Close X
Friday, November 29, 2024
ADVT 
International

Bangladeshi-Origin Muslim White House Staffer Quits US President Donald Trump's Office Over Travel B

IANS, 27 Feb, 2017 12:16 PM
    Hijab-wearing Muslim ex-White House staffer of Bangladeshi-origin has said she quit her job after US President Donald Trump announced his controversial travel ban, lasting just eight days in the new administration. Rumana Ahmed was hired in 2011 to work at the White House and eventually the National Security Council (NSC).
     
    "My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman - I was the only hijabi in the West Wing - and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and included," she wrote in an article published in The Atlantic.
     
    Ms Ahmed said that like most of her fellow American-Muslims, she spent much of 2016 watching with "consternation" as Mr Trump "vilified our community".
     
    "Despite this - or because of it - I thought I should try to stay on the NSC staff during the Trump Administration, in order to give the new president and his aides a more nuanced view of Islam, and of America's Muslim citizens.
     
    "I lasted eight days. When Trump issued a ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat," she said.
     
    Ms Ahmed said the evening before she left her job at the White House, she notified Mr Trump's senior National Security Council (NSC) communications adviser, Michael Anton, of her decision.
     
     
    "His initial surprise, asking whether I was leaving government entirely, was followed by silence - almost in caution, not asking why. I told him anyway," she wrote.
     
    "I told him I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country's most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim," Ms Ahmed said.
     
    She told Mr Anton that the administration was attacking the basic tenets of democracy. She said Mr Anton just looked at her and said nothing.
     
    Ms Ahmed, whose parents immigrated to the US from Bangladesh in 1978, said inspired by then president Barack Obama, she joined the White House in 2011, after graduating from the George Washington University.
     
    "The days I spent in the Trump White House were strange, appalling and disturbing," she wrote.
     
    Ms Ahmed's personal account comes amid a spike in incidents of intimidation and assault targeting hijab-wearing women across the US following Mr Trump's electoral triumph.

    MORE International ARTICLES

    Trudeau Says There's No Link Between Him And Foundation Bearing Family Name

    MONROVIA, Liberia — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is distancing himself from a growing opposition furor over a private Liberal fundraiser where one attendee subsequently donated $1 million to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

    Trudeau Says There's No Link Between Him And Foundation Bearing Family Name

    Toronto Mayor To Introduce Road Toll Plan For Two Highways

    Toronto Mayor To Introduce Road Toll Plan For Two Highways
    TORONTO — The mayor of Canada's largest city says he wants to impose a toll of roughly $2 on two major highways leading to Toronto's downtown core.

    Toronto Mayor To Introduce Road Toll Plan For Two Highways

    Canadian Accused In Death Countryman In Mexico Jailed As 'Precaution'

    Canadian Accused In Death Countryman In Mexico Jailed As 'Precaution'
    A Mexican judge has ordered a Canadian man who was arrested for the killing of a fellow countryman to be locked up for nine months as a "precautionary measure" while authorities investigate the death.

    Canadian Accused In Death Countryman In Mexico Jailed As 'Precaution'

    2 Indians Killed, 4 Injured In Road Accident In Oman

    2 Indians Killed, 4 Injured In Road Accident In Oman
    Two Indians have been killed and four others, including three children, injured when the car they were travelling in collided head-on with a vehicle in Oman, a media report said today.

    2 Indians Killed, 4 Injured In Road Accident In Oman

    Jail For Speeding Pakistani Driver Who Killed Indian-Origin Sikh Man In UK

    Jail For Speeding Pakistani Driver Who Killed Indian-Origin Sikh Man In UK
    Usman Anwar, believed to be of Pakistani origin, was sentenced to four years and eight months at the Old Bailey court in London yesterday for running over 55-year-old Parmjit Singh Karir 

    Jail For Speeding Pakistani Driver Who Killed Indian-Origin Sikh Man In UK

    Nikki Haley's Appointment Sign Of Indian Americans' Political Emergence

    Nikki Haley's historic appointment to a cabinet-rank post by Republican President-elect Donald Trump that caps the election of five Indian Americans to Congress this year has been welcomed by the community as a sign of its political emergence.

    Nikki Haley's Appointment Sign Of Indian Americans' Political Emergence