Tales of racial harmony from across US

CHENNAI: The day Donald Trump was elected US President, a group of Jews handed out flowers before Friday prayers at a mosque in New York City, offering support to Muslims.

When the President declared a ban on Muslim immigrants from certain countries, thousands of people from different religions, raised slogans outside John F Kennedy International Airport, chanting “we are all Muslims”.

These are the images

American storyteller

,

journalist

, writer Aman Ali wants to promote to show political decisions may not always reflect people’s mindset.

“Racism surely happens, but it’s not sentiment of the average ordinary American. We have got to celebrate the stories of harmony,” said Ali, delivering a talk on ‘Growing up as Muslim in America’ here on Thursday. The event was organised by the US Consulate, Chennai and the Nawab of Arcot.

Alia, member of a Hyderabadi Muslim family which settled in Ohio in the late 1960s, says he was not singled out for his religion, except for a single incident. While a reporter, a tipsy Congressman asked him to inform the government when he got a letter warning of a terrorist attack.

“I do not want to complain. I want to change the negative perceptions about the country through human stories which otherwise get lost,” says the 31-year-old. His ‘30 days 30 mosques’ project, where he covered 25,000 miles by road across all 50 US states, is about stories about Muslims in America. “ On one of our trips we found that North Dakota had a Muslim settlement which dates back to the 1700s, who had emigrated from Lebanon and Syria,” says Ali.

“When asked about discrimination, the seventh generation Muslim woman, also the caretaker of the cemetery in this tiny town, said we are all farmers we have no racism here. These are the stories I want to carry forward,” says Ali.