CLEVELAND – As Republican Party kicks off its week-long National Convention in Cleveland, during which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will be confirmed as the party’s nominee, the city’s Muslim doctors stand ready to provide them with medical help.
“I would just treat them like anybody else, if [a Trump supporter] needs my help. I would help without hesitation,” Isam Zaiem, a retired medical technologist who has lived in Cleveland since 1974 but hails from Damascus, Syria, told The Daily Beast on Monday, July 18.
“It’s no problem to have disagreement on issues. We have lost the ability to accept each others’ differences without being at each other’s throats.”
During the past months, Donald Trump has encouraged a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, from a complete ban of Muslims to “extreme vetting” in a CBS News interview earlier this week.
In response to anti-Muslim rhetoric, Dr. Bryan Hambley helped found a Cleveland protest organization of doctors, nurses and medical professionals called Stand Together Against Trump, or STAT, which also is a medical term from the Latin word ‘statim,’ meaning immediately or right away.
According to Hambley, there are about a dozen Muslim medical professionals affiliated with the group.
“There’s this running stereotype amongst Muslims that your parents expect you to either become a doctor or engineer. That’s the way we see it,” said Dr. Fatima Fadlalla, a resident physician in internal medicine who grew up in Cleveland and then returned for her residency.
As Trump’s most ardent supporters arrive in Cleveland, the city’s Muslim doctors, who represent from 10-20 percent of the city’s medical teams, are ready to provide them with medical help.
“I definitely see the irony in it, but as someone who took this oath and believes in the good in people, that’s not something that’s going to influence how I treat someone,” Fadlalla said.
“I’m What I know about the United States: the values I was brought up with, this sense of equality amongst people — I’m hoping that this will help me in treating whoever it is I need to treat.”
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Lasting Effect
As the convention kicks off, Muslims have concern that a clash of ideas and outburst of anti-Islam rhetoric might have long-lasting effects on Muslim youth here.
“Children will go to school with that, with that fear, that reservation — will they be attacked? … Some kids don’t even want to acknowledge they have a different religious for fear they’ll be ostracized or hurt,” Dr. Deborah Nafisah Abdul Rahim, a Muslim and retired school psychologist who spent much of her career working with Cleveland’s inner-city children, told The Daily Beast.
“We’ve got to start at home, saying the exact opposite things that [Trump] is saying… the leaders have to send a different message.”
However, Stand Together Against Trump plans to stand up to protests and to keep peace.
The group, which began with medical professionals, has since expanded to include anyone opposed to the Republican businessman, and is planning a march Thursday as Trump accepts the GOP nomination.
“The amount of attention on protesters bringing violence, bringing chaos has been incessant,” Hambley said. “Part of the reason we are here is to make sure that’s untrue.”
“Trump is the main hateful, violent one,” Hambley emphasized.
“Trump has suggested banning an entire religious group. He has got to stay the negative one. He’s got to stay the bleak one.”