What’s the Matter With the Muslim Vote?

For years, Muslims and Islam have been the center of some of the most heated and controversial debates in the Western world – about things as fickle as faith, democracy, and values. “Clash of Civilizations;” 9/11; the Cartoon Controversy; the veil (a symbol of oppression, or a symbol of unshakable faith); Palestine and Israel; Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran… Therefore, one could have expected Muslims to take center stage during the 2008 elections. But what happened?

To find out, I (P) asked Katrin Simon (KS), assistant professor of Islamic studies at the Free University Berlin, a few questions…
P:
Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Jihad… Since 9/11 2001, it seems like Islam has been one of the hottest potatoes out there – politically and religiously. Yet, google “muslim vote 2008 election,” and you get 303,000 hits (July 18, 2008), but hardly any from the mainstream media, dealing with the Muslim vote during this election.

Do Muslims not have a say in U.S. politics, are they not relevant, or do they simply not care?

KS:

American Muslims definitely care! They have to, since they are under scrutiny from various sides: the government and aligned institutions, other faith communities in the U.S., the American public and media in general, or Muslims worldwide. As we have millions of Muslims in the U.S. (around 6 million is the most quoted number) they are also relevant since these persons are possible voters. The question is if they matter as “Muslims,” that is, if they form something like a ‘Muslim voting block,’ where self-identifying Muslims rally around a “Muslim opinion.”

The U.S. Muslim community is the most diverse in the whole world. More than a third are African-Americans (mostly converts), a third have an Arab background, and a quarter a South Asian one. You could only speak about a Muslim voting block if those people gave priority to their Muslim identity instead of national, ethnic, racial, or class considerations. But studies show that there exist huge fissures along these lines, although there seems to be a tendency towards a “Muslim consciousness” since 9/11. Before, immigrant Muslims, who were mainly middle-class, gave priority to their conservative attitudes in moral issues and economy, and came out supporting G.W. Bush strongly in the 2000 election, whereas African American Muslims voted mostly Democrat, like the black community in general. Since 9/11 and the Iraq war, however, immigrant Muslims share with their black Muslim brethren the feeling of marginalization, stigmatization, and alienation from mainstream America and in 2004 shifted to John Kerry.

Nonetheless, ethnic lobby groups still represent more Muslim voters than decidedly Muslim lobby groups. From a strategic point of view, this is definitely more effective, since support from a Muslim group still gains negative press for any politician. The main reason for the invisibility of a Muslim voting block is that American Muslims have failed in establishing effective advocacy groups that add an outspoken ‘Muslim perspective’ to American public debates. Whether there is no will, or simply a lack of ability, to do that is a hotly contested issue even within the American Muslim community.

P:
One of the most persistent, and effectual, scare tactics of the 2008 campaign has been to refer to, and speculate about, Barack Obama’s Muslim ties. One might ask, why this should even be offensive in the first place, in a country like the US, where the 1st Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion? But the Obama campaign has wasted quite a lot of energy and time on denying those claims (e.g., “Know the Facts” from Obama’s homepage stating: “Obama has never been a Muslim, and is a commited Christian”). In fact, according to recent surveys, in the wake of the much-debated The New Yorker cover, 12% still thought Obama is Muslim.

In 2008, how is this still possible? And who has failed more in improving the “Muslim image” in the US – the media, the politicians, or the Muslims themselves?

KS:
When I talk to non-Muslim Americans, I am sometimes told that they cannot vote for a Muslim. The name (Barack Hussein Obama), the stepfather [Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia], and his having attended a Muslim school [in Jakarta, Indonesia] (which is false), seem to be proof enough. Sometimes people add that if Obama was an apostate he would have already been killed by Muslims, so he must still be a Muslim. But fortunately, these voices become increasingly silent.
The point is that being Muslim still seems to contradict the possibility of being a ‘good American citizen,’ as if it were a question of double loyalties. We should not forget that it took a long time before Catholics stopped being accused of being more loyal to the Vatican than to the U.S. [editors note: even JFK battled with this throughout the majority of his 1960 presidential campaign]. So Muslims are definitely not the first groups [charged with such accusations]. But since 9/11, “Islam” as a whole is perceived as the big enemy of America, and voting for a Muslim could mean to vote for the wolf in sheep’s clothing – for the enemy within.

Even a half-educated American public believes to know this much about Islam: that in “Islam” there is no division of religious and state affairs; and they take that as proof that a Muslim president could not possibly distinguish between his own religious identity and political considerations (G.W. Bush, by the way, is the best proof of a president who was bringing his own religious convictions to the office). But unfortunately, the American public, including the media, fail to acknowledge that something like “the Islam” does not exist – that Islam is as diverse as the 1 billion Muslims in the world, and that there is no single, exclusive opinion about how politics and religion should relate to each other. But who failed in improving the Muslim image in the U.S. is difficult to say. I tend to think that this question is so tightly connected with American foreign policy that as long as, especially, the situation in the Middle East is presented as a “clash of civilization” with Islam – instead of as tensions in a region whose inhabitants are predominantly Muslim – this image won’t change.

P:
Recently, Obama has struggled to cater to Jewish voters, going so far as to declaring that “Jerusalem the capital of Israel – and it must remain undivided” (words which Obama later admitted were “poorly chosen”).

On the Muslim side, however, the presidential candidates have not done much catering. For instance, Mrs. Clinton returned $50,000 in political contributions, which she received from the American Muslim Alliance (AMA). This is a woman who ended up loaning her own campaign over $10,000,000 of her own money! What is more, in September 2007, at the 44th annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in Chicago, all of the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls in the race at that time were invited to speak. Not one accepted the invitation!

Are American Muslims really that bad? Is there simply no room for Muslims in American politics?

