But Hussain of Bloomingdale, New Jersey will not be deterred by the hate. She said Muslims are just as affected by the issues that plague this country as any other American. 

“We live in this country where the economy affects us, big decisions made by our government  affect us, just like it would affect any other American person or family,” Hussain said.

With the elections looming, Muslim and Arab American voters across the United States are just as caught up in the stress and drama of the 2020 Presidential Election.

Hussain, like most Americans, is worried about COVID-19.

“There is misinformation on the national level that’s definitely making all our communities less safe, especially communities of color,”said  Hussain.

Hussain, is part of the 71% of  the Muslim American community that back Biden according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The poll showed only 18% percent of Muslim voters support Trump.

Despite the support, Hussain holds some reservations about the Democratic Party. 

“If the Republican Party is completely fine with being extreme in the other direction, the Democratic Party should be comfortable being bold in their efforts to improve and progress the United States,” she  said,

Pollsters say back in the 1990s, Muslim voters were split almost evenly in their support for Republicans and Democrats. But that gap began to widen post 9/11, when the Republican Party was perceived as more hostile to Islam.

And Trump’s presidency began with a Muslim ban.

Executive Order 13769 banned travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. 

Trump again went after, the Muslim and Arab community  just a few days ago when he tweeted that his administration has suspended, “the entry of refugees from terror-compromised nations like Syria, Somalia and Yemen.”

My Administration has suspended the entry of refugees from terror-compromised nations such as Syria, Somalia and Yemen. Biden’s plan surges refugees 700% into Minnesota, Michigan & Pennsylvania—burdening schools & hospitals while opening the floodgates to Radical Islamic Terror.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2020

“I know many Muslims in the community don’t agree that it is a Muslim ban and they call it a refugee ban, but we know that the countries that are on the list are Muslim majority countries,” Basma Alawee, a former refugge and first time voter said.

She hopes that Muslims and Arabs see how much they have in common with other targeted communities. 

 “I think it’s important for our Muslim and Arab Americans to understand that we are a part of a bigger community and we need to show up and stand in solidarity with others, including the Black community, so they can be there for us when we need them,” Alawee said.

Even though some Muslim Americans may not be thrilled by the candidates they need to choose between, they are serious about change, said Nihad Awad, the National Executive Director at CAIR.

“American Muslims want to get rid of policies and attitudes that harm them and they believe in the alternative,” Awad said. “The alternative is just to be normal. We live in  abnormal times and they want it to end.” 

In Greenville, South Carolina, Robyn Sadoon, an Irish and French Muslim American voter ,is disturbed by how the United States is viewed by the world under this administration. She said their policies have lost a lot of credibility especially when it comes to Syria, Israel-Palestine, NATO and the refugee crisis.

“I don’t think that any of us would have ever imagined that the president of this nation would be laughed at on the world stage by other world leaders,” Sadoon said. “ Much less be given such a negative and critical welcome as we have seen with massive protests against the arrival of this President in so many of the countries that he visited pre-covid.” 

A Palestinian Muslim American of Newark, New Jersey, Wajeeh Abushawish, took a different turn on the presidential election. He said he will be voting for Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins because his overall point is less money on wars and more money put into American lives. 

“I am a believer in voting for the person whose ideals match yours the most,” Abushawish said. “He is not afraid to support Palestine either, which is taboo for some reason in the United States.” 

Arab Americans share similar concerns.

“Arab Americans have problems with Biden,” Susan Muaddi Darraj, an Arab American novelist from Maryland said. “But our energy right now needs to go in making sure that Trump doesn’t get reelected. My hope is that after the election, we can return to a respect for facts and data. I also hope we find a way to heal the different communities that have been pitted against each other under this administration.”

According to a poll by the Arab American Institute, 59% of Arab voters say they are casting their ballots for Biden compared to 35% voting to reelect Trump.

Biden wasn’t Alana Bannourah’s, a Palestinian Christian American of California, first choice but she said she will be casting her vote for him since the Democratic Party’s values align with hers. 

“I am a registered Democrat and I am definitely voting for Biden, besides the fact that I abhor Trump,” Bannourah said. “I feel like the Democratic Party’s values that match mine are the economy, healthcare, the environment lately and especially  immigration.”

Machhadie Assi putting her ballot into the ballot box in Michigan on October 30, 2020. Photo courtesy of Machhadie Assi

If there is one major issue on the minds of all American voters entering November 3, it is post-election violence. Machhadie Assi, a  Lebanese Muslim American and a Victim Advocate for Michigan’s Attorney General Office, is frightened at the prospect of how Biden and Trump voters will react because people are emotional going into this election.  

“I am actually more concerned about the reaction of people if Biden wins than if Trump wins” Assi said. “Our  country has gone through a lot of hate and it’s in a sensitive stage right now. The result of the election will either escalate the division or not and I worry it will.” 

