“Next,” hollers a well dress federal agent to a line of people stretching around a crowded room. “What’s your religion?” the man asks a bespectacled woman wrapped in a hijab. “Muslim” she says averting her eyes. This terrifying image hopes to remind the American people of what’s at stake if remarks from the Trump Administration come to pass without resistance.
“Pre-9/11 there was a lot of intrigue as to what Islam was, but we were more a novelty before a couple of Saudis tarnished an entire religion.” said Jackson Al Abari, a Northern Virginia resident and Islam out-reach coordinator for AP Math Labs. Him and his group helped put together the dystopian future explored in “Registration day” seen below:
A practicing Muslim, Al Abari worked for the US Department of Defense and Homeland Security during the Iraq war. But that work hasn’t kept him from being a target for discrimination because of his appearance and faith.
“I get “randomly selected” every single time [I fly into the US],” he said noting his beard and brown skin play into peoples worst assumptions. “When [I] walk into a restaurant, someone will mutter something under their breath… what was excusable to mock Jews with a few decades ago is acceptable to browbeat Muslims with now.”
These issues, along with the words of President Trump on the campaign trail, helped motivate him to get involved in “Registration Day,” finding Muslim folks from around the area to participate in the video.
Shot in Norfolk at Ohef Shalom Temple’s community center, the production not only created a powerful message to be shared on the internet, it also offered an example of real life-solidarity between the Jewish and Islam communities.
“It happened to us 75 years ago, and equally disconcerting is when you close your doors. God knows how many people could have been saved if we didn’t close our doors,” said Linda Peck, Executive Director of Ohef Shalom Temple, commenting on the fate of Jews turned away leading up to and during the Holocaust.
She and her congregation were eager to open their doors when AP Math Labs was looking for a location to shoot the video. Her temple has a long history of activism, helping to raise money for Jews to get to Israel in the 30s and more recently being one of the first faith groups to sponsor Hampton Roads LGBTQ Pride festival.
“We believe all people are created in the image of God. It’s really important we connect with members of our community,” Peck said. “We believe that it’s important to share our faith and values with the Jewish and non-Jewish community.”
While the video was shot in late December 2016, it was released online shortly after Trump signed his executive order banning travel from select countries. The timing was a bit too much for Peck to not make a connection to her own heritage.
“You change it from the hijab to the yellow star and it could be my people,” she said. “It’s really frighting.”
For Landon Shroder, CEO and Founder of AP Math Labs, he’s pleased with the over 40 thousand views the clip has gotten so far, but he just hopes the message works.
“We all have to understand, as certain ideas get floated, they get normalized,” he said pointing to Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail and in office. “It can cast a shadow on the entire Muslim population, a portion of the American population, and paint them as a threat in waiting.”
Shroder, who also worked as an intelligence analyst during the Iraq war, is all to familiar with the process of radicalization and believes the President’s words are helping to advance the narrative of extremist groups overseas, while also riling up right wing extremists groups here at home.
“When people see that an administration or politician suggests something like a religious registration is a good idea, [people] decide to take action on their own in defense of their own perceived security,” he said. “That’s how fringe right-wing radicalization starts.”
He pointed to the burned burned mosque in Texas and the shooting at another mosque in Quebec as examples of such behavior.
While impactful and dramatic, the video aims to change hearts and minds with a dose of both the past and the possible future. But Al Abari hopes the video will help sway folks from allowing things to get that far here and now.
“I want to hold a mirror up to Americans and say ‘we’re better than this,’” he said. “We’re not Germans in the 30s or Bosnians in the 90s… I want to give us a sobering look at ourselves that says this is what we can become if we’re not careful.”
Keep up with Registration day on Facebook here.
Words by Brad Kutner
