November 17, 2024 - 5:00pm
“Trump’s pro-Israel cabinet picks upset Muslims who voted for him,” reads a Reuters headline from this week. In the piece, a range of Muslim Americans who voted for the President-elect lament that he has chosen several cabinet officials who favour a strong security relationship with Israel and who have downplayed the rights of the Palestinians.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network, is quoted as saying.
Many of Trump’s Muslim backers had hoped, for instance, that he would appoint as secretary of state Ric Grenell, an official from his first administration who helped lead Muslim outreach ahead of this election. The pick of Marco Rubio, a comparatively conventional hawk and strident supporter of the Israeli government, seems to have ruffled feathers in the community.
Does this mean that Muslim voters were betrayed by Trump? Was his outreach ahead of the election nothing more than a cynical ploy? And will Muslims go running back into the Democratic camp in 2028? For now, it’s too soon to make any assumptions.
In 2000, a majority of Muslim Americans backed Republican George W. Bush for president. The community had long been known as socially conservative and business-minded, so the GOP proved a natural home for them. But the Iraq War horrified Muslims in the US, leading many of them to flee to the Democrats. They continued to vote blue for another 20 years, but this year a large number either voted Republican or for a third-party candidate.
It’s possible that this was a one-off protest vote, yet there are signs that a greater realignment may be underway. Even before the war in Gaza, which served as a tipping point to drive votes away from the Democrats, many Muslims felt that the party had leaned too far into divisive social issues.
In recent battles between conservatives and progressives about school curricula, for example, many Muslim Americans have been standing on the same side as the Republican Party. In Hamtramck in Michigan, America’s only city with an entirely Muslim government, Mayor Amer Ghalib endorsed Trump in September, citing not just the war in Gaza but battles over LGTBQ issues as a turning point for his support of the Republican Party.
As the Democrats become increasingly socially progressive, many Muslim voters probably figure that even if Trump’s stance on arming Israel proves to be roughly the same as Joe Biden’s, at least they can win more domestic policy from the GOP.
That doesn’t mean that the Republicans should take backing from Muslim Americans — or any of the other minority groups in which voters swung further to the Right — for granted. Swing voters are by their nature not hardened partisans. If Trump governs particularly poorly in terms of either domestic or foreign policy, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Muslim and Arab Americans return to the Democratic Party.
While it’s true that Trump doesn’t have to be re-elected, he does have an interest in his legacy. His likely successor JD Vance would in 2028 rely on the same multiethnic working-class coalition that Trump assembled in this election, while Republicans will need diverse votes in mid-term elections before then.
Even with a cabinet stacked full of conventional GOP hawks, Trump has one advantage: it’s likely that the Israelis trust him a lot more than they would’ve ever trusted the Democrats. If he can work his dealmaking powers to bring a swift end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon — and avoid a much bigger war with Iran — while at the same time capturing the middle on social and economic policy, it’s possible that he can maintain the Muslim alliance with the Republican Party. More than that, this coalition could extend many years beyond 2024.
Zaid Jilani is a journalist who has worked for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, The Intercept, and the Center for American Progress.
ZaidJilani
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI think the author touched on this in a roundabout way, but not explicitly. You can’t view Muslims as some monolithic demographic that all think the same way. Different Muslims and different communities have different issues. Multi generational Muslims are not as connected to the war in Gaza, but are likely more socially conservative than democrats. There is also the Sunni and Shiite divide. They all have different perspectives.
I would also suggest the Muslim community in North America is much different than the Muslim community in Britain and Western Europe. It still costs a relatively large amount of money to immigrate from the Middle East to North America. The young radical Islamists, who grew up in poverty, are much more likely to immigrate to Europe because it’s cheaper and easier to get there.
I would also suggest the progressive Muslims you see marching in the streets of America are almost all students. They have very little in common with the small business owner in Dearborn.
Shia Muslims with political awareness will have noticed that the Democrats have supported Iran, while Trump had good relations with the Saudis.