KS:
A brilliant article in Islamica Magazine dealt with the Muslim community’s “Obama problem”. Its author, Firas Ahmad, wrote about the difficulty of supporting a candidate, while knowing that each support from your side will lessen his chances of winning. Obama would lose much more votes if he is suspected of having too close ties to Islam, than he could gain by directly addressing possible Muslim voters. This is the only reason why a politician would reject a voting block, although he usually will try to get as many voters as possible, especially in such a competitive and open-ended campaign. So the question here relates directly to the public image of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. Furthermore, this point is directly connected to the important Jewish vote: American media reported a lot about disappointed Jewish voters, who think about switching to McCain instead of voting for Obama, now that Hillary is done. This could be dangerous for Obama, since Jews have traditionally been a reliable support of the Democratic vote.

As for the ISNA convention: no politician would risk being seen in a picture, let alone on TV, together with certain participants of the biggest Muslim gatherings in America. Most of them are definitely good and loyal citizens, but a few are nonetheless famous for their critical attitude towards the American political system. The Muslim vote is [simply] not important enough. Also, thanks to Bush, most Muslims will not vote Republican anyway. So Obama has no reason to show up with Muslims in public. Most Muslim I have been talking to understand that this would only bring damage to his campaign, and if there is anything most American Muslims currently want, it is for Obama [to win the election].

P:
On January 4, 2007, Keith Ellison (R, DFL–MN) became the first Muslim to assume office in the US Congress.

On March 13, 2008, André Carson became the United States Representative for Indiana’s 7th congressional district, becoming the second Muslim to hold office in the US Congress.

Ellison was sworn in using Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an from 1764, rather than a Bible – a first-time-ever in the history of the United States. Sure enough, this garnered a lot of controversy in the national media, to which Ellison responded: “It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Quran.”

Are Ellison and Carson an indication of a new breed of American political visionaries?

KS:
Did Ellison and Carson get elected because they were Muslim? I don’t think so. They are both African Americans, and in the black community, there is almost no family without [a Muslim member] – be it “orthodox Islam,” Nation of Islam or anything else. Their religious identity is neither their only point of reference when they make politics, nor, from what I can tell, their prioritized focus. Only the kind of scandal that emerged as soon as the media covered Ellison’s story, his possible connections to the Nation of Islam (which most white Americans perceive as anti-white racist), and his wish to be sworn in on the Qur’an, put Ellison on the spot. He had to make clear, whether his religious convictions threaten his loyalty towards his job as an American politician. I think, he chose the best way by bringing his Muslim identity in a context with American history, with a Founding Father even, and religious tolerance as one of the traditionally most important American values. I am not sure if he thought about that before he got into that trouble – I tend to think that it was a sort of invented narrative, but definitely a helpful and convincing one.

At a talk at NYU, Ellison stressed his eagerness to bring America back to the ideals on which it was founded. He explained that he became a better Muslim during his election campaign. When “Media&Co.” harrassed him, he was forced to study Islam more extensively, he told the audience, and he realized then, during these hardships, how far this country was from the values it had once promised to its citizens.

P:
In New York, you were conducting fieldwork by attending Salaatul Jum’ah (Friday prayer) at the Masjid at-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. What were the things being addressed there? Also, the imams are (in)famous, amongst other things, for their political influence on the Muslim community. How would you describe their role during this elections?

KS:
Almost each khutba (sermon) dealt, in one way or another, with politics and the [2008] elections. But, as far as I can tell, this is not representative of all mosques in the U.S. My impression is that African American mosques put a higher emphasis on political debates, similar to most black churches (with which many of the black imams grew up). Immigrant mosques (and most American mosques are still ethnic mosques), however, only talk indirectly about political affairs, e.g., by addressing moral value topics, but rarely by naming politicians or parties.

A big topic is of course American foreign policy. But interestingly, most sermons dealt much more with Palestine than with Iraq. Palestine also seems to be the big topic around which African American and immigrant Muslims unite, although immigrants are in general more concerned with foreign policy issues, whereas black Muslims focus on domestic policy. But Palestine was repeatedly presented as the symbol of American (and Israeli) hubris and hypocrisy, where democratic evolutions are oppressed in the name of democracy and human rights.

Also, the khtubas emphasized Muslim experiences of discrimination in the U.S. – be it at airports, in schools or at the working place; of raids and detaining; and biased and skewed media representation. Again, the hypocrisy of the American system was addressed, which, for many Muslims, seems neither willing, nor able, to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – although they recognize the core values that are the basis of these documents. Only one imam openly questioned the system as a whole, and the values on which it was grounded.

For a long time, it was a contested issue within the American Muslim community, whether one could, and should, participate in elections. Today, obviously, most agree that if one wants to have any influence, one has to vote. Even Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam openly endorsed Obama, and encouraged his audience to vote for him (which was, ironically, possibly more detrimental than beneficial to the Obama campaign).

Many Muslims have difficulties endorsing a candidate who, on the one hand, supports an end to the Iraq mission and shows no open hostility towards Muslims, while, on the other, favors the possibility of homosexual civil unions and a liberal abortion law. This is, by the way, a problem that many Muslims face in Europe as well: although they are, for the most part, conservative regarding moral issues, they nonetheless vote for liberal parties who represent their economic interest and embrace a multi-cultural and tolerant model of society (including groups many Muslims have problems with). At the same time, conservative parties often reject conservative Muslim voters by anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. This is one reason why some Muslims favored Republican Ron Paul – a “compassionate conservative.”
But all imams were united in their opinion that it is a blessing that the system forbids Bush to run for a third term. And most of them seem to hope that Obama, as soon as the election is over, can openly articulate his sympathy for American Muslims – which they believe he sincerely feels, even if he has to hide it for now.

Written and edited by Peter Dahl