A Muslim delegate from San Bernardino, Calif., lashed out Donald Trump here on Monday, saying the GOP presidential nominee has put American Muslims on edge.
“The politics of what Donald Trump is playing is divide and rule. We have seen this in the Hitler era. And that’s the reason people call him Hitler Trump,” said Mike Saifie, a California delegate attending the Democratic National Convention to support Hillary Clinton, the party’s presumptive nominee.
“Muslims are feeling anxiety. They are definitely in a state of anxiety,” Saifie told The Hill in a Facebook Live interview on Monday.
“They are very fearful. What will happen if Donald Trump comes?”
Saifie said he’s the first Muslim delegate to represent the 31st Congressional District in California, which includes San Bernardino county, the scene of the ISIS-inspired terrorist shooting in December.
The attacks still haunt Saifie, and he calls one of the survivors of the San Bernardino shooting a friend.
Paula Harold was a supervisor of one of the shooters, Syed Farook, and she survived the massacre by crawling away from the flying bullets and hiding in a set of cabinets, according to the local ABC affiliate.
“On behalf of the Muslim community, it’s still unbelievable for us, as a Muslim, that somebody came and lived in our neighborhood and did that kind of act,” Saifie told The Hill.
Saifie believes this is the most anxious time to be a Muslim in America since he arrived in the country about 30 years ago.
It’s even worse now than after the 9/11 terror attacks, he said.
“Muslims don’t come in one single race or color. They are a very big variety of people,” he said.
“It’s not only become hard for our community ... the Muslim lawyers and the doctors and public servants like me.”
“It also influences our youth ... our kids,” he added.
“I have a fourth grader and then he was called a terrorist by another fourth grader.”
Trump recently backed away from his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. He now says that instead of applying a religious test, the travel ban will be a geographically defined, applying to countries linked to terrorism.
Saifie said he doesn’t trust Trump’s walk back of the proposal and, when asked what he would say if he met the GOP nominee, he indicated their conversation will not be a friendly one.
“Wherever he is, or wherever he wants to go to a psychiatrist, I will pay 100 percent my money for his psychiatric evaluation.”