Observing how reluctant the Muslim nations near Gaza are to take Palestinian refugees, one might suspect that the views of the Muslims of Dearborn might be more widespread (and unspoken) than often assumed.
Immigrants to the US, like most of my neighbors, tend to quickly focus on the important stuff; the big SUV, giant TV, getting their kids in a good school, etc. The Palestinian cause has begun to seem like a hinderance to all that. Imagining that all Muslims, or even just all Arabs, are ready and willing to support the cause is just short-sighted.
Of course, the professional activists (the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network?! Really?) will tell any lazy Reuters journalist who calls otherwise.
Basically, the Palestinians are running out of friends. Decades of failure plus barbaric brutality will do that, won’t it?
Precisely. The Democrats completely missed the attitude of many US Muslims relative to Hamas, Hezbolah, and Iran. The majority of Muslims in the US are Sunni and have no use for Iran or Hezbolah, and nobody really has any real sympathy for the Palestinians, including the actual Arab countries. US Muslims are predominately in favor of the Abraham accords and support Trump for that. Further, Shia Muslims in the US are or are directly related to pro-Shah refugees from the Iranjan theocratic revolution and are clearly not sympathetic to the current Iranian ruling regime.
How big is Muslim population of USA?
Less than 1%?
When they grow in numbers and influence (like UK Labour Party) their behaviour changes.
And not for better.
Why should we pretend that Islam is compatible with the West?
Muslims bring nothing apart from violence, benefit scrounging and terrorism.
However, reality is everywhere that Muslims don’t integrate.
Wider point is, just read book “House of War” by gen Simon Mayall, that Islam is incompatible with the West.
They want to dominate.
There is nothing usefull that Muslim bring to the West.
I had argument with, I thought fairly integrated, Pakistani I knew for 30 years.
We are on WhatsApp group but not really political one.
He started venting off about “poor people of Gaza and Lebanon” and then said that Jews in Europe deserve to be attacked (that was after Amsterdam attacks) etc.
Then it escalated when he said that Israel should not exist.
When I pointed out that Pakistan was only created in 1947 and would he like Indian chant of:
“From Himalaya to the see all of India should be free”?,
he called me ignorant racist.
That was someone who I considered fairly integrated (wife and daughters without chador etc).
Do we really need these people in the West?
On the pertinent issues, how would Kamala Harris’s nominee for Secretary of State have differed from Marco Rubio? How would her nominee for National Security Adviser have differed from Michael Waltz? How would her nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security have differed from Kristi Noem? How would her nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations have differed from Elise Stefanik? How would her nominee for Ambassador to Israel have differed from Mike Huckabee? One of those would have been Lynne Cheney, and all of them might as well have been.
We now await Donald Trump’s nominations to economic policy portfolios. Again, expect disappointment for the young men and the black men, the self-organised working class and the Left, whose abstentions, third party votes, and votes for Trump, expanded him beyond his 2020 vote that, if repeated on its own, would have repeated the 2020 result. But again, whom would Harris have had? Stephanie Kelton? Hardly!
And everyone has always expected this. It has never been the point, which is that the marker has been put down. Young men and black men, Latinos and the Native Americans who voted for Trump by two to one, Muslims and Christian Arabs, the working class and the Left: you cannot win without those, it is probably now fair to assume that you could not lose with them, they are all now firmly in play, and whoever was the next President will be a first termer.
How is this question even sensible ? Who writes these ridiculous article titles ? And why ?
How can you possibly have buyer’s remorse after only one week when Trump isn’t actually in power for another 6 weeks or so and hasn’t done anything yet ?
It’s such a shame UnHerd does this clickbait nonsense as it puts people off reading good articles like this one.
I agree: and there’s something else.
In using the term “Muslim Americans” rather than “American Muslims” there’s an implication that they put their religion above their nationality. Now that may be the case, or may not, but has anyone asked them to which loyalty they’d rather be ascribed?
Technically, loyalty to the Ummah above all else is precisely what Islam mandates.
