As a Muslim, how do I tell my child the new president doesn’t like us? | Mehdi Hasan

‘Did she win?” My bleary-eyed nine-year-old had fallen asleep on our couch the previous night, as the polls closed in Florida. When she sat across the breakfast table from me, I had to break the news that, while her own state of Virginia might have (narrowly) opted for Hillary Clinton, most of the other swing states – Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan – went with Donald Trump. “So we won’t have a female president?” she asked, looking disconsolate.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that she, we, minority communities across the board, had bigger problems to worry about. The normalisation of racism, of antisemitism, of misogyny, but, above all else – in terms of the impact on her own life and future – Islamophobia.