BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer Speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio on Thursday was famous Arab American businessman, Tom Barrack. The grandson of Lebanese immigrants, Barrack worked hard to become a real estate investor and eventually the founder, chairman, and CEO of Colony Capital. During his speech, Barrack pledged to only speak positively about … Continued
Aaron Sankin
The Daily Dot
A few block city blocks from where the Republican Party was gathering to officially nominate Donald Trump for president of the United States, Maysoon Zayid perched on a stool, brushed her long, wavy hair back over her shoulder, cracked a smile, and bragged about being Trump’s worst nightmare.
Zayid is a Palestinian American and has cerebral palsy. She’s disabled (like the New York Times reporter Trump publicly mocked), she’s a Muslim (whose parents Trump suggested shouldn’t have been let into the country in the first place), and she’s a woman (who, like Fox News reporter Megyn Kelly, has blood “coming out of her wherever”).
Good, Fast and Easy Chicken Paillard and Greek Salad!
Sponsored by: Connatix – July 21
Learn how to make a super healthy and fast chicken paillard with Greek salad that will make your mouth water.
Zayid is a comedian—and a wickedly funny one at that. On the second night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Zayid deftly found the humor in the dark situations American Muslims face on a daily basis. “When I go through airport security, the TSA doesn’t just see an Arab, they see a shaking Arab,” she cracked. “I’m on the next plane to Guantánamo Bay, which is great because I heard there are a lot of hot Arab men there.”
“I’ve been married for six years and my mother-in-law had never been to the U.S. to see her son,” the New Jersey native says of her husband, whom she met in Gaza. “She can’t get into the country because she’s on the terrorist watch list.”
She waits a beat.
“That’s because I put her on there.”
With fellow Muslim standup comic Dean Obeidallah, the host of a politically minded talk show on SiriusXM radio, Zayid came to Cleveland to find the laughter in Trump riding a wave of Islamophobia to the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
The event, held in Cleveland’s historic Hanna Theatre, was organized by the Arab American Institute, a bipartisan group founded in the mid-1980s to encourage Arab Americans of all religious faiths to get more involved in the political process. The group typically holds public policy forums in conjunction with the quadrennial major party conventions. However, as the organization’s co-founder and president Dr. James Zogby said in his introductory remarks, it didn’t seem like the political climate surrounding the 2016 Republican convention was particularly conducive to that sort of measured discussion. Instead, the group threw an unconventional event for an unconventional election cycle.
“This has been a difficult year, a difficult decade,” Zogby sighed. “Sometimes all you can do is laugh.”
In an interview with the Daily Dot after her set, Zayid insisted she wanted to perform as close as possible to the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention is being held, because she felt that, as someone simultaneously Muslim and American, her voice, her very existence, was being silenced by a political culture that brands her as a dangerous other.
“I’m so frustrated that this is real. I’m flabbergasted that this is real. I’m watching this convention and don’t understand how so many Americans are supporting hate, supporting a scary clown,” she said, adding 2016 is the first time in her career she’s feared for her physical safety for the depressingly revolutionary act of simply being a Muslim on stage.
Growing up in a predominantly Italian American neighborhood, Zayid says she was never bullied for being Muslim. “You’re from where Jesus was from,” her friends would say. Fifteen years after 9/11, they lean over to her and ask in a hushed tone, “Is Obama really a Muslim?”
She pointed to how former Speaker of the House and erstwhile vice presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich suggested, in the wake of the recent terrorist attack in Nice, France, that Muslims in the United States should be given a test to determine if they support Sharia law and deported if they didn’t answer to his liking. “Where would they deport me to?” Zayid asked. “New Jersey?”
The idea that Muslims are the enemy, that they’re not part of the fabric of American society, is spreading. Hate crimes against Muslim Americans have spiked since Trump began running for the Oval Office on policies like banning on Muslims from entering the United States.
The problem, Obeidallah argues, is that the way Muslims and Arabs are talked about in the United States has largely become a partisan issue. “Bigotry shouldn’t have two sides to it,” Obeidallah said, leaning his elbows into a table after his set, the suitcase at his side showing how briefly he plans on staying in town. “There aren’t two sides to antisemitism. There aren’t two sides to racism, at least in general. There’s not two sides to homophobia, at least in general. Clearly, there are two sides to Muslims or Arabs even being in this country. This has been the rhetoric from the right since way before Trump. Trump is just the biggest fish.”
