This week, Maggie Siddiqi, new senior fellow at Interfaith Alliance, is with host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush discussing Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education, Bishop Budde’s model of faithful resistance, and the importance of coalition-building to stand up for democracy and religious freedom.
Maggie joins Interfaith Alliance following a distinguished tenure with the Biden administration at the Department of Education, directing the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Prior to that, she served as senior director of the Religion and Faith team at the Center for American Progress, where she led the organization’s work on religious liberty. Maggie also spent nearly a decade in national organizations serving American Muslim communities, focusing on interfaith relations and faith-based advocacy.
“Religious freedom is a matter of equity. I’m not sure how the Trump administration thinks they can tout efforts to address religious freedom and antisemitism while undermining the very means through which those efforts happen. They cannot have it both ways. Equity is about fairness, right. That is what equity means, and we want students of all religious and non-religious backgrounds to be treated fairly and welcomed into class without having to hide a critical part of who they are and what they believe. That’s a matter of equity and inclusion.”
– Maggie Siddiqi, senior fellow at Interfaith Alliance, where she focuses on building partnerships across the religious landscape. Maggie has a master’s degree in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations from Hartford Seminary and a bachelor’s degree in religion from Wesleyan University. She also earned graduate certificates in Islamic chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary and in nonprofit management from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
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—INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT—
REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:
And now to my guest. Over the years, Maggie Siddiqi has made great contributions to interfaith work and religious freedom, including holding leadership positions at the Center for American Progress Religion and Faith Team, and the Biden Department of Education Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Maggie has just joined Interfaith Alliance as a senior fellow, and will lead a new body of work deepening and broadening partnerships across the American religious organizational landscape in this high stakes moment, and I am delighted to have her join me today on The State of Belief.
Welcome, Maggie Siddiqi!
MAGGIE SIDDIQI, GUEST :
Thank you so much for having me, Paul. I’m a long-time listener, first-time caller on The State of Belief.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Oh my God, that is perfect. Well, welcome, longtime kind of colleague. You know, close to a decade of admiring your work, benefiting from your work, and really appreciating all you bring to the religious landscape and this tough work that we do, but which is also so gratifying. One of the things I like to do, just at the top of the show, is to ask guests how they got here. You’re a really important participant in this work of interfaith collaboration and also policy work.
What is your background and how did you get here?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Well, thanks so much for that opening question.
I think in some ways it was my inability to pick a lane and stick with it. I was a religion major in college. I interned during the summer with Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, God rest her soul, and I enjoyed both of those areas so much. And so it occurred to me that I should figure out a way to do both, and started engaging in work around the intersection of religion and public policy. One of my earlier jobs, the way I got into this work, was by working at the Islamic Society of North America that was doing, in its DC office, both interfaith relations and government relations.
And I discovered that what I loved most was when those two things overlapped, when we were engaging in advocacy together with faith groups of many different backgrounds around issues that we cared about, whether it was disability rights or gun violence prevention or what have you. The power of coming together in a coalition of religious groups that all cared about those issues together was so beautiful, and so that there have been a lot of steps since that job. But that, I think, was when I finally discovered my calling.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
That is fantastic and rooted in a tradition, but also recognizing – and I say this for myself as a Christian – for me to actually live out my Christian calling is to work across lines of difference.
And that’s also because of my background, with different traditions, having very close Jewish family members, but also just my experience of meeting people and going, oh my God, you’re so fascinating. I want my life to intersect with yours, no matter what, and I want to take your concerns seriously. And I think that that’s the opportunity of interfaith work and policy, and how it intersects, when done really well. And you’re such an example of that.
