Bernie Sanders visited a mosque in downtown Washington, DC, just blocks for the United States Capitol, Wednesday afternoon, in an effort to show solidarity with interfaith leaders and in response to what he calls Donald Trump’s “xenophobic” comments.
“It is time to say enough is enough. It is time to end religious bigotry, it is time to build a nation in which we all stand together… condemn the anti-Muslim rhetoric that we are hearing,” the Vermont Senator said. He sat around a table at Masij Muhammad, also referred to as “the nation’s mosque,” with its Imam Talib Shareef and a local rabbi and chaplains.
Sanders emphasized that the country had worked hard to overcome racism and discrimination in the past.
“We’re not going back. We have suffered too much. There’s been too much division. We are going forward… We will not allow people to divide us up, because you’re Jewish or you’re Muslim or Christian or Catholic. We’re not going to allow that to happen,” Sanders continued. He spoke at length about what he sees as the dangers of hateful rhetoric. Listing the Rwandan genocide, Japanese-American internment camps, and the conflict him Bosnia, Sanders who is Jewish, argued that “bigotry and intimidation” can come with “unspeakable results.”
“We must never forget what happened under the racist ideology of the Nazis, which led to the deaths of millions of millions of people, including family members of mine, as well as Poles, Russians, gypsies, gay people, people with disabilities, people who were quote-unquote ‘different.’ People who were quote-unquote ‘inferior,'” he warned.