Dalia Moghed provides an enlightening perspective on muslim life in america, at many times, to the point of being painful. She becomes honest and raw with her feelings; this is not a spewing of statistics, not a speech sharpened to its fine point, jagged with teeth. Instead, her words wash over you, a salty, bitter sea; you can feel her anxiety, her pain, her fear envelope you in waves. You can feel the hate inflicted upon her and her people, such a massive, senseless thing you feel as though you are drowning in it, drowning with her. Her work is largely fueled by her deeply felt emotions and trauma which reverberate through the listener; it is very easy to empathize with her pain, mostly due to her strong, emotional statements. She tells how her people are victimized and persecuted socially and institutionally, the disbelief and hurt easily heard in her voice; she addresses misconceptions and stereotypes forced into her people and religion with earnest dissent genuine repulsion. Moghed references the tragedy of 9/11, and the devastation it had on the Muslim community within contemporary America that fuel gate, misconceptions, and discrimination today. She addresses and explains her identity as a patriotic American Muslim, a title and proclamation always needing to be defended from wrongful attack. “When they attacked our country”, Moghed says in reference to 9/11, “they attacked our country.” This strong, emotional statement that reverberates to the point of being chilling is the climax, the most impactful moment of the speech. From then on, you stop thinking in the terms of a ethnic and religious minority, a Muslim in hostile territory; you begin to think in terms of being a rightful American citizen who is subjected to violence, discrimination, and degradation by their own country, by their own people. And while this statement incites the shift, the how speech develops a new perspective on Muslim Americans, one that is personal, told by them. It is not alienating, it does not demote them to the status of ‘other’; instead it is unifying, perpetuating the idea that I can be this and also this, that one is not worse than the other, that I can be both and love being both simultaneously.
This speech coincides with the argument that the American dream is not achievable for the few that society excludes, alienates, and persecutes; they are called ‘other’, dehumanized and segregated. And this exclusion is not on the basis of economic status, an idea perpetuated throughout our study of the limitations of the American dream, but instead is determined by ethnicity, by religion. The very rights written into the constitution are dissented by society's actions; the freedoms of religion, the freedoms from discrimination are null to us all on a social level, which in turn influences our politics, our institution. It becomes more than a contradiction; it is a deliberate exclusion.
The speech on a whole was emotional and at points, heartbreaking, building strength, evoking empathy. It was saddening to read, but also enlightening, providing a shift in perspective that excites me.