You worked at the Center for American Progress, and I remember some just remarkable work that you did there. And it just so happens that there you also worked with our senior policy person, Senior Director of Policy Guthrie, and so in some ways the family continues to expand and we’re just delighted that you’re here. But tell us a little bit about your work at Center for American Progress before you went to the Department of Ed.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
That was an incredible time, and it’s wonderful to sort of get the team back together, with Guthrie here and I both being at Interfaith Alliance now. There was an incredible amount of foresight on the part of John Podesta and others that formed the religion and faith team, initially, at the outset of Center for American Progress’s founding, recognizing that there was a role for a faith voice on matters of public policy, and that public policy that directly addresses religion – so, namely, religious freedom issues – were significant enough for there to be a progressive policy agenda. And advocating for truly the rights of all people – so the free exercise rights, the separation of Church and State rights, and then also, really importantly, the right of all people, of all religious, secular and spiritual identities, to live without fear of hate, which is something that I think sometimes we don’t think of as part of the religious freedom agenda, but for so many of us, and especially now, more and more, is a critical part of that work.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
That is so important, and it’s often not part of the equation. But once you bring that into the equation, it kind of changes, somehow, the balances of what you pay attention to.
It’s interesting, we talk about the Center for American Progress having this foresight and this wisdom – not to gripe, and I don’t like to harp on this too much, but I would say, Center for American Progress is a left-of-center organization. You would never have to convince a right-of-center organization that somehow religion was going to be an important part of how they did their work. They are funding that, they are finding ways to put that forward, and I’m really glad that there was a mechanism at the Center for American Progress to do that. But sometimes that’s just something we have to put in front of our colleagues and say: this is actually a really powerful opportunity for you to work with religious communities, because you haven’t mined that potential yet, and you really could make your own cause more powerful and the breadth of your coalition wider if you were to invite religious leaders into it.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
I think for organizations that are on the right side of the spectrum, I think the sad part is that oftentimes having that religion agenda is a Christian Nationalist agenda. It’s an agenda that’s weaponizing religion, and in particular Christianity, to actually undermine the religious freedom rights of all in America. And so I think the part to be attentive to, where we need a progressive agenda, is a counterweight to that. To say, no, we really do want religion to be able to flourish in society here, and we have an alternative vision to this one that is overtly politicized and coercive in nature.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
So you have just completed your role as director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the US Department of Education. This was a presidential appointment. Talk to me a little bit about what it meant to be invited by the president to join the Department of Education, and think of positive ways that, just what you talked about, a broad religious vision that included everybody, how you could help instigate some good thinking about that at the Department of Ed. What was your initial like reaction? It must have been pretty exciting!
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
It was an incredible honor to be invited to apply for that role, to be appointed to that position. I am incredibly proud of the work that we did to protect religious freedom and religious inclusion at the Department of Education. It was an honor to work with so many colleagues, including Melissa Rogers, over at the White House. I served in that role as a senior advisor to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on religious freedom issues, including antisemitism and Islamophobia, and he was just an incredible champion of that work and really understood the importance of ensuring that students of all religious, secular, and spiritual backgrounds were free to show up to school and learn as their full selves.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
It’s just it’s so valuable, the work that you did. And some of that really got into difficult issues, like LGBTQ issues and how people really felt, young people felt safe in their schools. And not just that, but also religious minorities. You think about how important schools are. I mean, having two youngsters in public school, I just value so much the fact that my public school really is trying, as best they can, to really look out for everybody, and no one is thrown to the curb. And I just think it’s the opportunity to model that, almost, as a society. So schools and education can be a great place where we can learn about that.
But of course, because you were a presidential appointee, January 20th was your last day, and so you put into place some really important things. But I want to check in with you and see how you’re feeling, seeing what’s happening at the Department of Education. Maybe you can bring us up to date on some of the things that you’re seeing so that our listeners understand what kind of new moment we are in, frankly, for the Department of Education.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
It’s pretty devastating to witness, even, President Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education. I don’t know whether he’ll actually succeed at that, but he’s certainly doing what he can to chip away at it right now.
