. He promoted the policy in his first campaign ad, saying such a ban should remain in place “until we can figure out what’s going on”.
Hamid, 56, said she had not been afraid to go into the crowd because she believed people would have stopped more serious threats. But she said the crowd’s reaction to her protest was indicative of the power of Trump’s rhetoric.
“It was really quite telling and a vivid example of what happens when you start using this hateful rhetoric and how it can incite a crowd,” she said.
“I don’t even think he believes in the rhetoric he is spewing.”
On Saturday John Kasich, the governor of Ohio who is also running for the Republican presidential nomination, said the crowd’s booing of Hamid and her fellow protester was “terrible”.
“We’re not a country that feels good about yelling or insulting people,” he said on CNN. “Maybe it was a Friday night, who knows.”
Kasich also said the video of Hamid and the man being booed and taken out of the Trump event would be shown around the world, potentially damaging America’s standing with Muslim countries, allies in the fight against Islamic State.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), meanwhile, called on Trump to apologize.
“The image of a Muslim woman being abused and ejected from a political rally sends a chilling message to American Muslims,” Cair’s executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a statement.
“Donald Trump should issue a public apology to the Muslim woman kicked out of his rally and make a clear statement that American Muslims are welcome as fellow citizens and as participants in the nation’s political process.”
theguardian
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