The Democratic-Republican divide over Muslims wasn’t always so. Prior to 9/11, and the Republican-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the GOP was the natural home for American Muslims. In 2000, George W. Bush won an overwhelming majority of Muslims—a generally socially conservative demographic with a high incidence of small business ownership. Today, the ranks of Muslim Republicans have thinned considerably. In recent election cycles, the GOP share of the Muslim vote was in the single digits.
When Obeidallah asked if anyone in the audience was planning on voting for Trump, the response was a spattering of halfhearted applause, instantly crushed by the deafening silence from the rest of the room.
“I think there were more Republicans here than [the ones who] applauded, to be honest. I talked to some afterwards who [said they] didn’t clap,” Obeidallah explained after the show. “If you’re a Republican Muslim right now, it’s very challenging… and they know that. Internally in their party and externally in their community. If you’re a Muslim Republican now and you tell me you’re a Muslim Republican, I’ll ask if you’re supporting Trump. Almost everyone I know says ‘no,’ but there are one or two that are. If they are supporting Trump, people are stunned.”
Obeidallah was disappointed there weren’t more Republicans in the audience, especially at an event only a short walk from the single largest gathering of conservatives in the country, but he chalked it up to the polarization fracturing the country writ large. “You can reach who you can reach,” he shrugged. “You can only do as much as you can, unless you make it a hostage situation and you kidnap a Republican and force them to listen to your jokes. But then you’re just perpetuating a negative stereotype.”
Even so, there are are people outside of the Muslim community who are speaking up. Obeidallah pointed to a particularly thoughtful and compassionate speech delivered by Hillary Clinton after the terrorist attack in a Orlando gay nightclub, but he expressed remorse that it didn’t get more media coverage relative to speech given by Trump, which saw the GOP nominee threatening American Muslims with “big consequences” if they didn’t do more to tip off law enforcement to potential terrorist threats.
One of the main problems, the comics argued, is that there aren’t enough Muslim voices elevated by the media to tell their own stories. “It’s deliberate,” Zayid charged. “It’s because we don’t fit the narrative. When was the last time you saw a Muslim woman on television that doesn’t cover her hair but is a practicing Muslim who speaks Arabic and has read the Quran?”
In the decade after 9/11, Zayid was a frequent guest on political talk shows. Yet, in recent years, those bookings have dried up entirely. “There aren’t diverse voices,” she said. “We don’t know what Muslims look like. We are only fed the story that we’re supposed to be fed and absolutely nothing else.”
Part of the issue with the pervasive stereotyping in popular culture that regularly prevents Arab Americans from telling their own stories is that it paints whole community with the same broad brush. While the Middle East is overwhelmingly Islamic, that’s not the case for Arabs living in the United States. A 2002 survey conducted by Zogby International and the Arab American Institute found that 63 percent of Arab Americans identify as Christians.
The fear being spread about Muslims has regularly led to people outside of the faith being targeted by harassment and, in some cases, physical violence. After a gunman killed six people in a 2012 shooting a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, many in the community speculated it the attack was a result of the shooter confusing Sikhs for Muslims. In that way, hate directed against one group can put the wider population at risk.
And the issue of representation extends to all corners of popular culture. “If you’re doing a show about Muslims, someone is going to be a terrorist,” Obeidallah noted. “You’re not going to have an Arabic family sitcom where no one is a terrorist. If you’re going to have someone’s Arab identity in a film, there’s going to be something involving terrorism, even if they’re not the terrorist. Something in there will touch on it. Our entire existence in entertainment media is tied to terrorism in one way or the other.
“If there was a Muslim family show where no one was a terrorist, you could be sure that right-wing people, ones at this very convention, would be upset about it,” he continued. “They’d say you’re doing this to whitewash terrorism to make us not afraid of Muslims.”
In a sense, this fixation on Muslims being terrorists is a result of American culture being normatively white and Christian. Terrorism is the primary frame through which many white Christians, a significant portion of whom don’t regularly interact with any Muslims on a personal level, relate to the Islamic faith. Pop culture, even when it’s about Muslims, is rarely for Muslims. That’s why Obeidallah and Zayid have had to carve out their own spaces like the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival and Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.
Zayid ended her set, as she always does, with a joke told entirely in Arabic. It was the first joke she ever heard her father tell—the joke he gave her when she first informed him she wanted to be a comedian.