The administration has swiftly already appointed my successor, I’d like to imagine that that is an indication of an interest in continuing the work that we were doing around religious freedom. But of course, the religious freedom resources that we had developed and posted on our center website have already been deleted. So all of our resources about protecting the right to prayer and religious expression in public schools, about addressing antisemitism, which this administration claims to care so much about, and more – those are already taken down. So that’s an indication of where they stand on religious freedom issues.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I just want to pause there for one second, because I think that’s really important. You know, there will be a narrative that we’re finally paying attention to these issues. You know, that’s what they’ll try to say, like, finally, we’re here, now, and we’re going to take these things seriously. Those were taken seriously, and really great people from diverse backgrounds worked together to create something that would work for the whole of democracy. And the fact that they’ve already taken those things down – guidelines for inclusion, guidelines for countering antisemitism and hate in school, guidelines for how religious freedom can be exercised, guidelines on how prayer is allowable, but government-enforced prayer might not be allowable – these are all things that you guys worked really hard to create.
I’m proud, and we have to have a little discussion about this, but that a former employee of Interfaith Alliance, Katie Joseph, a wonderful person, left Interfaith Alliance to join your team. She was a lawyer who was really thinking hard and thinking smart about questions like antisemitism, about questions like inclusion and things like that; and so I just think it’s really important just to stop for a second, because you’re going to hear a lot of rhetoric, and to recognize that some really important work at the Department of Education was done to make sure that every person would feel respected and welcome in public schools.
And what we’re going to see is, instead – we’re already seeing it in public schools around the country – the idea that you can put up one tradition’s sacred text, that you can instigate one tradition’s prayers. I just think we’re about to get into dangerous territory. We’ll talk about that, but I do want to just acknowledge the great work that you did I think is my main point, and make sure that our listeners know that when they start hearing rhetoric about: finally, the Department of Education is doing something – that’s intentionally misleading.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Thank you, and I’ll just add that religious freedom is a matter of equity. I’m not sure how the Trump administration thinks they can tout efforts to address religious freedom and antisemitism while undermining the very means through which those efforts happen. They cannot have it both ways. Equity is about fairness, right. That is what equity means, and if we want students of all religious and non-religious backgrounds to be treated fairly and welcomed into class without having to hide a critical part of who they are and what they believe – that’s a matter of equity and inclusion.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Thank you for saying that. You know it’s DEI… I mean, you can’t even say that without people having a visceral reaction. Ah, DEI, you know. It’s crazy, but what you’re saying is, really, it’s about inclusion, it’s about saying there’s not one group that gets more, but there’s not one group that gets less, either. And so it’s really about this idea of equity is really about fairness. So thank you for reminding me about that.
So you were at Department of Education when the terrible attacks by Hamas happened on Israel on October 7th, and then followed by a terrible war on Gaza. And really, for those of us who’ve been working in interfaith work for as long as we have – well, I’ve been, since kind of the 90s. You were still an infant, I think, at that point. I’m joking, but this is a very difficult time, maybe the most difficult time I’ve seen in interfaith relations. And so how do you—you’ve witnessed these dynamics, you’ve tried to navigate them. How do you understand those dynamics in this moment? Because they continue to inform and reverberate, and we still are experiencing those now. And we are in a moment where I would say the Trump administration is exacerbating the suspicion between traditions.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
That’s exactly right. And first let me say you know it was incredibly painful but necessary to bear witness to all of it: the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israelis, then the assault on Gazans. There was so much death, so much suffering, so much cruelty amidst it all, and we had students across our country, from Jewish, Arab and Muslim backgrounds in particular, whose entire social media feeds were filled with that suffering. The trauma was primary. It was secondary, it was intergenerational, and it is ongoing. Even with a temporary ceasefire, that doesn’t erase all of that pain in those communities.
And so in that time, you know, following October 7th, it was my job to bear witness to that pain, and work with leaders from those communities on how we could support those students – and there was incredible clarity at the department that our goal was to support all students, and we did our best to do just that. The group of people across the administration that worked to develop the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, by and large, that was the same committee that pulled together the US National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate.
We recognized the need to work on those issues and those forms of discrimination together and, as you rightly pointed out, there were a number of folks, and that included conservative members of Congress, who did everything they could to say that it couldn’t work like that. They were deeply interested in deepening existing divides on this issue and presenting a zero-sum game, and this really has been always the strategy of the right: to divide up coalitions of communities that typically vote against them and then turn those communities against one another.
And so you’re absolutely right. There’s been an incredible fracturing, I think, in a lot of the interfaith relationships that have taken years to build, and that fracturing was absolutely aided by some of those bad actors for whom our pain was a real boon to their cause of divisiveness. And they didn’t allow oxygen for some of the important conversations that needed to happen about how policymakers or leaders of educational institutions could meet the needs of all the communities that were impacted by that violence and trauma.
And you know, I’ve said a lot of really downer things here, but I hope that there is some recognition now, in this new era, that we really need to be clear-eyed about the forces working against our ability to come together. We have to be willing to support our educators, our local policymakers, and others who really want to figure out how to support all of us, how to support all of their constituencies, all of their students, and we have to do that by coming together and being willing to say that we want to figure out how to be in a community together, how to present them with that vision of success.
It’s incredibly tough work, but that is the work of creating a pluralistic society, and so I think there’s a real opportunity to be had there. And I wish we were not starting from this place of difficulty, but I think it’s such important work, and I’m glad to be a part of Interfaith Alliance in this moment, because I think it’s a real place where folks can come together.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Well, it’s been its own challenge. I do want to highlight a great report calledTogether Against Hate that our colleague Zev Mischell, who was on the show a few weeks ago, really talking about the interfaith response to hate, and recognizing that there are forces that are trying to drive us apart.
But if we also recognize that much of the antisemitism, much of the Islamophobia, the majority of it is actually coming from kind of White identity, Christian identity groups that are attacking our people, and recognizing that the interfaith community can really be a powerful force in fighting back against that if we can come together and if we can recognize that one another’s challenges are the interconnectedness between those two. And I do want to mention, I don’t think I had quite put together how closely linked the committee to counteract Islamophobia and the committee to counteract antisemitism were, that there were many of the same people…
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
One and the same, really one and the same.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
That is so interesting. That is new knowledge for me – and you’d think I would know that, but I didn’t know that. I saw that they happened sequentially and we, at Interfaith Alliance, we welcome both of them, but I don’t think I realized that they were—so that’s hard fought, I mean, you can imagine, within that committee, that’s hard work; but they managed to do something with integrity and with the eyes towards the well-being of both the Muslim community and the Jewish community right now, among others. So thank you for educating me.
And so what do you think, just stepping back, about the role of interfaith going forward? I mean again, you and I have been in these rooms together; what gives you some excitement right now about the possibilities?
I will say, I’ve been setting Maggie up to be a big downer – but she’s the opposite of a big downer. Anybody who has worked with Maggie Siddiqi sees possibility, and she opens up possibility. She’s so courageous, and also who she will show up with… There are some people who say, you can’t talk to them. Maggie believes in actually talking to other people and being part of a big coalition talking to other people and being part of big coalition buildings. So I want to make sure that I give Maggie an opportunity to shine the way that I see her shining in so many ways. So please believe me, I’ve made Maggie into… I’m just projecting my Eeyore self on her, but she is not that way.
Maggie, talk a little bit about what still excites you about this moment, even though we’re getting all of this stuff coming at us from the Trump administration and the inherent difficulties of this moment in our democracy.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
You give me too much credit, Paul. I feel like I have more downer things to say, as well. But I’ll say, you know, people of faith give me hope in this moment. Bishop Budde, I don’t know whether she meant to or not, but she became the standard-bearer of the resistance under this administration, and I think a lot of us who may have felt afraid to speak out – you know, her message, it was so humbly presented, so soft-spoken but, you know, powerfully filled with the compassion and wisdom of Jesus’ message. That’s not an act of political partisanship but it’s an act of moral conscience and moral courage.
