Portside

The backlash from Arab and Muslim communities in response to the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and now bombing in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, may prove pivotal in the outcome of November’s election. In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Michigan by a mere 154,000 ballots, or 2.5%. Michigan, one of the swing states, is home to 300,000 who claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa, and 200,000 identify as Muslim. That same year, 146,000 Arab Americans voted, and roughly 70% voted Democrat. 

Michigan, home to the “big three” automakers (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler), has long been an obligatory stop in the election campaigns of White House hopefuls.

The economic crises of the 1970s drove many Rust Belt residents to leave, but conflicts in the Middle East drew new waves of Lebanese, Iraqi, Yemeni, and Palestinian immigrants to this part of the country.

The blow could be greater if other Arab American communities also turn their backs on the Democrats in other swing states where they have critical mass, such as Georgia, Virginia, and Minnesota.

“In the 2020 presidential election, Georgia and Pennsylvania voted for Biden by a narrow enough margin that the relatively small Muslim vote in those states could have an impact on the results,” said Professor Saher Selod, the director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research organization focused on American Muslims. Selod said that more than 61,000 Muslims voted in Georgia in 2020, which Biden won by 12,000 votes. He won by 81,000 votes in Pennsylvania, where 125,000 Muslims came out to the polls. 

“In states where elections are coming down to tens of thousands of votes, it may be time to pay closer attention to the Muslim vote,” Selod said.

Protest coalitions led by Muslim Americans, such as the Uncommitted National Movement, have formed to pressure Biden and Kamala Harris to achieve a ceasefire and impose an arms embargo on Israel.

“We are telling people that if you don’t vote, you are not using your voice. And so our message is clear, don’t vote for the Democrats. And so people will say, who should I vote for? And we’re telling them, you don’t have to vote for one of the two major parties,” said Hudhayfah Ahmad, a spokesperson for the Abandon Biden campaign, which has now rebranded to Abandon Harris after the vice president became the new Democratic nominee and vowed not to shift from Biden’s Israel policy.

Go out and vote

Electoral abstention is a key factor that can define the election; even members of the Arab community who do not vote for Trump may leave the ballot blank in November 2024. According to Pew Research, Democratic voter abstention facilitated Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton by just over 10,000 votes in 2016. 

Muslim American civic organizations have been working to raise awareness about the importance of voting, and succeeded in mobilizing voters in the 2020 elections. Emgage, for example, managed to turn out 1 million voters in the 2020 elections, according to its website. 

“I think that the community is still interested in expressing their concerns, especially related to the crisis that’s happening in Gaza. So they are interested in voting,” said Hira Khan, the executive director of the Emgage Michigan Chapter. “How they vote is really to be seen because in the presidential primary, they used the Uncommitted Movement as an outlet to indicate that they are engaged, they are caring about these concerns, and they want to vote, but they do not support any particular candidate.” 

For a portion of the Muslim community, Harris’ candidacy has a special symbolic significance, not only because she would be the country’s first female president, but because she is a Black American with South Asian roots. For example, Black Muslim Leadership Council came out in support of Harris once she became the candidate. 

Harris had a brief rapprochement with the Uncommited movement, and in her speech she incorporated the call for a “ceasefire” but had her first bump during a campaign event in Michigan when protesters heckled her by chanting “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide.” When they continued to chant, she said, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

Another critical moment in the relations between Kamala and the Uncommitted Movement came when the DNC did not allow a Palestinian American speaker on the main stage.

“We are just asking her to follow U.S. law, stop selling weapons to Israel, and she’s not even doing that. Which leads me to believe I don’t think she cares to gain this vote. I think she feels she can win without this vote, and it’s going to be a matter of who is right, her or us,” said Ahmad of Abandon Harris.

The Uncommitted National Movement decided it will not endorse Kamala Harris for president because she did not respond to the movement’s requests for Harris to meet with Palestinian families in Michigan and discuss a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza on Sept. 15.

“Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her,” organizers of the Uncommitted National Movement said in a statement on Sept. 19.

A difficult scenario

Arab Americans have a difficult choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who declared that if elected to a second term in the White House, he will ban anyone who does not believe in Israel’s right to exist from entering the U.S. and revoke the visas of foreign students who are “antisemitic.”

“Since Oct. 7, I think the community has experienced a lot of pain. It’s been very traumatic for a lot of people. There are members of our community that have lost like 80, 100 members of their family,” said Khan of Emgage. 

According to the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll (UMDCIP), favorable views of Muslims dropped to 67% in 2024 from 78% in 2022, returning to 2016 levels, and favorable attitudes toward Islam dropped to 48% from 52%. Favorable views of Muslims dropped among both Democrats and Republicans, but the drop was starker among Republicans.

Trump’s return to the White House could make the situation of Arab and Muslim communities worse, and favor a climate of symbolic and real violence against these communities. A growth of Islamophobia and attacks have increased in recent times. 

“There has been a dramatic spike in cases of discrimination against Muslims since Oct. 7, and Palestinians. So right now, in the immediate aftermath, everybody was like: Is this Islamophobia? And some of it is, but then also some of it is specifically targeting Palestinians,” Selod said.

As Harris refuses to take a tougher stance against Israel, Arabs and Muslims for whom Gaza is the number one priority are becoming increasingly aware of the weight of their communities in this election.

“The Muslims are going to swing the election one way or another,” Khan said.

[María Constanza Costa: Political Scientist, University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina. Ms. in Journalism, University of San Andrés (Argentina). Associated Professor of the Seminar "Islamism, nationalism and popular mobilization in the Middle East" and "Migration, human rights and governance" at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the UBA. And she is a columnist for the International news section of Panama Magazine in Argentina.]

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