My Special Muslim Id Card By Wajahat Ali

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been quoted that he wants to monitor “certain mosques” in the U.S. In the article, “Mr. Trump, I’m used to standing out in the crowd. That’s why I’m ready for my special Muslim ID card” by Wajahat Ali the author uses effective satire to capture the attention of his audience in order to stress emphasis on his thoughts and views of American Muslims being assigned an ID card. Wajahat Ali is qualified to speak on this issue as he is a national correspondent for Al Jazeera America, an award-winning playwright, an attorney and a former consultant for the State Department. In addition, he is capable to speak on this subject as he is an American Muslim who was born and raised in the U.S. Nonetheless, the author can provide his points of view as both a Muslim with an exotic religious identity, but yet can provide his points of view as a true American Muslim. Most importantly, Wajahat Ali was successful at effective satire as he
was able to utilize humor to discuss the political issue at hand, and was also able to make use of ridicule to expose and criticize Mr. Trump’s stupidity and vices.
Throughout Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, he has been criticized for making many outrageous comments and/or ideas; in spite of this, Mr. Trump has a “suggestion that Muslims be given a special form of identification and his openness to the possibility of tracking American Muslims in a database” (Ali). Many journalists that write about political issues discuss the facts and backgrounds of the topic to bring their point of views to the table. On the other hand, Ali did something completely different and appealed to his readers by using satire. To illustrate his point of view that having ID cards assigned to Muslims is absurd, Ali goes overboard by exaggerating and putting humor in his article to display just how much he is in disagreement with Donald Trump’s ideas. Satire means to use humor, irony, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s lack of common sense that particularly has to deal with politics and other topical issues. Ali makes use of satire immediately and effectively in his very first sentence of the article when he says “…ethnic “brownness” and multi-syllable name that will never appear on a Disneyland key-chain” (Ali). This sentence contains satire as it utilizes humor in order to show Ali’s ethnic background and to portray how un-accepting the U.S. is that a Muslim name would ever appear on a Disneyland key-chain. The author applied many humorous statements throughout the article in order to portray that he was writing in satire. Ali successfully responds satirically to Trump’s proposal by suggesting that he “…needs to speak to the language of the new generation” (Ali). He implies that the ID should be of modern times and portrays this by stating “if this ID can’t be Snapchatted it might as well be a Polaroid” (Ali). In addition, he also brings humor to the new generation idea by stating that he recommends the ID should have a Muslim emoji and “we should be able to customize our own IDs so we can be the protagonists of our surveillance state narrative” (Ali). In addition, an “emoji should reflect a colorful, digital palette, appropriate for the most diverse religious group in America. I recommend colors ranging from White to Caramel Latte to Mocha Brown to Beyond Mocha” (Ali). By Ali emphasizing and recommending colors for the emoji, he displays effective and affluent use of satire. Nonetheless, Alia uses satire successfully when he states “each Muslim ID can list our respective superpowers and weaknesses” (Ali), which would highlight their strengths and weaknesses. Wajahat Ali was successful at effective satire as he was able to utilize humor to discuss the political issue at hand, and was also able to make use of ridicule to expose and criticize Mr.
Trump’s stupidity and vices. Throughout the article, Ali illustrates his points of view that having ID cards assigned to Muslims is ridiculous and he places humor in his article to display just how much he is in disagreement with Donald Trump’s ideas. Alia proved that he successfully responded to satirically to Trump’s proposal by the use of humor, irony, and exaggeration in his article. Nonetheless, Alia was the perfect journalist to write the article as he is an American Muslim and the topic at hand was very personal to him as he has lived with the scrutiny of being a Muslim throughout his lifetime. In conclusion, Ali was very successful in creating a satirical article that was able to draw people in and make them want to read the entire article as it made readers laugh over a current political
issue.