And then the Quakers, from their peace church tradition, launched their legal challenge to Trump’s attempt to send law enforcement storming into schools and churches and other houses of worship. And the opportunity to be a part of organizations like Interfaith Alliance in this moment that I think are really going to be a part of those efforts, and really make a significant impact. So that’s given me a tremendous amount of hope right now, and I’m very grateful to be able to be a part of that with you, Paul.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Well, I think one of the things that you really put forward is that we don’t have to view other people as this, you know, destroy or be destroyed, neighbor versus neighbor, it’s you or me. This is a tactic, and I think we need to recognize that we will be living alongside people we don’t agree with, but can we find a way to do that in a way that actually recognizes that people want to live in different ways, but we can all be part of a democracy that celebrates the difference rather than views it as a detriment or as an evil or whatever. So I think that maybe that’s an opportunity here.
And how do we talk? How would you suggest we talk about that, even from those of us in advocacy spaces where we tend to get very passionate about, whether it’s fear-based or whatever, about people we feel maybe are our enemies, but we have to view it a different way?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Right, if you’ll permit me a sort of soapbox moment here. You know, I think that the Muslim-Jewish dynamics that we just talked about are sort of a microcosm of how we’ve been fractured as a society by the divisive politics of Trump and those who share his ideology. I believe that in the 2016 election cycle – and it may predated that, but to sort of point to that time period that Trump really sold conservatives on this idea that it’s a dog-eat-dog world. So you should just forget about everyone else and look out for number one.
And you know, progressives were absolutely shocked by this idea and thought wow, once the election results were in, I can’t believe my friend, my family member, my neighbor were all just okay with the hate that Trump was sharing. And so then we started feeling more and more isolated from those around us. And then COVID came, and we found that some of our neighbors wouldn’t even wear a mask to protect us from a deadly disease, and I think, by 2020, many of us inadvertently became sold on the big lie that Trump was spewing, ourselves. We became sold on his idea that it’s a dog-eat-dog world. That at the end of the day, you’ve got to look out for yourself, because no one else is going to look out for you.
And so that means Trump and his ideological counterparts essentially convinced all of us that a pluralistic society does not work – and I believe that is an absolute lie that he convinced us of. And you know, when you become convinced of that, it’s so easy to just throw up your hands in the air and say, whatever, just let the whole house burn to the ground. And this administration, this Trump administration, is the burn-it-to-the-ground administration. I mean, they’re actively trying to end the very ideals of government, and government itself. The government upon which our beloved country was built.
But it’s all based on a lie, and I think what I said about sort of people of faith giving me hope in this moment – I really think it’s going to be faith communities and other groups within our civil society that help really expose that lie. And the best way to expose it is by proving that pluralism can work. And that’s incredibly tough work, of course, as we just talked about with the example around October 7th. I mean, that’s finding new ways to be in coalition with folks that we don’t always see eye to eye with on every issue, but it’s for the purpose of saving our democracy. It’s tough, but I know it can be done, and I think we have some really powerful people showing the way here, and I mean powerful in the sense of their courage and their conscience, like Bishop Budde.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
You know, it’s very interesting. I was on C-SPAN, I don’t know if you listened to it, but it was very interesting to just hear the different callers talk about, some of them very grateful for what I was saying and really appreciative, and others saying, it sounds like Satan is speaking through you, kind of thing. And you know, then you realize, oh, religion can be really helpful, and it can heighten this.