I don’t speak Arabic, so I didn’t understand a word of it, and Zayid didn’t follow it up by translating the joke into English. She didn’t need to. The laughter erupting from the audience when she got to the punchline spoke volumes. That laughter might have caught in the throat of many an audience member, but at a time when the community sees itself as under assault simply for existing, it was the best they could hope for. At least, for now.
Source: www.dailydot.com
Rania Khalek Electronic Intifada The Democratic primary race for president is effectively over following Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton. But the battle over Israel and Palestine within the party is just getting started and will likely spill over into the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next week. Throughout the platform writing process, those appointed … Continued
With all the anti-Arab bashing we see in the news every week, Arab America is determined to expose those who discriminate against our community. We will recognize those who vilify the positive influence and contributions Arabs have made to the fabric of American society. And we will use hummus as our weapon. By naming those … Continued
BY: Fred Shwaery/Contributing Writer The Republicans are in Cleveland and the Democrats will be in Philadelphia next week. There are so many events to join in these conventions so if you’re anywhere near Cleveland or Philadelphia, consider stopping in to watch history unfold before your eyes. There are thousands of delegates at each convention … Continued
BY: Andrew Hansen/Contributing Writer The Coup Late Friday night, shock swept through the world as the Turkish military attempted to seize power from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As media outlets were shut down and people took to the streets, the world watched with anticipation to see how the attempted coup would play out. The conflict … Continued
Skylar Lindsay
The Moderate Voice
JERUSALEM — “So welcome, American, to Palestine,” Bashar says as he taps his hand-rolled cigarette into the ash catcher on an unlit hookah. “What do you know about Palestine?”
In the American public that I know, we hear almost any question about Palestine or Israel as intrusively provocative or overly political. The Clinton Democrats’ platform on the subject is predictable and it demonstrates a paralysis: conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the American public is stuck or non-existent. We “don’t want to get into it.”
The trouble is, we already are: America has been “into it” by supporting Israel economically since the 1950s and militarily since the 1960s. U.S. military aid to Israel is around US$3 billion per year, totaling US$121 billion since World War II (without adjusting for inflation). “Tax dollars at work” arguments aside, unwavering support for Israel is a basic tenet of mainstream U.S. foreign policy talk.
This isn’t news. But when the American public tries to talk about the conflict, we are heavily influenced, if not stopped outright, by having to confront our implicit support for Israel. Given a pre-assigned role in such a long and deep conflict, we stall out: our government appears to have determined who is “right” among Israelis and Palestinians, or at least who it is geopolitically advantageous to support. This starting point inherently pressures American citizens to either stand with their government by default or be absolutely certain about their own conclusion.
As a result, those in the American public who try to “get into it” begin at what can be a very murky level of analysis: we search doggedly for an objective moral conclusion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We look to ethical measurement as a prerequisite to a just peace process: if only we were to wheel in the scales of justice, it would become clear who is “in the right” (other than the current Israeli government).
This scales-of-justice conversation involves a lot of talk about “proportionality”: the question of whether a retaliation for this or that act of violence was proportional and appropriate.
But why do we try to weigh violence against violence? No one suggests that Israelis and Palestinians might find reconciliation by equalizing levels of brutality. Would the two sides repent their respective wrongdoings and bring the walls tumbling down – architecturally and psychologically speaking – a-la-Joshua at Jericho? Would this ethical balancing make international peace efforts more effective? Maybe if we could just measure things out until “right” and “wrong” materialize, Quartet Reports and the French peace initiative would bring resolution.
This emphasis on proportionality does, however, introduce the power of understanding scale and numbers in Israel-Palestine.
Palestinians and Israelis live under our magnifying glass but we still struggle to have a grounded conversation about what actually happens here. The first step out of hand-wringing inertia is to talk. An obvious topic to talk about is the violence one side committed against the other, even if this is a kind of ethical voyeurism. We find this easy because we can use the “crimes” committed by the Palestinians as a frame of reference to evaluate the morality of “crimes” committed by Israelis, and vice-versa.
A less judgmental and potentially more valuable form of comparison, however, would be to take the who, where and what of the conflict and make them concrete and comprehensible.
First, where: Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories take up an area slightly larger than New Jersey (just over 10,700 square miles). The West Bank is a little smaller than Delaware. Gaza is a close in size to Philadelphia but slightly more densely populated (1.8 million Palestinians live there). We know New Jersey. We can picture two Delaware and Philadelphia-sized pieces inside of it. This is a thin strip of land, much of which is desert.
