Moustafa Bayoumi > Quotes

“If you drop her, she’ll break, but she’ll cut you, too. She’s tough and tender, enraged and exhausted, withdrawn and outgoing, a pessimist brimming with humanist hope.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“Yet as in the postmodern world in which we live, sometimes when you are everywhere, you are really nowhere.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“In other words, perhaps it is time to admit that the War on Terror is not just a stupid war. It is a war designed to make us stupid. How”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror

“They found out that the other immigration detainees had been incarcerated for days, weeks, and sometimes months. This discovery was not comforting.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“Never in her life had she thought that she would end up in jail unless she had committed a crime. So why was she here? ... She hadn’t been convicted. She had been abducted.
This wasn’t justice. It was revenge.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“...what relationship does being Arab or Muslim in America have to blackness, to notions of American belonging and participation in American politics, and to social mobility and economic opportunity? In other words, have Arabs and Muslims today become less "white" and more "colored"--that is to say, have they in some sense become more "black" than blacks?”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“At least if she had committed a crime, she would have stood in front of a judge and answered the charge against her. If convicted, she would have been properly sentenced, and then she would know exactly how long she was to be here. But as a detainee she had no idea when she would be let out.”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

“What Sadiq found when he reached the welcoming shores of the United States was a history of institutional racism and Asian exclusion laws for which he was unprepared. White nationalism would already be working against the Mufti’s message. Later he would write that if Jesus Christ comes to America and applies for admission to the United States under the immigration laws, [he] would not be allowed to enter this country because: 1. He comes from a land which is out of the permitted zone. 2. He has no money with him. 3. He is not decently dressed. 4. His hands have holes in the palms. 5. He remains bare-footed, which is a disorderly act. 6. He is against fighting for the country. 7. He believes in making wine when he thinks necessary. 8. He has no credential to show that he is an authorized preacher. 9. He believes in practicing the Law of Moses [polygamy].7”
― Moustafa Bayoumi, This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror