Let me take you back eight years. Or maybe you’re already back there as more and more traumatic political news rolls over you in wave after incessant wave; me, too, girl!
On January 28th, 2017, with a stroke of his signature black Sharpie, the 45th American President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States. It became known as a the “Muslim travel ban,” or simply, the “Muslim ban.”
With the stroke of a pen, the President banned Syrian refugees from the USA indefinitely and prevented anyone (including refugees) from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the USA for 90 days.
He also halted the US refugee resettlement programme for 120 days, and indicated that when this restarts the US will slash the maximum number of refugees it will receive from 110,000 to 50,000.
These countries all have one thing in common: most people seeking asylum from these countries are trying to escape serious human rights abuses like torture and mass murder.
A licence to discriminate: Trump’s Muslim & refugee ban
Amnesty International UK
Things happened very fast. Refugees who had slogged through as much as 10 years of bureaucracy to be approved for resettlement in the United States lost their futures overnight. Almost all Syrian refugees in those days (I was helping to resettle Syrian refugees with the IRC around that time) were families including someone either disabled or with exigent medical needs like late stage cancers; they were abandoned. People on trans-oceanic flights were suddenly persona non grata at their ports of entry.
The response also happened fast. Lawyers from the International Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City had already put out the call for lawyers to show up at the airports where refugees might be arriving.
“It occurred to us that there were going to be people who were traveling who would land and have their status affected while in midair,” said Betsy Fisher, the group’s policy director [whom I know from our time in Jordan]
Lawyers Mobilize at Nation’s Airports After Trump’s Order
By Jonah Engel Bromwich, New York Times
Dozens of lawyers showed up at airports across the country, offering their services to detained arrivals and the families awaiting them, while hundreds of protestors lined the sidewalks outside.
The largest Arabic class I ever taught in New York City started a couple weeks later. As always, I started the first class by asking everyone to share their name and answer the simple question, “Why Arabic?” This helps me tailor each class to my students’ needs and motivations, but I’m also fascinated to hear the stories that brought them to my classroom. As we went around the room, more than half had the same story. “I’m a lawyer / paralegal / teacher / social worker / nurse, and I was at JFK to protest the Muslim ban, because I knew it would hurt my clients.” And they understood that the Muslim ban was just the first salvo in a longer war. Signing up for an Arabic class was their commitment to staying in the battle.
MuslimGirl Steps In
The women at the award-winning platform MuslimGirl.com had been riled up since Trump first descended that golden elevator to announce his presidency, and his call later that year for “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” I was deeply concerned, too. They decided to take their media savvy and organize March 27th, at the opposite end of Women’s History Month from International Women’s Day, as the official
Muslim Women’s Day
Labeled as “the largest Muslim women’s media takeover ever,” Muslim Women’s Day 2017 achieved phenomenal success, as high-level partners and allies flooded the internet with positive representation of Muslim women. In no time, #MuslimWomensDay became the number one trending hashtag during the day — with 72 million impressions worldwide.
Muslim Women’s Day Then and Now: A Look Back Through the Years
by Jummanah for MuslimGirl
Sounding the Alarm
MuslimGirl (again, like me) sees not an echo of the 45th President, but an amplification of his Islamophobic racism. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR – who were still litigating the original Muslim ban in 2024) finds in its 2025 report that Islamophobia is the highest it has ever been, and perhaps more concerning, “For the first time in our report’s nearly 30-year history, complaints reported to us were often the result of viewpoint discrimination rather than religious identity.” Americans don’t hate Muslims just because of Islam, but because they’re “speaking out against Israel’s policies of apartheid, occupation and genocide” and highlighting Palestinians’ human rights and the U.S.’s role in trampling those rights.
As Islamophobia escalates and the now-47th President Trump prepares a ban on citizens of dozens of “undesirable” countries, and ICE is kidnapping legal residents off the streets for their stated views on the slaughter in Gaza, Arab and Muslim Americans (and many others who are also being targeted for other reasons) are on high alert.
The censorship of Muslim women’s voices and our allies has already surpassed the fever-pitch of the 2017 Muslim ban that inspired Muslim Women’s Day in the first place. Right now, Muslim creators, journalists, students, storytellers and organizers are being disproportionately silenced at a moment when our voices are urgently needed.
Muslim Women’s Day 2025 Is Cancelled — Here’s Why
by Amani for MuslimGirl
It’s in this context that MuslimGirl has declared that Muslim Women’s Day is insufficient. Usually, the platform and hashtag are used to highlight positive stories of Muslim women excelling in an adversarial world. This year, Amani says, current events and threats demand stronger action. She wants you to:
- Speak out against censorship.
- Share Muslim women’s content with renewed intention.
- Demand better from tech and media companies.
- Don’t let your representatives have a moment of quiet.
- Use #MuslimWomensDay and social media to organize.
And, I would add, learn more about women in Islam. You might be surprised by some of these facts about American Muslim women. Check out Amani’s podcast, Amani On Air, or listen to her conversation with her father for Story Corps. I love the positivity about global Islam spread by RPCV Friends of Muslims on Facebook. Read a novel by and about Muslim women. Learn about some progressive Muslim women in history.
What’s Next?
It took the 45th President three tries and a year and a half to get his way with what’s known as “Muslim Ban 3.0,” upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018. Refugee resettlement was only coming back to full strength at the end of the Biden Administration, and has now been devastated by both a ban on domestic refugee resettlement, and the dismantling of foreign aid programs around the world that support refugees during their arduous, years-long approval process in third countries.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) introduced the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act last month, which has passed the House. I’m sure it doesn’t stand a chance in the Senate, but you can call your Senator about it anyway, register your opinion with their office. Find out more about why the Trump 2.0 Muslim ban is so much more insidious. Not unrelated, learn more about how the arrests of legal residents for their views on Palestine are crushing international students’ and immigrants’ sense of safety; 5Calls.org has a script to protest the kidnapping of pro-Palestinian protestors by ICE.
Honestly, it’s hard to know what’s next. Things are already worse than I could have imagined. If lawful permanent residents are being disappeared and deported without the opportunity to prove in the courts that they belong, how long before they do the same to citizens? What will happen when I fly home at the end of my time in Jordan? And as scary as that is for a middle-aged, middle-class white lady like me, how much scarier is this “brave new world” for Muslim women?
In the meantime, I think a lot about the quote often attributed to theologian John Wesley:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
Inshallah khayr. May all be well.
MaryahConverse.com 
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