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muslim ban
How Harris Can Win Back Voters Who Opposed Biden Over Gaza
By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy, Vice President Harris can build on this goodwill, win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency.
Jul 29, 2024
In the weeks leading up to President Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race, most of the editorial boards, party activists, and elected officials calling for him to end his reelection campaign focused on only one issue: age.
But there was another reason President Biden needed to drop out: Gaza.
Long before President Biden's debate meltdown sparked panic in the Democratic establishment, his support for the Israeli government's war in Gaza sparked outrage in the Democratic base, where 56 percent of the party's supporters have described the war as a genocide.
At least half a million Democratic voters protested President Biden's support for the Gaza genocide by voting uncommitted or submitting blank ballots during the presidential primaries earlier this year, including over 100,000 people in Michigan, 88,000 in North Carolina and 46,000 in Minnesota.
Over 1 in 5 Democrats or independents in key swing states said they were less likely to vote for President Biden due to the war, according to a YouGov-AJP-Action poll in May. Over a quarter of those voters said that an immediate and lasting ceasefire, full entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and conditions on military aid for Israel’s war were the minimum policy changes needed to secure or solidify their votes for Biden.
Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.
Many Democratic voters were alienated even more by President Biden's failure to call out reports of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobic violence with the same fervor he uses to call out reports of antisemitic rhetoric, as well as his criticism of the diverse, overwhelmingly peaceful student protests on college campuses.
Frustrated voters included Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Black Americans, young people and others who helped carry him to victory in 2020. If those voters ended up supporting third party candidates or boycotting the presidential race altogether in November—as some promised to do if Biden remained on the ticket and did not change course—they could have easily tipped the results in Michigan and other key swing states.
Now that President Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has a chance to turn the page, chart a new course, and win back those voters, including American Muslims.
That's what our coalition of American Muslim political organizations is calling on her to do.
Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.
Many American Muslims are open to supporting Vice President Harris if she distances herself from President Biden's Gaza policy, respectfully engages with all of our community leaders, picks a vice presidential nominee who does not have a history of explicit hostility towards our community like Governor Josh Shapiro, and commits to concrete policy proposals that would stop the genocide, end the broader occupation of the Palestinian people, and establish a just peace.
Taking these steps will set her apart from not only President Biden, but also from President Trump.
Most American Muslims do not want Donald Trump to return to office for perhaps obvious reasons. The former president has made it clear that he plans to round up undocumented immigrants as part of the largest mass deportation in American history, reinstate the Muslim Ban, stack the federal civil service with political loyalists, and pursue a foreign policy just as or even more, immoral than President Biden’s foreign policy.
During the presidential debate, President Trump even said that the Israeli government should be allowed to complete its war on Gaza, ignored the question of whether he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state to achieve peace, and weaponized Palestinian identity as a racist insult.
After President Trump's speech at the RNC, Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks reportedly said that he believes Trump will give the Israeli government a "blank check" to “finish the job quickly” in Gaza.
“If you need to carpet bomb the area, do it," Brooks said.
Vice President Harris now has the opportunity to contrast herself with Trump on this issue in ways President Biden could not. She has already built up some goodwill in the American Muslim community by using a noticeably more humane tone when discussing Palestinian suffering compared to others in the administration.
She just took heat from the far-right Zionist Organization of America, which ridiculously accused her of embracing "Arab Islamist criminality" because she dared to express some understanding of college students protesting the war on Gaza.
This week, Vice President Harris also declined the opportunity to sit behind Benjamin Netanyahu during his controversial address to Congress. After privately meeting with him on Thursday, Harris delivered remarks about Gaza that were far more balanced and humane than anything Joe Biden has said in nine months.
By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy, Vice President Harris can build on this goodwill, win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency. She must not miss this opportunity.
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What Will It Take To Stop Hatred Towards Muslims?
Muslims are loving, peaceful people. Our holy book, the Quran, explicitly states that taking a life is the same as killing all of humanity, and saving a life is the same as saving all of humanity.
Jan 26, 2024
My faith tradition, Islam, has always taught me to speak up for justice, condemn hate, and value our shared humanity. For this reason, I have spent almost my entire career working for causes that advance social justice.
