F Shirin MD

Incase you have nothing else to do but read my lengthy FB status from the other night😊 My victory ✌️ speech 🎤 tonight 🥱 (Trust me I tried my best to keep it short and sweet and without cussing 2024 never/Biden, no-to-Harris qaum. My sentiment for them is still .. 🤬coz come nov 2028, i know y’all will again chasing your tails in endless circles, utterly confused masses of destructive voting choices.. Anyways….) Dear fellow American-Muslimi voters: This is definitely a time to celebrate! So be happy, go crazy with your slogans of the Blue Wave, democracy, and the power of the vote; but it is also time to pause, remember, and introspect. The party celebrating its victories tonight — the Democratic Party — is the party that has consistently sought to bring the marginalized into mainstream. It is because of the political space this party creates that we see several Muslim candidates , a Native American woman, an openly gay man, several Black & Hispanic candidates, to stand up to a bigoted President, Vice President, & their billionaire cronies, mega donors, and still emerge victorious at the ballot box. It is because of this space that we can feel such joy & pride hearing Arabic expressions like InshaAllah and Alhamdulillah, and those familiar, sweet words of prayer and affection that find their way into our text messages to our children when they travel, take exams, or simply go about their lives. Tonight, Native American families must be feeling a renewed sense of hope. Black, Latinos, and other ethnic minorities must be breathing a little easier. LGBTQ, other marginalized communities, too, have reasons to feel that their voices matter. And this is precisely the moment to remember something important: the people, leaders, and political party that stand for your freedom, your rights, including your religious freedoms, and your right to feel equal and included, are also standing up for the rights of people of other races, religions, identities, and backgrounds. Some of those rights may not directly affect your life. Some issues may even challenge your personal, cultural, or religious beliefs. But they matter deeply to other people. A commitment to equality and individual liberty cannot be selective. You cannot demand religious freedom for yourself while denying others the freedom to live according to their own convictions. So, please, stop bringing your religious beliefs into debates about abortion rights, gender identity, and other matters of personal freedom as though your faith should dictate the choices of an entire society. Learn to coexist in a pluralistic society. Respect the values of a Western democracy, just as you expect that democracy to respect your own religious and cultural values. Under a Democratic government, nobody asks you to abandon your faith, surrender your identity, or give up your cultural heritage in order to belong. Recognize the significance of that freedom. Respect it. And extend the same courtesy to others. You do not have to share someone’s identity, lifestyle, or personal choices to respect their dignity, freedom, and right to live without discrimination. Your religious convictions do not give you the authority to determine how another person should live, love, or identify. The freedom you cherish for yourself must extend to those whose lives and choices may be different from yours. We cannot celebrate the doors that democracy opens for us while remaining indifferent to the generations of struggle that made those doors possible for others. And never forget what Trump’s Republican rule did, or attempted to do, to immigrants, minorities, including but not just the Muslim Americans. If you have somehow failed to recognize the implications, revisit those years. Read the record. Listen to the rally speeches. Remember the rhetoric, the hostility, and the policies. Do not let selective memory or political disappointment erase what happened.