Muslim woman writes about her days in Trump's White House

A Muslim American narrates her journey to and eventually out of the White House, eight days into the administration of US President Donald Trump.  

Quoted in a magazine, The Atlantic, Rumana Ahmed says she was hired to work at the White House in 2011 when had completed college. Although Ahmed was the only hijab-wearing Muslim, she says the Obama administration never made her feel unwelcomed. However, she stayed in the White House — despite being aware of the hatred Trump had for her community — only to give the new president a more nuanced view of Islam and of America's Muslim citizens.

Ahmed says she knew her journey would not last longer in the White House as Trump saw people like her not as fellow citizens but as a threat, given the ban he had issued on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees.  

Her colleagues did not ask, but Ahmed told them the reason for her to resign. She told them it was insulting for her to walk in the country's most historic building under an administration that was working against everything she took for as an American and as a Muslim. 

In her personal account, she says her parents immigrated to the US from Bangladesh in 1978. Her mother began working as a cashier and later started her own daycare business, while her father worked at the Bank of America, eventually being promoted to assistant vice president at one of its headquarters. "Living the American dream, we'd have family barbeques, trips to Disney World," she writes in her personal account. "My father began pursuing his PhD but in 1995 he was killed in a car accident." 

Ahmed says she was 12 when she started wearing a hijab, out of choice though she was encouraged by her family.
She adds 9/11 was another turning point in her life when she was faced with the fear some kids felt towards her, but also the incident taught her to carry patience and peace along throughout her life.   

As she grew up, Ahmed says she never intended to work in the government as she always assumed it to be corrupt and ineffective. "Working in the Obama White House proved me wrong," she writes. "It felt surreal... here I was, a 22-year-old American Muslim woman mocked and called names for covering my hair, working for the president of the United States." 

She says right-wing websites would spread absurd conspiracy theories about American Muslims but she did not know it would end up in the White House. However, it happened as the climate in 2016 felt like it did just after 9/11.  "I was almost hit by a car by a white man laughing as he drove by in a Costco parking lot," she writes.

After the election declared Trump the victor, Ahmed says she contemplated resignation, despite having the option to stay as she was a direct hire of the National Security Council. She decided on staying just so that Trump's security council could benefit from a "coloured, female, hijab-wearing American Muslim patriot".
However, when she walked into a US government buildings on January 23, with new staffers there, Ahmed says she did not feel the excitement she had felt on her visit to the White House under Obama. "The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion."

The former White House staffer says the new government was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism.  

"I might have lasted a little longer, but January 30 came when the executive order came, banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries," she says. "Discrimination that has existed for years at airports was now legitimised."

She believes it is dangerous to place the national security of US in the hands of people who think America's diversity is a weakness.

"People of every religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and age, pouring into the streets and airports to defend the rights of their fellow Americans over the past few days proved the opposite is true," she writes. "American diversity is a strength and so is the American commitment to ideals of justice and equality."