And so I’m speaking out of the responsibility of clergy and the kind of language we use about spiritual warfare and what does it mean to talk about politics in terms that are used around grappling with the devil? Which is what I experienced yesterday. And I know enough to not like take that too seriously, but that’s really a mindset. I don’t have a solution for it yet, but I do think when we do talk about religion and politics and religion and policy, recognizing how the worldview that people are in and trying to find ways to focus on loving your neighbor, and finding ways to…
You know, I think what was so startling to me – and I agree that Bishop Budde’s words were very inspiring – but what was really surprising and startling to me was how angrily people responded and said she was, like, hating the president. You know, when she was saying please have mercy, using things like “mercy” and “welcome” and “care” and all of these terribly hateful words, and just recognizing that we’re in for a real moment. But I do think that there’s an opportunity. I really do. I mean even speaking to the national audience on C-SPAN, it just felt like maybe people are hearing a different way of framing the question.
You know, one of the things I was really trying to say is, like, we don’t have to live the same way in order to each respect one another. And I do think that that’s a lost value. One of the things I said is, like, you know, if in your community you’re not going to welcome gay people, okay. In your religious, that’s your business. You’re going to lose some of your kids, but you can do that. I’m not trying to erase you there. But don’t erase me, either. And I think this is the way that we need to start thinking about this. We have respect for religious traditions, including conservative ones, but they don’t get to trump or they don’t get to erase other people.
How do you imagine us going forward with these, as you said, zero-sum dilemmas?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
We had a teacher come speak at a public event we held at the Department of Education, and he had this really powerful quote that he teaches in his classes that are focused on religious literacy. He said, “Other people are not failed attempts at becoming you.” Which I thought was, it’s, of course, really funny, right? I get, I’m sure you know, get the laugh out of it. It’s really, I thought, a really helpful way to frame things.
And I think this is the complicated thing about being in a community of any kind, whether it’s a school community or faith community or something else, is, it forces us to be in a space with people who come at the same questions that we have, but from completely different perspectives. And I think that is – especially in these times, it’s really easy to say, you know what? I’m just gonna live my faith over here in my private space. I don’t really need to be in community with people that I disagree with.
But I think that that’s part of the wisdom of being in community, is being forced to encounter people who have different perspectives, whether that’s a different political perspective, a slightly different religious angle… You learn something, but you, most importantly, learn how to be in this world. We’re not meant to be in this world as people living on our own, and so for those of us who, perhaps, like I do, are part of tradition that mandates time in community, I think for me, that’s part of God’s wisdom is forcing me to be in encounter, constant encounter with folks.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
As long as you brought that up, can you tell us, what are some spiritual pieces of wisdom that you rely on in times like this?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
One thing I’ve been reflecting on a lot is this notion of spirituality like body heat, to sort of pick up on that last idea of being in community. I mean, you can produce a lot on your own, but you keep it a lot better when you huddle with some friends, and I think being in that huddle right now is the part that can be really difficult. But when we continue to show up in community spaces as, say, progressive people of faith, I think we make more room for other people who share ideas and maybe aren’t as public with them to be in that space with us, and we make more room for more people to experience that spirituality, to experience that body heat.
And you know, that’s why I say I think in the Islamic tradition, there are a lot of rituals that are required to be in community, and that can be really tough on some occasions. And I think that is part of the wisdom there. I’m really looking forward to Ramadan as a time when I know it will push me to be in community with folks from different walks of life, and how that will support me and challenge me and, most importantly for me, at the end of the day, help me keep my body heat. Help me keep my spirituality alive and well.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I love that. I really love that, and the recognition of body heat and that, especially in these cold months, that it can also be a matter of life and death. Like if being around people can really be the way you stay warm during the winter.
And this is such a tangent. But my kids love this movie, Wild Robot. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but one of the important things about this is that the animals will not survive the winter if they don’t hibernate together. And they have to overcome all kinds of differences, and they go into a cave and they hibernate together. Even the meat eaters, and they all kind of lay it aside and say, we have to come together in order to survive the incredible winter.
Very beautiful, and only someone who has a ten-year-old and a six-year-old may appreciate what I just said, but that idea is a really deep spiritual idea. And I also love that recognizing these times when, within our own tradition, that build up our own body heat so that, actually, we can serve in a broader, a broader community. So I just thank you so much for that.
