A New Generation of Islamist Political Power
The response in state legislatures to the Hamas Islamic terror attacks of Oct 7 showed how thoroughly Islamists have infiltrated our political system and the threat that they pose.
In Delaware, Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton, the first Muslim elected in Delaware, heckled Vice President Kamala Harris at a Christmas party, demanding that Israel stop attacking Hamas.
After Oct 7, Wilson-Anton posted, “I do not stand with Israel” and warned that, “so long as a government refuses to respect the existence of a people it should expect resistance.”
A new generation of Islamist state legislators like her showed its true colors after Oct 7.
In Ohio, Rep. Munira Abdullahi, newly elected, promoted claims that Israel is “the biggest child-killer in the world”.
In Texas, Rep. Salman Bhojani, the first Muslim elected to the State House, accused Israel of engaging in the “mass killing of Palestinian civilians” during its fight against Hamas and claimed that the Oct 7 Hamas massacres “did not occur in a vacuum”
In Illinois, Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, the State House’s first Muslim ‘Palestinian’ elected official, accused Israel of “genocidal language” and signed a letter after Oct 7 claiming that “inequality” was at the “root cause of the violence”.
Michigan’s State House of Representatives did not condemn the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 after opposition from House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash from Hamtramck, the first all-Muslim governed city in the country, who has accused Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid” and held a hunger strike to oppose Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
In Georgia, Rep. Ruwa Romman, a former communications director for CAIR, and the first Muslim ‘Palestinian’ in the George State House, described the Oct 7 attacks as an “escalation” caused by “settler violence and terror aimed at Palestinian business owners”
Rep. Romman argued that a resolution condemning the Hamas atrocities was creating “division” and claimed that Israel’s campaign was “not self defense” “not about hostages” and “not about Hamas”, but about “causing as much damage as possible.”
In the Georgia State Senate, Sen. Sheikh Rahman and Sen. Nabilah Islam, two newly elected members, abstained from a resolution condemning the Hamas atrocities. Sen. Islam had accused Israel of bombing “innocent Palestinians”.
In Minnesota, Sen. Omar Fateh responded to the Oct 7 attacks by accusing Israel of “horrifying acts of violence” while falsely claiming that it was engaged in a “genocidal war”. Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, a newly elected state senator and the first Muslim woman in the state senate, spread false claims that Israel had bombed a hospital and demanded an end to the attacks on Hamas. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images |
Though domestic issues tend to motivate most U.S. voters, the war in the Middle East may be the dominant issue in mind for an increasingly important voting block: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, members of these communities have watched the rising death toll and heard vivid accounts of the horrors befalling Palestinians in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to bombard the enclave with the support of the Biden administration.
For some Arab Americans, a community that overwhelmingly voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential election, that support may have negative consequences on Biden’s attempt to regain the White House in 2024. In fact, numerous Middle Eastern and Muslim American leaders have called for their communities to “abandon Biden” in the upcoming presidential election.
The question, then, is what effect such defections could have on Biden’s chances of winning reelection.
As a whole, the number of Middle Eastern or Muslim Americans is quite small. According to the 2020 census – the first year such data was recorded – 3.5 million Americans reported being of Middle Eastern and North African descent, about 1% of the total U.S. population of nearly 335 million citizens.
But the outcome of the 2024 presidential election may come down to results in a few swing states where Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans are concentrated, such as Michigan, Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
In the 2020 presidential election, for instance, Biden won the state of Michigan by a total of 154,000 votes. The state is home to overlapping groups of more than 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim and 300,000 who claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa.
Working around statistical erasure
As a social scientist, I specialize in statistical analysis and research on how race, ethnicity and religion affect political outcomes in the U.S. I know from firsthand experience that any effort to gauge the attitudes and behaviors of Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans requires a bit of analytic gymnastics.
For starters, since 1977, the U.S. government has categorized those with ancestral ties to the “original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East” as “white,” according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.
That stipulation is found in that agency’s Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting and is used in U.S. census reports.
As a result, members of this community are subsumed within an expansive grouping of “whites” that effectively renders them invisible in nearly all administrative data and public opinion polls. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
Muslim Voter Surge in U.S. Elections: Key to Winning Swing States
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