NPR: SOTU Guest: Alaa Basatneh

The following interview was aired on NPR on January 12, 2016. A link to the article can be found here.

HOST: President Obama delivers his final State of the Union address tonight, and when he speaks a young Syrian-American social media activist will be in the audience.

CLIP: My name is Alaa Basatneh I’m 19 years old. I live right outside of Chicago with my parents and my younger brother, Louie. I used to pretty much go to the mall with friends, you know? , just have fun. But nowadays, I don’t have time. I’m responsible for hundreds of people on the ground in Syria.

HOST: That’s Alaa Basatneh who was profiled in the documentary “Chicago Girl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator”. She’s 23 now and still works online with the Syrian opposition. She visited Syria twice in recent years but after extremists threatened her life she cancelled plans for a third trip. Her work caught the eye, though, of Illinois Democrat, Representative Mike Quigley, and he asked her to be his guest tonight at the President’s address. Basatneh said the invite boosted her spirits at a time when it is tough to be a Muslim in America.

Alaa Basatneh: Just walking on the streets I would get comments uh… that are very non-American, the least to say. Something along the lines of “go back to your country” or I would get uh… dirty looks just because I’m wearing the head scarf. It’s been really hard, but I know that if I was to sit and reason with every single person that’s giving me the hard time that they will come back to their senses and understand that I am a human just like them.

HOST: Congressman, you must’ve seen the story a week or so ago when a Muslim woman, a 56 year old flight attendant, was escorted out of a Donald Trump campaign after she stood up in silent protest. Apparently some people were standing near her, grabbed her hand, and said “sorry”. But others were shouting things like “she has a bomb!” What went through your head when you watched that and thought about tonight’s speech?

Mike Quigley: It’s difficult to watch. All I can do is do things like we’re doing tonight and invite her to the State of the Union. I hope when people talk to my guest tonight, they see a smart, brave young woman putting her life at risk. I hope people see that and begin to slow down the hatred, recognize that this country does better when we don’t pit one group against each other; we don’t try to find scapegoats.

HOST: So Alaa, what was your reaction?

AB: Well, I was really happy to see that standing next to Rose…

HOST: Rose Hamid, she was the one standing in the… in the Donald Trump crowd, right? Yeah.

AB: Yes. Was a Jewish American who had the same sticker on his chest that Rose was wearing that said “Muslim” on it, even though he’s Jewish. It shows the unity, it shows how much Americans, from all different backgrounds are standing next to each other hand-in-hand, saying “no” to islamophobia, saying “no” to hatred.

HOST: And yet those opinions are very easy to find these days. Does it feel to you like bigotry has become kind of normalized in America today?

AB: No, and it will never be the land of bigotry.

HOST: Representative Quigley, just a few days ago the governor of your neighboring state, Scott Walker – Wisconsin, tweeted something provocative. He said the arrest of two Iraqi refugees in California and Texas, with ties to ISIS, vindicated his stance against allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. And one of these men was in fact online and commenting about wanting to return to Syria to fight for ISIS. Did those arrests give you pause?

MQ: No. I think it’s easy to differentiate risks are. I serve on the House Select Committee on Intelligence; we have to understand that uh… Oklahoma City, was an American-born terrorist. That screening process for refugees is more thorough than any other process that anyone coming to the United States is involved. There are risks involved with freedom, and I appreciate and understand that. We need to be safe, we need to protect ourselves, but that doesn’t allow bigotry and hatred to rule the day.

HOST: And given that this is President Obama’s last State of the Union address, Alaa, what do you hope will be Obama’s legacy?

AB: President Obama has done a great job advocating for the Syrian people, but we do truly need international action and we the international community to collaborate for the sake of the Syrian people.

HOST: Do you think he should’ve have made more bold moves early on with the red lines when there was evidence of chemical weapons attacks?

AB: Yes, I do. I think President Obama should’ve intervened when those red lines were crossed by Assad and his regime.

HOST: Alaa Basatneh is a Syrian-American social media activist profiled in the documentary “Chicago Girl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator” and she’ll be an official guest at tonight’s State of the Union Address and was invited by the Illinois Democrat, Representative Mike Quigley. Congressman and Alaa, thank you both very much today.

AB: Thank you so much.

MQ: Thank you.