U.S. Senator John Kennedy, R-Louisiana. (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee livestream screen capture)
NEW ORLEANS — Muslim and Arab constituents of U.S. Sen. John Kennedy are criticizing his comments toward Arab American civil rights leader Maya Berry at a Senate hearing on hate crime and hate speech last week.
Some of Kennedy’s New Orleans constituents also said they think the Republican senator does not see them as full American citizens despite being part of his constituency.
The Sept. 17 Senate Judiciary hearing was meant to address rising hate crimes against Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Americans. But instead of discussing incidents of hate at home, Kennedy asked Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, “You support Hamas, do you not?”
He continued his line of questioning by asking Berry if she supported Hezbollah and Iran. Moments later, he told Berry she should hide her “head in a bag.”
Kennedy’s questioning of Berry was condemned by civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Council on American-Islamic Relations. Residents of greater New Orleans also denounced the comments.
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Hakm Murad, a Palestinian American and a leader of pro-ceasefire protests in New Orleans, said he found Kennedy’s behavior “devastating.”
“You have to almost laugh at it,” Murad said. “That during a congressional hearing about hate speech and hate crimes that he’s actively using hate speech.”
Verite News reached out to Kennedy’s office for comment on the hearing and his constituents’ concerns, but the office did not respond by publication time.
Murad called Kennedy’s words “ugly,” especially because Kennedy didn’t acknowledge the presence of a Palestinian hate crime victim at the hearing. Murad was referring to Hanan Shaheen, who was allegedly stabbed dozens of times in an attack at her family’s Illinois home last year in an attack that also allegedly killed her 6-year-old son, Wadee Alfayoumi. Police said the attack by the family’s landlord was a targeted hate crime.
“She’s lost her child, her everything, and she’s a victim of a hate crime in our country,” Murad said. “And he did not give her even a moment of attention. Didn’t even give her condolences.”
Murad and other Muslims interviewed by Verite News found the conflation of different Middle Eastern entities — Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — troublesome. And they may not be the only ones. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimates that there are more than 24,000 Muslims in Louisiana and more than 6,000 in Orleans Parish.
Immigration lawyer and Muslim American Fatima Khan, who lives in Mid-City, said Kennedy was implying that all Muslims are somehow associated with groups labeled as terrorist organizations by the American government.
“The way that our community experiences Islamophobia is that we have our Muslimness or our concern for our communities labeled as extremism,” Khan said.
Metairie resident Jenny Yanez, who works as the Louisiana community development coordinator at Islamic Circle of North America Relief USA, said that the rhetoric she hears about Muslims from politicians today is worse than what she heard in the post-9/11 era. She said Kennedy’s “racist and disrespectful” words legitimize Islamophobic attitudes.
“He’s creating a new generation of people who have disdain and hatred and [are] learning to dehumanize Arabs,” Yanez said.
Yanez also said she thinks Kennedy sees Arabs and Muslims as terrorists with foreign interests instead of as Americans. She’s worried about the policy implications Islamophobic bias can have.
“We understand now that he does not think of Arabs or Muslims as full Americans, so why would he include policies that include us?” Yanez said.
Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy layers xenophobic bullying on top of his typical buffoonery
Muslims and Arab residents who spoke with Verite News said they feel excluded from policy decisions that are important to them on a local level as well. Last month, the New Orleans City Council passed a “peace” resolution to address Hamas’s attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza.
Many Jewish community leaders and organizations supported the resolution, but the final version doesn’t have any signatures from local Muslim or Arab organizations. At the council meeting adopting the resolution, community members advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza urged council members to rescind their signatures, saying that the resolution did not represent their voices.
An alternate resolution called “The People’s Ceasefire Resolution” was signed by 50 organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace New Orleans and the Islamic Shura Council of Greater New Orleans. Yanez said Muslim leaders felt disregarded by the City Council when it adopted the peace resolution. Verite News reached out to council members on the comments of their constituents, but none responded by publication time.
Murad, who advocated for the council to adopt the alternate resolution, said he feels ignored by both the council and Kennedy. He said he has been calling Kennedy’s office every day for almost a year, asking the senator to call for a ceasefire and an arms embargo to end what Murad and some human rights experts have described as a genocide. More than 40,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza, and the U.S. continues to send billions of dollars of military support to Israel.
“He hasn’t heard us for a year now and he still continues to ignore us,” Murad said. “And as a representative, that’s the worst thing you could do.”
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This article first appeared on Verite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.