But Assi is trying to remain  hopeful of what is to come in the next four years.

“I hope we can gain back the respect the world has had for the United States of America under the new administration,” said Assi.

The post Muslim and Arab Americans are ready for Election Day appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Republican and Democratic candidates for state legislature wait to make their case to Brooklyn’s Arab-American voters. Photo courtesy of the Arab American Association

Police surveillance of religious institutions, immigration policies and protests against construction of a mosque—not the typical issues for a candidate forum in this election year, but the ones on the minds of New York’s growing Arab-American community.

For two hours, candidates for state office faced those questions, along with questions on same-sex marriage, education and tax policy, at a recent meeting in a public school in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood. Conversation in Arabic regularly intermingles with English on the streets of this community, one of the country’s largest Arab neighborhoods.

The Arab American Institute estimates the Arab-American population has grown to 3.6 million nationwide, with 450,000 in New York State. Only California has more. The New York metropolitan area has the third largest urban concentration, after Los Angeles and Detroit.

As the voting power of this community grows, candidates try to adjust. Hosted by the Arab American Association of New York, the Bay Ridge forum heard candidates try to win the audience’s favor, even by setting aside their previous statements.

Republican state legislator Marty Golden did not mention his past support for a New York Police Department program to monitor mosques as part of an anti-terrorism campaign.

“Anybody that would spy on any religious institution is absolutely wrong. I do not stand with anybody who would do that,” he told the audience. “And I don’t believe that this police commissioner (Raymond Kelly) would do that but, if he has, he should apologize – but it hasn’t been proven that he has.”

Golden’s opponent in the November election, Democrat Andrew Gounardes, quickly told the forum that Golden initially supported the police department’s mosque surveillance program. When the program was first exposed by Associated Press news reports, Golden and several other state legislators signed a letter to Kelly praising the program.

Democrat Andrew Gounardes criticized his opponent Martin Golden’s past support for NYPD’s controversial surveillance of mosques. Photo Courtesy of the Arab American Association

“We, elected officials of New York City and State, write to you today to applaud you and the NYPD for using all means at your disposal to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11 from occurring,” the letter read in part.

Despite such questions about mosque surveillance and the Republican position on immigration policies, the idea of Brooklyn as a melting pot continues to dominate political rhetoric here. Alec Brook-Krasny, a Democratic legislator who was born in the Soviet Union in 1958 and immigrated to the United States in 1989, reminded the audience that “the issues that we’re worried about are the same.”

Chris McCreight, manager of Gounardes’ campaign to unseat Golden, also emphasized the community’s similarity to other working-class voters in Brooklyn. “Just like everyone else, they want the minimum wage increased,” he said in an interview.

McCreight denied that Brooklyn’s Arab-American population had a particular partisan lean. He nevertheless accused the Republican incumbent of shifting the boundaries of his district to replace some working-class Arab-American voters in Bay Ridge with a more affluent, mostly Jewish community in nearby Manhattan Beach. The Gounardes campaign has repeatedly leveled this charge against Golden since the proposed revisions to the district maps were made public earlier this year.

Calls to Golden’s office seeking comment were not returned. In February, Golden’s campaign stated that, while he was pleased with the new district map, he denied any role in drawing it.

“Senator Golden was not involved in the creation of these districts, but is pleased that the proposed 22nd Senate District contains about 95 percent of his current district, while picking up some new neighborhoods,” Golden’s office wrote in a statement to Politicker.com at the time. The new map does remove several Bay Ridge city blocks from Golden’s district, while adding a section of Manhattan Beach.

Respondents to a recent Arab American Institute survey of Arab-American voters listed foreign policy as the second most important issue facing the United States, behind jobs and the economy, but questioners at the town hall did not broach foreign policy issues. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. outreach to Arab and Muslim countries, the primary foreign policy concerns of the 400 Arab-American voters who participated in the September poll, went unmentioned.

The only candidate who declined to appear at the event was the neighborhood’s congressman, Republican Mike Grimm. The Arab American Institute, a national political research organization founded by prominent Lebanese-American James Zogby, gave Grimm a negative rating, largely for his support of pro-Israel legislation. Zogby is currently a member of the national executive committee of the Democratic Party.

The Arab American Association of New York, a community group, is striving to defeat Grimm in the Nov. 6 election.

This year, get-out-the-vote efforts by the Arab American Association have registered more than 2,200 new voters in Brooklyn, who could swing close races to Golden and Grimm’s Democratic challengers. Grimm won his seat in Congress by fewer than 5,000 votes in 2010.

The association’s executive director, Linda Sarsour, said during a voter registration event in September, “We believe that our district is going to set an example of what happens when people of color and immigrant communities come out to vote in large numbers in 2012.”

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