For a flashpoint in the conflict, the Old City of Jerusalem is tiny. It is similar in size to downtown Hamilton, NY, where I went to college – about one square kilometer. It takes just a few minutes to walk from the Western Wall – literally the westernmost wall of the plaza around Al-Aqsa – to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Who: Israel has roughly the same population as New York City (8.5 million people). The number of Arabs in Israel is slightly smaller than the number of African Americans in New York (1.7 million). The population of the West Bank is close to the population of Chicago proper – 2.8 million.
This is a starting place for a conversation in the American public that is currently stalled. And this is a conversation that, amid the election circus, we need to be having. From talking about who and where, let’s move on to the what without appointing ourselves the arbiters of justice. We already know where that leads and we don’t have time. It also might not be our place.
As Bashar, a young Palestinian put it to me, “Nineteen years of this s–t. I am so tired.”
There has to be a way to start a dialogue – not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between American citizens. There has to be, if we hope to help the international community go beyond hand-wringing and finger-shaking. There has to be, if the United States will ever seriously evaluate its relations with Israel.
Source: themoderatevoice.com
Todd Spangler and Kathleen Gray
Detroit Free Press staff
As the Republican National Convention got under way in Cleveland, delegates faced increasing questions Monday about their party’s positions toward Muslims in America and abroad, with a leading Islamic group accusing the GOP of intolerance.
“For too long the Republican Party has been using fear as a political tool to drive a wedge between Islamic Americans and other Americans,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, speaking not far from the hall where the convention got under way Monday.
Awad and others with CAIR — which includes a chapter in southeast Michigan, home to one of the largest Arab-American and Muslim communities in the country — called for an end to what they called a “demonizing” of Muslim Americans, saying they want to bring an end to violence and radicalism based on a twisted interpretation of their religion as much as any other Americans.
Calling Islamophobia “a moral sickness and something we must reject together,” Awad called for “equal and fair treatment” of Muslims everywhere, accusing presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump of emboldening “extreme voices of hatred.”
But even as some leading Republicans — Trump among them — have called for cracking down on immigration from Muslim countries and suggested Islamic communities in the U.S. aren’t doing enough to help law enforcement, other GOP regulars have called for less incendiary positions.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, for instance, denounced Trump’s comments about immigrants, while U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, condemned Trump’s original proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. saying it didn’t “follow the pattern of who America really is and what we stand for.”
And when the Rev. Dr. Lou Prues of the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church in Detroit delivered the opening prayer at Monday’s breakfast meeting of the state’s Republican delegation in Cleveland, he struck a similar note, asking God to “enlarge our sympathies” toward others and “give us a deeper understanding of those people who dislike us.”
“I love these people,” Prues, a volunteer with the delegation, said after the prayer, referring to other Republicans. “But when I’m asked to pray I’m going to pray universally, globally. I’m not going to get caught up praying against this or that. I’m going to pray for a better understanding of all people.”
“I’m convinced radical anything is a danger,” he added.
Many in the party, meanwhile, have called for taking a hard line with Muslim immigrants and, in some cases, with those already in the U.S. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, following last week’s truck attack in Nice, France, suggested Muslims should be tested and deported if they believe in Sharia law — a legal process based on Islam. He later said his remarks had been exaggerated.
The Tennessean reported Monday that an outspoken critic of Islam from the Netherlands — Geert Wilders, founder of the right-wing Party for Freedom — was invited to the Republican National Convention by a Trump delegate, state Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Mufreesboro. Wilders, who has called Islam the “ideology of a retarded culture,” shook hands and took photos with many attendees at a Tennessee delegation meeting on Monday, including U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In the Michigan delegation, soon-to-be-replaced national committeeman Dave Agema — no stranger to controversial comments — posted on Facebook last week his sentiments that, “When I hear the news commentators saying they don’t know the motive of the killer in France, I know they are completely ignorant of Islam.” He then says, in the same post, that laws are needed to ensure Sharia law doesn’t get a foothold in Michigan because of the state’s large Muslim community.
CAIR condemned the attack in France, just, as Awad said, “we have condemned previous ISIS or ISIS-inspired atrocities and the deviant ideology that produces such senseless and cowardly violence.” But many delegates, including some in Michigan, trust that Trump and his supporters know what they are doing.
“I totally have faith he is going to work with his advisers and make the right decision. I support everything he is saying,” said Diane Schindlbeck, a Trump delegate from Spring Lake. “We just have to have good policies in place on who is allowed into our country … We need a policy in place and not just let anyone here.”
