I greatly admire Cornell’s faculty for putting together this panel in order to educate international students on their rights and the current issues facing immigrants in the United States. With President Trump’s recent executive orders targeting American immigration policies, many have been worried about their situation and in America. Of the many topics addressed in the panel, the one that stuck out to me was the ideological effect of these policies on immigrants and religious minorities.

One panelist mentioned that the increasingly Islamophobic atmosphere in the United States since 9/11 has actually encouraged terrorism. Young Muslims in America feel unwanted, hated, and alienated. Policies that prevent Muslim refugees escaping countries torn apart by American wars from entering the United States have only increased anti-American sentiments.
Interestingly enough, this has also had the effect of creating a growing sense of Jewish-Muslim fellowship. Someone on the panel mentioned that there has been increased anxiety among the American Jewish population in the past year, and there have been more and more occurrences of anti-Semitic verbal attacks. The growing prevalence of anti-Semitic ideologies is likely due in part to the legitimizing of these beliefs though the promotion of known anti-Semites such as Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer. As these two religions, Judaism and Islam, have been increasingly persecuted under this administration, it is only natural that they have developed some form of fellowship.

Something I find particularly fascinating about this development is how it relates to the controversy over the term “Judeo-Christian.” So often Judaism and Christianity have been seen as sister religions, with similar “Judeo-Christian values” and similar histories. However, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with the term, as it erases the years of oppression Jews have experienced at the hands of Christians. Today, Muslims are undergoing discrimination at the hands of majority Christian nations as well, making these two religions more closely linked by their own conflicts with the third Abrahamic religion. I wonder if, as this regime’s openly discriminatory policies continue, the trend towards Jewish-Muslim fellowship will continue as well, and one day “Judeo-Islamic” will become a more relevant term for discussing religion in the United States.