American Muslims face a choice: vote Democratic, or vote themselves off the island. That’s how Haroon Moghul, the author of the coming memoir “How to Be a Muslim,” put it to me this month — and how many of my fellow American Muslim voters feel.
As Republicans have embraced an extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim platform, has the Democratic Party emerged as our only viable political home?
“As a Muslim, I’d vote for Jesus, but the Republicans won’t let him in, and the Democrats don’t believe in him,” said Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Barnard College, who concedes that he’s a tad bitter about his political options. Like him, many American Muslims can’t imagine voting for the “Home Alone 2” actor who trumpeted anti-Muslim bigotry all the way to the White House. They also support progressive policies, like affordable health care and a living wage. But privately, they adhere to traditional values, believe in God and think gay marriage is a sin, even though an increasing number support marriage equality.
Can the progressive tent stretch to include them?
Sabir Ibrahim, a Pakistani-American lawyer from the San Francisco Bay Area, is skeptical. Even though he “held his nose and voted for Hillary Clinton,” he perceives a hostility from progressives toward socially conservative sensibilities.
As an example, he cited liberals’ derision earlier this year when a news report noted that Vice President Mike Pence once said that he avoids dining alone with women who aren’t his wife — something some practicing Muslim men do, too. The liberal ridicule, according to Mr. Ibrahim, results from a narrow-minded dogmatism that demands across-the-board acquiescence to a certain set of cultural values.
Nearly every person I talked to warned that Democrats cannot take the Muslim vote for granted. Even though there are only about three million of us, we live in critical battleground states. (In Florida, Muslim voters helped push George W. Bush to victory in 2000.)
Many Muslims believe that any embrace from the Democratic Party today is just another pity invite given by the popular kids to the freaks and geeks so they can continue using us for homework, eating our mothers’ tandoori chicken and wielding us as a club to beat up Republicans.
Muslims, among the most diverse religious community in America, still seem to exist in two bland flavors: the angry progressive or the angry religious fundamentalist. From many Republicans, I am asked, “Why aren’t you condemning extremism?” or “What are you doing to fight the Islamic State?” as if I can magically uncover militants using my extremist spidey sense.
In liberal circles, I am apparently only a safe, useful Muslim until they find out I don’t drink alcohol and I do take my religion seriously. I’ve heard: “Oh, you pray? I thought you were progressive” — a comment that seems to assume I’m against women’s rights, democracy, marriage equality and deodorant just because I fast during Ramadan.
During the 2016 primary, it did seem to me that Democrats were actually slobbering over Muslims, including those who are practicing and traditional. At one event, Bernie Sanders invited a young woman in a hijab to the stage and promised to fight against “all forms of racism.” The Democratic convention featured the Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan.
This embrace of Muslims has continued since the election. Hasan Minhaj recently received a standing ovation at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner after his blistering roast of Mr. Trump. Progressives are rallying behind Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American in Brooklyn who was one of the organizers of the Women’s March.
It might seem like a kumbaya love parade, but I’m not convinced the halal Kool-Aid isn’t still spiked with some fear.
It was just nine years ago that workers for the Obama campaign in Detroit prevented two women in hijabs from sitting behind the candidate, where they might appear in photographs. Two months before the 2008 election, I was invited to a fund-raising event in Silicon Valley attended by Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. I asked him why the Democrats weren’t openly embracing Muslim voters. “Why? The elections are just two months away,” he said.
Even though there’s still an unpleasant edge beneath the Democrats’ courting of Muslim voters, it’s not as if the Republicans will be getting our votes back anytime soon. That leaves Democrats — or neither party.
Dalia Mogahed, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding in Washington, noted that data shows that many Muslims favored neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Trump.
“Some liberals can show up also as extremists,” said Imam Makram El-Amin of Minnesota, citing Bill Maher as an example of a person who fails to see the “layeredness” of American Muslims. As a black Muslim American, Mr. El-Amin says he’s “not going to be defined or forced to make decisions by those who make litmus tests.”
Both progressives and Muslim communities still need to question their own bubbles and orthodoxies.
Some practicing Muslims, like their Republican and progressive counterparts, are unwilling to open their tent, fearing that if they accept everyone, then everything will fall apart. If religious communities accept “progressive” values — or even the existence of gay Muslims, feminist Muslims, people marrying outside their faith — the consequences, they imagine, will be that their sons will abandon the religion, engage in a threesome, and snort cocaine off a bar table on which Muslim women, with lower back tattoos, are dancing in stiletto heels.
On the other side, Fawzia Mirza, a gay storyteller born to Pakistani immigrant parents, said that, in her experience, many progressives “still haven’t met anyone who is queer and Muslim.” For them, she says the worst nightmare is that Muslims will “come in and hijabify their daughters.”
One positive thing emerging from this political moment is that our respective communities are forced to confront issues like racism, sexism and anti-Muslim bigotry that have always existed but have been hidden under toothless slogans promoting progress. Now we have to actually do the hard work to achieve it.