In the post-9/11 era, I chose to work for a Muslim civil rights organization. As a spokesperson for the organization, I became a target of hate groups and received hate emails and threatening messages. During the Trump Administration, I staunchly opposed the Muslim Ban and worked to reunify immigrant families, and faced backlash throughout. And now, as thousands of Muslims get killed overseas, I’m working to dismantle the forces of Muslim hatred here at home, and am once again experiencing opposition.
I’m holding out hope for a better tomorrow. But with every major period of hatred towards Muslims, my hope shakes. Despite decades of advocacy, most policymakers, leaders, and influencers are still fearful to speak in support of Muslims – or worse, they embrace blatant discrimination.
It’s mind-boggling that it is controversial to condemn hate against Muslims. The fact that we can’t even do that—the absolute bare minimum—reveals just how dangerous it is to be a Muslim in America and how far away we are from true acceptance.
While Muslim Americans are being violently attacked nationwide, some people believe that it is not the right time to combat Islamophobia.
Muslims in America face hatred in all aspects of their lives: School, work, banks, airports, houses of worship, interactions with law enforcement, polling locations, social media, and more. Muslims are among the most likely of all minority groups to be subject to hate incidents, according to research conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) between 2016 and 2022. It’s mentally and physically grueling.
Muslim civil rights organizations are also reporting that there has been an exponential increase in hate crimes and bias incidents against Muslims, especially Palestinians, since October 7th. And blood has been shed. A landlord in Illinois who was radicalized by elected leaders and the media killed his 6-year-old Palestinian tenant Wadea Al-Fayoume. Weeks later, three Palestinian students - Tahseen Ali Ahmad, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Hisham Awartani – were shot in Vermont.
I recently drafted a resolution to condemn and combat Islamophobia along with my co-author Sami Shaban, a Palestinian American. I introduced the resolution to the Princeton community, where I have lived for almost two decades. I thought the process would be simple. After all, why would there be backlash to a statement that simply condemns hate against Muslims?
I was taken aback when the resolution faced opposition. A community leader felt that given the events of October 7th, it was not the right time to pass such a resolution without an equivalent for antisemitism. They also felt that there had not been sufficient condemnation of the attacks of October 7th.
It was painful, gut-wrenching opposition. Allies, including an LGBTQ+ community leader, and I explained that Princeton had already passed a resolution to condemn and combat antisemitism some time ago—and that the Islamophobia resolution was actually modeled after it. I also felt the need to state that as a Muslim, I am against all violence and that violence is never a solution, especially to a political problem.
After much negotiation, the community leader eventually supported the resolution. And in December, Princeton Mayor and Council elected leaders—who supported the resolution throughout wholeheartedly—unanimously passed it.
This experience was just a microcosm of what’s happening all over the country. While Muslim Americans are being violently attacked nationwide, some people believe that it is not the right time to combat Islamophobia. And, just as in this situation, many national leaders are seizing the opportunity to pit Jewish and Muslim communities against each other. That’s deeply troubling.
As a Muslim, I am against all violence and that violence is never a solution, especially to a political problem.
Muslim and Jewish communities are natural allies. Muslims love Moses as a prophet of God, and the Torah is one of our holy books. And right now, both of our communities are experiencing unbearable pain and hatred here at home. It is important, in our support of one another's communities, to recognize that while we must acknowledge and combat the hatred against both groups, we must not be conditional in that support.
The event was also a painful reminder that despite my decades-long work to advance justice for all marginalized communities, for some people, I will always be seen as a terrorist sympathizer. While every religion has its share of terrorists – those who claim to commit horrible acts falsely in the name of their religion – I don’t know that any other community has to constantly defend itself. It is exhausting for Muslim Americans to constantly state, “I condemn terrorism,” and to be held responsible for any acts of terrorism committed around the world by terrorists claiming to be Muslims. In fact, to demand and expect such condemnations of us is a perpetuation of Islamophobia and is harmful to the Muslim community because we continue to only be seen through the lens of terrorism. This is very traumatizing for the Muslim American community.
