Wishing Muslims around the world a “Ramadan Mubarak” — a blessed holiday — President Donald Trump on Wednesday hosted his first White House dinner for Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, an overture that surprised many in the Muslim community after he skipped hosting such a meal last year.
Speaking at the Iftar dinner, which breaks the daylong fast, Trump offered a message of unity, recognizing members of the Muslim community at home and abroad. “In gathering together this evening, we honor a sacred tradition of one of the world’s great religions,” he told an intimate audience that included Cabinet members and ambassadors from many Muslim-majority nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Wishing Muslims around the world a “Ramadan Mubarak” — a blessed holiday — President Donald Trump on Wednesday hosted his first White House dinner for Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, an overture that surprised many in the Muslim community after he skipped hosting such a meal last year.
Speaking at an iftar dinner, which breaks the daylong fast, Trump offered a message of unity, recognizing members of the Muslim community at home and abroad. “In gathering together this evening, we honor a sacred tradition of one of the world’s great religions,” he told an intimate audience that included Cabinet members and ambassadors from many Muslim-majority nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Trumps’ Iftar Dinner was a dramatic departure from last year when he said “I think Islam hates us” in an interview with CNN. Instead, Trump spoke of “the renewed bonds of friendship and cooperation” forged with “valued partners” from across the Middle East and said Iftars “mark the coming together of families and friends to celebrate a timeless message of peace, clarity and love. There is great love.”
Donald Trump’s White House broke a two-decade-old tradition last year by cancelling the president’s annual Iftar dinner. On Wednesday night, the annual Ramadan reception, conceived in the 1990s to celebrate Muslim-Americans, was back on as Trump hosted his first Iftar for the foreign Diplomats.
The White House described the Iftar as being “for the Washington Diplomatic Community,” and most of the 50 or so guests in the state dining room of the East Wing were foreign ambassadors representing majority-Muslim countries.
According to the Washignton post, the leading members of the U.S.’s Muslim community who typically attend the event weren’t invited. Muslim advocacy organizations the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council were both snubbed. So, too, were prominent spiritual leaders Mohamed Magid, the imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society Center, and Talib Shareef, president of the historic Nation’s Mosque, the oldest mosque in the capital, both of whom have been fixtures at the annual Ramadan celebration.
The Iftar reception, introduced during the Clinton era, was meant to symbolize how Muslims are woven into the American social fabric. The White House Iftar tradition began in 1996, under Bill Clinton’s administration, and continued with the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Many expressed that the revived Iftar should have been an opportunity for genuine engagement with a marginalized demographic, instead of just another diplomatic dinner.
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