State Sen. Joe Hune, R-Hamburg Township, a Trump delegate and member of the convention Platform Committee, said: “If you look at Donald Trump’s policy in terms of building the wall (to stop illegal immigration from Mexico) and making certain when you’re coming in the country and you’re not a citizen, there will be additional securities and safeguards, I don’t know how you can argue against that.”
Others weren’t as comfortable with Trump’s position, but said it’s little more than campaign rhetoric.
“I haven’t heard he wants a ban on Muslims; he wants to temporarily restrict things and I think that’s still a policy that I’m not comfortable with,” said state Rep. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, a Trump delegate. “He can target certain areas of the world, but it shouldn’t be based on ethnicity or religion.”
“I want to believe that what he is talking about is making sure we’re a lot more cautious about the process, not that we’re restricting anybody based on their religion or ethnicity,” he continued. “He speaks in very broad generalities and ultimately his policy has to get through Congress and meet Supreme Court muster. And a lot of these ideas, if you just take them as exactly the way he says, they won’t get through either of those processes. So it doesn’t really worry me that much because all of those other safeguards and checks and balances are in place.”
Source: www.freep.com
BY: Enas Fares Ghannem, We Are Not Numbers/Contributing writer “We regret to inform you that your application was not accepted.” —The Jordanian Representative Office This message has been received by almost every Palestinian from Gaza who has applied for what is called a “non-objection” letter from Jordan since last August. Such a letter is required before … Continued
by James J. Zogby
Arab American Institute
I grew up watching both parties’ conventions. Television networks covered them from beginning to end. Oftentimes, because the outcome was not assured, there was drama and tension. During the past several decades, conventions have lost their excitement. With the nominees known and the platform decided in advance, the events have become something akin to infomercials for the nominees and the party. As a result, television coverage has been limited to a few hours, or less, each night. And viewership has declined. This year, however, might be different, though maybe not in a good way or, at least in the way party leaders might hope for. This is because there are competing dynamics currently driving and dividing American politics and both will be on display over the next two weeks when Republicans and Democrats gather for their quadrennial conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
In the first place, there is the hyper-partisanship that has created a disturbingly toxic political environment. The parties talk past each other and embarrassingly vitriolic rhetoric, once found only on the margins of our politics, has come to define our everyday political discourse. Add to that the fact that Congress is so paralyzed that many White House appointments remain in limbo and reasonable efforts to pass legislation making needed reforms go nowhere.
Not only is there a deep division between the parties, but as we witnessed during this past primary season, Republicans and Democrats are fractured within.
With Donald Trump’s victory assured, traditional conservatives have, as one leader recently observed, “lost control” of their party. For this, they have only themselves to blame. During the past eight years, they fed the beasts of xenophobia and hatred of “all things Obama”. The monster they created has turned and has now devoured them.
While some conservatives held out hope for a “dump Trump” movement at the convention, that effort was defeated when the party’s Rules Committee quashed their designs. In one clear sign of Republican division, for the first time in recent history, none of the living former Republican presidents or presidential nominees (the two George Bushs, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney) will be in attendance. Some disgruntled delegates may follow suit and stay away. Who will be there, at this point, is anybody’s guess. And if Trumps’ opponents do go, it is uncertain how they will react.
It, therefore, remains to be seen how the GOP Convention will unfold. Will it be an orchestrated Donald Trump made for TV variety show? Or will the dissidents still find a way to make their presence felt?
Even without any disruption inside the convention hall, the scene outside promises to be tense as the many component elements of the social movement harnessed by Trump will square off against their equally aroused and passionate opponents. Cleveland is tense. It is a majority African American city that has had its share of controversial incidents of police violence. Add to that demonstrations sponsored by, among others, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, and pro-gun groups (and their opponents) and you have a potentially combustible mix.
The most worrisome news is that because Ohio has an “open carry” policy and provides for licensed individuals to carry concealed weapons–we have an “accident” (or better, a tragedy) waiting to happen. In anticipation of unrest, the city has emptied its jails, moving prisoners to other locations, and there will be a massive deployment of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies throughout the city.
Just a few days after Cleveland, Democrats will gather in Philadelphia to formally nominate Hillary Clinton as their candidate for President. With Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton and his decision not to continue his challenge by introducing minority planks to the party platform, party regulars were relieved—hoping for their own version of a peaceful made for TV convention. But, despite Sanders’ move toward unity, it would be important to note that fissures remain.
