周六晚上，一段视频迅速走红，民主党参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德在密歇根州卡罗镇的一次市政厅会议上，面对一名自称“汤米”的观众关于其穆斯林信仰的偏见提问，以美国政府运作的课程作出回应。
In a clip that quickly went viral Saturday night, Democratic US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed countered a bigoted question about his Muslim faith at a Michigan town hall with a lesson in American government. The five-minute conversation took place in Caro, Michigan, where a man who identified himself as “Tommy” asked from the audience: “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”
这段五分钟的对话发生在密歇根州卡罗镇。汤米从观众席提问：“你会否否认穆斯林兄弟会？”埃尔-赛义德先回答：“当然。是的，绝对。”随后他反问汤米：“你在暗示什么？你认为我不会吗？”埃尔-赛义德后来说：“我想保护你按照自己的意愿信仰宗教的权利。”他接着说：“看来你不想保护我按照自己的意愿信仰宗教的权利。”
After responding, “Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” El-Sayed then pivoted to questioning the man in response. “What are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?”“I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose,” El-Sayed later said. “It seems like you don’t want to protect my right to practice as I choose.”
汤米自称是基督徒，只是一遍又一遍地重复他最初的问题。埃尔-赛义德将汤米暗含的“双重忠诚”指责与约翰·F·肯尼迪在成为第一位天主教总统的道路上面临的情况进行了比较。
When Tommy, who identified himself as Christian, simply repeated his initial question multiple times, the Michigan candidate compared the man’s implicit “dual loyalty” accusation to what John F. Kennedy faced en route to becoming the first Catholic president.
埃尔-赛义德因其信仰长期遭到右翼人士的攻击。上周，特朗普总统故意将埃尔-赛义德误称为“穆罕默德”，并称他为“圣战者”。他的对手们还用带有偏见的言论攻击他的家人，包括他的妻子萨拉·朱卡库和同父异母的姐姐伊曼·阿卜杜勒哈迪。
El-Sayed has been regularly targeted by the right over his faith. Last week, President Donald Trump intentionally misnamed El-Sayed as “Mohammed” and called him a “jihadist.”His opponents have also attacked his family, including his wife, Sarah Jukaku, and half-sister Eman Abdelhadi, with bigoted rhetoric.
当埃尔-赛义德要求汤米“否认”任何试图将宗教教义纳入美国法律的行为时，汤米拒绝了。埃尔-赛义德说：“所以我认为现在需要理解宪法的是你。”随后，汤米情绪低落地离开了市政厅。
When El-Sayed asked his interlocutor to “disavow” any attempt to read religious doctrine into US law, Tommy refused. “So I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution now,” the nominee said. Tommy then sullenly left the town hall.
该交流在社交媒体上迅速吸引了大量观众，有人质疑汤米的“鸟狗”行为的真实性。周日，马丽莎·卡巴斯报道称，汤米实际上是托马斯·蒂佩尔（Thomas Teepell），根据Legistorm的信息，他在2月之前一直担任乔什·霍利（Josh Hawley，共和党-密苏里州）参议员的运营总监。他的父亲是蒂米·蒂佩尔（Timmy Teepall），一名共和党策划人，曾在2004年至2011年间为美国众议员、前路易斯安那州州长博比·金达尔（Bobby Jindall）工作，后来又帮助霍利成为美国参议员。
The exchange quickly found a huge audience on social media, with some questioning the authenticity of Tommy’s bird-dogging. And on Sunday, Marisa Kabas reported at that Tommy is Thomas Teepell, who, according to Legistorm, served as operations director for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) until February. His father is Timmy Teepall, a Republican strategist who worked for US congressman and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindall from 2004 to 2011 and later helped Hawley become a US senator.
据报道，这位父亲也是基督教民族主义者肖恩·费赫特（Sean Feucht）的坚定盟友，后者因在新冠疫情初期反对封锁而走红。在试图制造一个“得逞”时刻时，蒂佩尔似乎反而自己被得逞了。
The father is also reportedly strong allies with Sean Feucht, a Christian Nationalist who gained popularity opposing lockdowns during the initial years of the Covid-19 pandemic. In trying to manufacture a gotcha moment, Teepell seems to have gotten got instead.
与此同时，埃尔-赛德只是众多被迫回应此类偏见语言的政客和公众人物之一。就此话题，索拉娅·纳迪亚·麦克唐纳德（Soraya Nadia McDonald）在周六写道，埃尔-赛德的论点也有效地反驳了右翼常用的恶意提问方式：如果埃尔-赛德说该问题是伊斯兰恐惧症的，他本来就是准确的。但右翼媒体在将偏见的识别和命名视为一种本身不公正的受害化过程中取得了非凡的成功，在这种框架下，仅仅将某人或某事称为种族主义者、性别歧视者、同性恋恐惧者、伊斯兰恐惧症者等，反而比实际的种族主义、性别歧视、同性恋恐惧或伊斯兰恐惧行为本身成为一个更大、更令人反感的罪行。
Meanwhile, El-Sayed is just one of too many politicians and public figures who are forced to counter such bigoted language. On the subject, Soraya Nadia McDonald wrote on Saturday that El-Sayed’s argument also effectively counters how the right often presents these bad-faith questions: Dr. El-Sayed would have been accurate if he’d said the question was Islamophobic. But right wing media has found extraordinary success in treating the identification and naming of bigotry as a form of unjust victimization unto itself, in which merely something or someone as racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc, becomes a bigger and more objectionable offense than the racist, sexist, homophobic or Islamophobic thing.
当这种情况发生时，通常伴随着将识别仇恨言论的行为重新包装为“辱骂”。埃尔-赛德通过让汤米向观众展示他自己的屁股，而不是让观众看到汤米在展示他的屁股，从而巧妙地规避了这一切。
When this happens, it’s usually accompanied by rebranding the act of identifying hateful speech as “name-calling.”Dr. El-Sayed neatly sidesteps all of that by allowing Tommy to the audience his own ass rather than the audience that Tommy is showing his ass.