Now, if one in debt has hardship,
then let there be respite, until there is ease for the debtor.
and should you forgive it as charity, it is best for you,
if only you were to know.
—The Quran, 2:280
(WASHINGTON D.C., 8/24/22) – The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the nation’s largest umbrella group for major national, regional, and local Muslim American organizations, applauds President Joseph Biden’s Executive Order forgiving student loans up to $20,000 to help ‘families that need it most’ amid our staggering and shameful $1.6 trillion debt weight that we have collared to the bent necks of America’s young, and the future of this nation.
“This $10-to-$20 thousand loan forgiveness for 8 million individuals – who are disproportionally Black – earning less than $125,000 a year, or families making up to $250,000, is not the $50,000 debt-canceling that the best economic models tell us will do the most good for America’s youth and future, but this is a much-needed and very welcome first step up for us all,” said Oussama Jammal, USCMO secretary general.
The average student debt for white borrowers is $12,000, while Black women bear an often life-long $52,000 iron-collar of debt enslavement, part of the structural racism that our government simply must break.
President Biden correctly said in his White House announcement today that “both of these targeted actions are for families that need it the most, working- and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic.”
Yet Biden must follow up this order of debt-forgiveness – which importantly fulfills one campaign pledge of his – with more robust student debt relief measures for the rest of the 45 million Americans still manacled by what amounts to predatory student loans.
Wealthy Americans and Congress had no trouble at all conjuring up hundreds of billions in loan forgiveness – fraught with fraud – for businesses and corporations who benefited from individual loans for millions.
We cheer President Biden and his administration for this salutary order and urge them to take the next step in student debt relief in all haste.
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