The Sanders candidacy was not an ordinary Democratic campaign. It was a social and political movement that brought together liberal Democrats and a number of progressive movement groups and activists with no strong ties to the party. While other candidates lose, endorse, and fade away, neither Sanders nor his followers appear to be interested in following this path.
It is important to note, that these movement activists will be in Philadelphia and will be both inside and outside of the convention. Inside, they will be among Sanders 1,900 delegates and outside, they will be demonstrating in the hundreds of thousands against unfair trade agreements, for universal health care, for racial justice and against police violence, for immigrant rights, and for Palestinian rights. These are the issues that drew activists to Sanders. While he can correctly claim that his campaign had a direct impact on the making the Democratic Party’s platform more progressive, it remains to be seen whether activists will find that sufficient or whether they are willing to follow Sanders in supporting the party’s nominee and believe that she will implement their progressive agenda. And so it is likely that in addition to demonstrations outside the convention, there may be signs of discontent within the hall.
In any case, despite the best efforts of the organizers of both the Cleveland and Philadelphia affairs, the unexpected may occur. Stay tuned.
Source: www.aaiusa.org
by THE KITCHEN SISTERS NPR Lebanese chefs celebrate in Beirut after setting a new Guinness record for what was then the biggest tub of hummus in the world — weighing over 2 tons — in October 2009. The world record effort was part of Lebanon’s bid to claim hummus as its own. They call it “The … Continued
By STEVE CARMODY
Michigan Radio
One result of Donald Trump’s call to ban immigrants from Muslim countries dealing with terrorism is a rise in efforts to get more Michigan Muslims registered to vote
In Cleveland later this morning, a coalition of Muslim groups plan to hold a news conference to “Challenge the GOP’s ‘Politics of Fear’.”
Concern about growing islamophobia has led to a push to get more Muslim Michiganders to the polls in November.
Last month, services at mosques in Michigan were crowded with people observing Ramadan.
On the final Friday of Ramadan, as worshippers gathered at a mosque in Canton, they were greeted by volunteers trying to get them registered to vote.
Rabab Qamar helped organize the voter registration drive. She says speeches by presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump talking about banning Muslim immigrants and other Republicans calling for surveillance of mosques has disturbed Muslims.
“One party has been almost ostracizing Muslims with their rhetoric,” says Qamar, “I think it’s kind of pushed a lot of people from the Muslim community out to vote.”
Traditionally, Arab and Muslim Americans vote in smaller numbers. There’s a few reasons for this, including the fact that many are recent immigrants.
But different groups are trying to change that.
Robert McCaw is the government affairs director for the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR. He says CAIR estimates there’s been a 60% increase in the number of Muslim Americans registered to vote in the United States since 2012.
“Voter registration just didn’t start happening in 2016,” says McCaw. “The community has been putting a lot of resources over the years in increasing our political and civic participation. I think this is just some of the fruits of that labor.”
McCaw says Michigan’s voter rolls have seen the number of Muslim and Arab voters grow to about 55,000.
Polls show Muslim voters are more likely to vote for Democrats.
But Michigan Republican Party State Chairwoman Ronna Romney-McDaniel says the GOP has a message she believes can convince Muslims voters to support Republican candidates.
“Our policies are going to help everyone,” says Romney-McDaniel. “We want people to have jobs. We want Michigan to continue to rise. We don’t to lose the comeback that we’ve just started in this short period of time of Republican leadership since 2010. We want to keep that going.”
Romney-McDaniel, who’s a Trump delegate at this week’s convention in Cleveland, defends the presumptive nominee’s call to block refugees from Islamic countries where terrorism is active.
While the 2016 presidential campaign is spurring many Muslim Michiganders to get involved, there are some Muslim leaders looking beyond the November election.
On a sunny day this Spring in Lansing, dozens of people took part in the sixth annual Muslim Day at the state capitol.
Muzammil Ahmed is the chairperson of the Michigan Muslim Community Council. He organized the event where Michigan Muslims share their concerns with state lawmakers. He says many Republican legislators declined to meet with them.
Ahmed hopes the current political climate will help create an atmosphere where people can have a frank conservation about what it means to be an American.
“We are here not to do it for just the Muslim community,” says Ahmed. “Many people have been feeling maligned and have been feeling isolated because of the environment and rhetoric that’s been out there currently.”
Ironically, Ahmed credits Donald Trump for inspiring many Muslims to register and vote for the first time, if just to vote against him.
Source: michiganradio.org
1,451 Results (Page 81 of 121)
Loading ...