What's being aimed at Abdul El-Sayed by Trump is not a policy disagreement. It is the President calling a Michigan-born doctor a "jihadist" and saying he'd need a metal detector to enter the Senate. It is a sitting senator mocking him with a nickname about his faith. It is crowds shouting "traitor" at the sound of his name, and a flood of online smears about his religion, his family, and his community.
Let’s call this what it is: Islamophobia.
I've always said: before you tell me about your religion, show it to me in how you treat other people. By that measure, the people attacking Abdul's faith are failing their own.
Hate aimed at a Muslim is poisonous, just as is hate aimed at a Jew, a Christian, a Sikh, or anyone else. It is beneath the presidency, beneath the Senate, and beneath who we are as Americans.
Debate ideas. But we have to reject the politics of hate, and we have to do it out loud.