Surveys of the past have revealed that significant percentages adhere to this tenet, a fact that doesn’t sit particularly well with me at all.
There was a long period, 1950s through 70s, when surveys said that American Catholics were big fans of the Church and its teachings, while the whole time they were getting divorces, popping birth-control pills and reading “The Joy of Sex”.
Polling seems like a great idea, but it just doesn’t work very well. Ask President-elect Harris.
By their deeds you shall know them.
I am surprised, going by your handle, that you even ask the question.
Answer was and is given on the streets of uk every week.
It’s a real failing of UnHerd. Irritating clickbait headlines written to a limited set of formulae. I usually want to read the article once I have overcome the pretensions of the headline.
The author doesn’t bother to mention, for some unknown reason, that 53.2%s of Muslim-Americans voted for Jill Stein (source: The Council on American-Islamic Relations). Why is that? Good luck with that Green Party vote…though Jill Stein, a self-loathing Jew, is a proclaimed anti-Zionist. Better luck next time.
Trump and Harris only received 21.4% and 20.3% of the Muslim American vote, respectively. Not much of a mandate for Trump to support the Palestinian side of the Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon/Iran/Yemen war. Besides, Trump continues to vociferously support Israel and the Israelis…he’s a loyal friend.
Importantly, a Pew Research Center survey found that 36% of Muslim Americans DON’T sympathize with the Palestinian people or their desire to gain a sovereign nation. There are 57 Muslim countries, and1.9 billions Muslims worldwide, many not located in the Middle East, and most could care less about the creation of a Palestinian state, despite their pervasive antisemitic beliefs.
53.2% huh? The thing that always gets me about statistics like this is it’s hard to think of any reasonable way they could know this. Votes are anonymous. People either won’t talk to exit polsters, and those that do often lie (I know who people to do this). It’s what – two weeks since the election? How did the Council on American-Islamic Relations get a number like that? A proposition like that is farcical at this point.
Yes, I agree, Total nonsense.
How are any polling data points determined? Through extrapolation. CAIR has its fingers on the pulse of American Muslim voters. Perhaps they were off by 5-10%, who cares…the bottomline is that the majority of American Muslims voted for Jill Stein.
In New York State, where I live, they’ve determined that Harris received 55% of the Jewish vote while Trump received 45%. Data points on local and national candidate votes are pervasive…you can take them with a grain of salt or ignore them. I find them helpful…as do the DNC, the RNC, and anybody else whose livelihood involves the American electorate and how to reach them and persuade them to vote in a certain way.
Well,the green flag is the colour of Islam, so,at least something in common.
But that means that 64% either support Palestinians etc or, maybe, don’t have a view.
In the piece, a range of Muslim Americans who voted for the President-elect lament that he has chosen several cabinet officials who favour a strong security relationship with Israel and who have downplayed the rights of the Palestinians.
Maybe they weren’t listening very closely over the last year.
There will be a lot of Buyer’s Remorse. This may be one of many similar fractures.
If your rage and susceptibility to dog whistles overrides clear thinking you may have missed the multiple contradictions and deceptions fairly obvious peppered across Trump’s utterances. Or you did notice but not care, at least for now.
Rage?
Hmmm … Bit of projection going on here, I think.
Wow, you actually thought Harris would win by a landslide. Sorry, mate, you are as out of touch with the voters as she was.
Probably time to make a firm distinction between Muslim students and their agitators and actual Muslim citizens living lives in America. This ‘buyer’s remorse’ comment is exactly the kind of navel gazing commentary progressives deploy on all issues that aren’t ‘white’. News flash, that’s why you lost. You do not understand the issues of regular people and are so captured by race and gender politics that you cannot employ critical thinking to actual issues. If progressives cannot pivot to class they will never win again. Muslims are very invested in merit and conservative values for their kids. You actually have to start listening to people to understand this.
Another nonsensical hit piece article, although not quite as bad as Mr. Fazi’s. Still, I am pretty certain the Muslims who voted for Trump were well aware of his support for Israel. Another article that should have been vetted more thoroughly.