Muslims are loving, peaceful people. Our holy book, the Quran, explicitly states that taking a life is the same as killing all of humanity, and saving a life is the same as saving all of humanity. As we gear up to introduce this resolution nationwide, I hope that our leaders will acknowledge the plight of Muslim people and treat us with the respect and dignity we deserve.
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Three Crimes Trump Should Have Been Indicted for Instead
Some of the actions Trump took while president were much, much worse than storing some old files in his bathroom.
Jun 11, 2023
Although the saga of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, as revealed in the 38-count indictment, is shocking to anyone who has ever been involved in government work, it is also darkly comic and trivial. Trump seems to have held on to the top secret documents the way a collector hangs on to objets d’art once loaned to him—just to have them around and to take them out and show people to impress them from time to time.
There isn’t any evidence that he planned to use the documents to make money or to blackmail someone. He was just a spoiled rich guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who was used to keeping stuff he wanted to keep, and was used to impressing people with his stuff.
In my view some of the actions Trump took while president were much, much worse than storing some old files in his bathroom. The government over-classifies things, and the 1917 Espionage Act, which underpins some of the charges against him, is unconstitutional and should be struck down. Maybe if the Republicans are angered enough by its use against their party’s leader they can be proper libertarians and get rid of the damn thing.
Trump seems to have held on to the top secret documents the way a collector hangs on to objets d’art once loaned to him—just to have them around and to take them out and show people to impress them from time to time.
So here are three things Trump did, which immediately come to mind, that should have been crimes that landed him in jail.
1. Trump initiated a formal policy of family separation of undocumented immigrants to the United States. He didn’t change the law, just the way Homeland Security and other agencies viewed the law. It is not intrinsically illegal for people to enter the U.S. without a visa, if, for instance, they are seeking asylum. You can’t really tell the status of their case until they go before a judge. So up until 2017 they weren’t considered criminals. But Trump encouraged law enforcement to disregard asylum claims and to view them as having broken the law for just having stepped foot in the U.S. If they were criminals they had to be jailed. And children cannot be held in a jail for adults. So the practical outcome of treating the parents as criminals was that their children would be taken from them by child services and placed in juvenile detention or even in foster homes.
The policy had no other rationale but cruelty. Then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, part of Trump’s psychopathocracy, openly boasted about sending a message in this way to immigrant families not to come with their children. There is no, repeat, no evidence that the family separations slowed immigration. The practice did, however, resemble the actions of slavers in the America of the 19th century who separated enslaved families and sold family members down the river. Some of the children taken away were U.S.-born. The government lost track of others. Some children were abused.
Anybody who did a thing like that should go to jail for life.
Anybody who did a thing like that should go to jail for life. But it wasn’t even illegal, and, although 66% of Americans disapproved, 27% thought it was the right thing to do.
2. Muslim Ban. Trump tried three times to come up with regulatory language that would allow him to ban some Muslims from coming to the United States. Discriminating against people on the basis of religion is un-American. Because he finally tied the ban to countries that would not or could not conform to U.S. reporting requirements on would-be immigrants, he finally made it stick. Most of the big Muslim countries, like Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Indonesia were not even affected. He managed to make life more difficult for Yemeni-Americans who could not see their grandparents anymore, or for desperate Syrians trying to flee their civil war. As with family separation, the cruelty was the point.
3. Trump’s deployment of force against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters at LaFayette Square in June 2020 was illegal and unconstitutional. His attempt to order in military forces contravened posse comitatus.
Scott Michelman of the ACLU observed, “The President’s shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked, and frankly criminal attack on protesters because he disagreed with their views shakes the foundation of our nation’s constitutional order. And when the nation’s top law enforcement officer becomes complicit in the tactics of an autocrat, it chills protected speech for all of us.”
Also illegal was his use of federal agents to kidnap protesters in Portland, Oregon, off the streets without due process.
Of course these three lawless actions that harmed large numbers of innocent people are only a drop in the bucket among the innumerable unethical, illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain ugly things Trump did to our country. If he goes to jail for stupidly fooling around with some old Pentagon war plans, that will be ironic, since it is probably the least damaging of his crimes.
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