After George Floyd’s killing, I sat with my daughter to talk about the age-old problem of racism, going back to the moment Bilal ascended the Kabah. I hadn’t spoken much with my daughter about this topic earlier – it just wasn’t something to naturally bring up. But our new national conversation on racism gave me an opportunity to talk about something of the painful things within our community that we mostly stay silent about.
I’m hearing stories of other parents doing the same, and the racism Black Muslims face within our community is finally being discussed more. This event on anti-Black racism put on by Mizna in St. Paul, Minnesota is just one example.
The Twin Cities are the epicenter where all this started, with George Floyd killed outside Cups Foods, a market owned by Mahmoud Abumayyaleh. Now another local Arab Muslim market owner, Majdi Wadi of Holy Land restaurant and grocery in Minneapolis, is in the news. And it’s because of his daughter.
In some ways I can relate to Majdi. He is an immigrant who came to the US for college, flipping burgers to help put himself through school. Using a recipe handed down from his grandfather, he began selling what would become award winning pita bread at Holy Land, a niche Middle Eastern Deli, Bakery and Grocery.
Majdi hired his daughter Lianne Wadi as his catering director. After the Floyd murder, someone named Muna Azam began re-posting Lianne’s old tweets from 2012 that were highly racist, as well as an Instagram post using the N-word in the caption. According to media coverage, she “posted multiple tweets repeatedly using the N-word, spewing anti-Somali and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and promoting a pro-Hitler Twitter account when she was a teenager.”
Customers of Holy Land launched a boycott. So Majdi did what any dad knows can’t be easy: he fired his daughter. He has hired a bias consultant to train employees and reached out to local Black, Somali, and Jewish leaders. “I am ready to conduct an investigation,” he told the media. “I’m ready for any consequences… I have no-tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination with any race.”
“Most immigrants, we make the same mistake. We’re not educated about the culture,” Majdi added. “Nobody ever taught us how to raise a kid in America.”
As an immigrant and a father raising a daughter, I know Majdi is in a tough situation. It is a reminder of what happens when we responsible adults stay silent about problems: they can infect our own community and even our own family. Hopefully the events of the past few weeks can wake us all up to challenges we need to address. We need to stop being silent and start taking responsibility. For the sake of our daughters.