I’m curious, looking forward, would you ever go back into government? I mean, this is not your opportunity to ask for a job from the Trump administration, but did you like working in government? Because I’ve always been like, I’m not sure I’d be so good at the structure of it. But did the structure of it kind of appeal to you?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Look, as somebody who went to seminary, I don’t think there are a ton of roles, and appropriately so, for somebody with my specific expertise in government. But no, I did. It was incredibly challenging, but I do continue to feel really proud of the work that I did in government. I think that Secretary Cardona, in particular, and his leadership team had incredible foresight in making sure that the person hired in my role had specific policy experience around how to navigate religious freedom issues, and thought that that was really important to consider.
I worry about what might have happened without people like myself and Katie Joseph and others in roles within government. I hope that I helped, in some ways, to at least make things not as bad as they otherwise might have been; and so, in theory, if the government is still alive and well, and there were a role to emerge again, I would be open to returning. I won’t claim that it was in any way easy work and I feel like I’m still processing and trying to wrap my head around my time and what this moment means for the work that we did over this past administration.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
I want to ask you what happened to the policy statements around inclusion, around antisemitism, around policies for religious freedom and for inclusion of LGBT… Where are those? You said they were taken down, but they must exist somewhere – and just hearing you, I want to recognize the work that you did, and if they don’t exist somewhere, they should exist somewhere. And people should be able to know what was offered and see that as an alternative. Has anybody kind of decided, here’s a little website to say what we did, now that they’ve been taken down?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
That’s a good idea, though, Paul. Hey, look, that’s what the Wayback Machine is for, you can look at anything that was on a website in the past. So I recommend that.
Look, these were all resources that we pushed out to the general public. No administration is allowed to delete records from the previous administration. So there are always Freedom of Information Act or FOIA requests that folks can file. But, you know, for things as readily available as all the things we had on our website, simply using the internet archives to pull up those resources is pretty simple.
And you know, my hope is that we did our job in spreading the resources that we had developed far and wide. So K-12 educators and higher education leaders and faith communities alike that might be able to benefit from some of those resources already have access to them as well, already, in their inboxes.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Well, I’m going to conspire with you to see if maybe we need to put these someplace where they can be really available and held up as maybe alternatives to what is coming down the pike. But anyway, that’s just my little sneaky idea. I don’t know if it’s a good one.
I do want to end this great conversation, for which I am very grateful, with asking you this question right now, like just thinking about our listeners, who are maybe not professional. Some of them are professional interfaith people and some of them are clergy and others are people doing good things in their community. What would you suggest is the one thing that everyone should consider just making a part of their life? It can be an activity, it can be any kind of any suggestion for ways of dealing with this moment. Everybody wants to know, like, what can I do? How would you answer that question with just one thing?
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Well, since I’m on this show with you, I’ll say join Interfaith Alliance! But you know, I think in addition to that, one of the things I learned from my time in the administration is that it’s incredibly important to focus on what is within your ability to have an impact on.
It is not going to be everything; and you, I think, gave some words of wisdom to this effect on one of your recent episodes, Paul: you know, pick the thing that you are going to be able to impact, whether it’s as a clergy person, whether it’s as someone who is active in your PTA, wherever your ability is to make a difference.
Focus on that, because if you try to take on everything, you will just be way too overwhelmed. It is so easy, in this moment, to be overwhelmed by the unending cruelty coming from this administration. And we’re going to need to be really discerning about how we take action and how we protect our hearts amidst all of this.
PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:
Maggie Siddiqi is a veteran interfaith leader and organizer who has just joined Interfaith Alliance as a senior fellow.
Maggie, I am so excited to be working with you at this critical time. Thank you for joining us today on the State of Belief.
MAGGIE SIDDIQI:
Thank you so much for having me.
