Opinion | Democrats Don’t Need to Calm Down

April 2, 2024, 5:16 p.m. ET

April 2, 2024, 5:16 p.m. ET

It’s a uncommon factor in our quickly secularizing nation to be confronted with piety and devotion in fashionable tradition. So it was a shock, and a balm, to look at a person who prays day by day and talks brazenly about his religious religion storm a bastion of earthly godlessness: “Saturday Evening Reside.”

I’m referring, after all, to the comic Ramy Youssef, who hosted the present on what he described in his opening monologue as “an extremely non secular weekend,” noting Ramadan, Easter and the arrival of a brand new Beyoncé album.

“I’m doing the Ramadan one,” he quipped, to peals of laughter, unspooling a really humorous bit about how loving Muslims are. Youssef has mined his expertise as a believer among the many profane in mild standup specials and a namesake sitcom. His complete monologue glowed with a welcoming heat — Muslims, he appeared to say: We’re identical to you.

In a rustic that’s supposedly obsessive about variety and inclusion, it’s outstanding how uncommon it’s to listen to from a working towards Muslim in America.

Surveys by the Institute for Coverage and Understanding, a nonpartisan analysis group targeted on Muslim People, have persistently discovered that Muslims are the most probably group to report non secular discrimination in the USA. In line with a Pew survey carried out in 2021, 78 % of People stated that there was both quite a bit or some discrimination in opposition to Muslims in our society. Muslims aren’t any extra prone to commit crimes than members of another group, however crimes through which Muslims are suspects get outsized media protection, analysis has proven.

It’s no shock, then, that Islamophobia is probably probably the most tolerated type of non secular prejudice. Proper now, Senate Republicans seem to have persuaded a number of Senate Democrats to vote in opposition to a Muslim judicial nominee after smearing him, with no proof in any respect, as an antisemite.

Lots of the skits that toyed with faith on “S.N.L.” on Saturday had been humorous — Ozempic for Ramadan! Genius. However a part of me winced by means of them as effectively, as a result of I noticed in Youssef one thing that different members of minority teams have needed to do to “earn” their place within the security of the mainstream: the efficiency of normalcy, of being nonthreatening and candy, the requirement to show that your group belongs in America identical to everybody else’s.

I beloved Youssef’s monologue, through which he bravely pleaded, “Please, free the folks of Palestine. And please, free the hostages. The entire hostages.”

“I’m out of concepts,” Youssef declared towards the tip of his monologue. “All I’ve is prayers.”

To which this nonbeliever can solely say: Identical, Ramy. Identical.