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The Supreme Court hears arguments on the Muslim Ban tomorrow. I’ll be in the courtroom, and with hundreds of civil rights supporters at the rally on the courthouse steps. Join me. As the Fourth Circuit has declared, the Muslim Ban violates the Establishment Clause and is “unconstitutionally tainted with animus towards Islam.”

Everytime I talk to Muslim friends, colleagues, and even taxi drivers, I hear the same themes over and over again – children bullied as “terrorists” at school, women harangued for wearing headscarfs (with aggressors sometimes forcibly yanking religious headcoverings off), graffiti and vandalism to businesses, threats and firebombs at mosques.

Yesterday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations released “Targeted,” its annual civil rights report, assigning hard numbers on how the Muslim Ban has harmed the American Muslim community. CAIR reported 300 hate crimes against Muslims in 2017 – a 15% increase from its 2016 data. Those 300 hate crimes reflect a more than 500% increase in reported anti-Muslim hate crimes since CAIR began fulsome tracking in 2014. Most scary to me is the sheer number of violent and threatening incidents surrounding American mosques — 144 in the last year.

FBI hate crime data concurs. Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim sentiment are by far the largest categories of religiously-motivated hate crimes, accounting for 80% of the total religiously-motivated hate crimes every year. Since the 2015 beginning of the presidential election cycle, Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim hate crimes have dramatically spiked. (2017 FBI data is not yet available, so I included projections based on the 15% increase reported by CAIR and the 60% increase reported by the Anti-Defamation League.)

In particular, the Muslim Ban has wreaked havoc on families because of their faith. CAIR documented 464 incidents of bias related to the Muslim Ban. In “Total and Complete Shutdown,” a report on the Muslim Ban released last week, Muslim Advocates reports that U.S. admissions of Muslim refugees dropped by 94% during the first year of the Trump Administration. Non-immigrant visas for Muslim and Arab countries have dropped by 20-30%, and visas for “Muslim Ban” designated countries have plummeted by 55%.

The perpetuation of hatred and fear against religious minorities should be loathsome to all Mormons, once a highly persecuted minority religion ourselves. Indeed, I am proud of the way my community has stood up for our religious neighbors.

In CAIR’s national press conference yesterday, a Muslim civil rights leader listed Mormons first in sincere gratitude to the minority religions which have stood with Muslims during this period of hate and fear. Let’s keep it up. Protecting religious freedom must mean lending our time, talents, resources, and vocal support to our persecuted religious friends. So take concrete action: Invite your neighbors to share their stories and perspectives. Break bread with them. Schedule and attend interfaith events. Defend faiths on social media from horrific attacks.

Precisely because I am a Mormon with a deep knowledge of the evils of religious persecution, I started vocally supporting the rights of my Muslim friends to practice their faith free of harassment and fear on September 12, 2001. On that day, proposals were flying around the national media and my very red state to create national Muslim registries and ban Muslim immigration. I could not let that stand. No extremists should be permitted to define the beautiful faith of a billion of God’s children.

It is the Muslim Ban which inspired me to become even more engaged in the cause of religious civil rights. Three months ago I left my tech law firm job and joined the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a civil rights attorney. I have loved every minute of engaging more deeply with passionate members of the peaceful, loving, and service-oriented faith that is Islam.

My prior vocal defense has now turned to legal defense in court. In this and other aspects of my life, I have felt called by God to consecrate my skills and my talents towards being a voice for those who may be voiceless.

I hope all of you will feel the same inspiration. Stand with me and my Muslim friends, tomorrow at the Supreme Court, and for years to come around the world.