Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are at risk of losing Michigan because a huge portion of the Muslim vote, which has been reliably Democratic for decades, could stay home or vote for Donald Trump.
Harris and Walz are working overtime to keep hold of the Muslim vote, but since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1200 people in Israel, this means they equivocate about terrorism and Israeli countermeasures.
“Israel is ruling the world,” Fatima, a 30-year-old woman from Dearborn, said. Standing in Kitab Cafe on Hamtramck, which doubles as an Islamic book store, Fatima held out one palm, “They have the U.S. and other countries in the palm of their hands.”
Fatima had come to Hamtramck, a majority-Muslim enclave of Detroit, for work. After she spoke of Palestinian suffering amid a year of attacks by Israel, I asked her how she thinks Israel should have responded to the attacks of Oct. 7, in which terrorists also took 250 hostages.
Fatima’s only answer was, “I totally support Palestine.” I asked her if she thought Hamas was good for Palestine, and she said, “Absolutely. Yes… I support them.”
Fatima says President Joe Biden has supported Israel, and as a result, she will not vote at all. This is the sort of voter Democrats are worried about losing in large numbers.
About half of American Muslims express qualified support for Hamas in its war against Israel. Pew asked Americans if Hamas’s reasons for fighting Israel were valid, and 49% said yes. When asked if Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas were valid—not merely Israel’s methods—most American Muslims (54%) said no.
In 2020, Biden won an overwhelming majority of the Muslim vote. Estimates are generally above 65%.
According to one survey, an estimated 145,000 Muslims voted in Michigan in 2020. Biden won the state by about 154,000 votes, so the Muslim margin provided tens of thousands, maybe even more than 120,000, votes in the state.
This explains why Harris scheduled a private backstage meeting before her Flint rally on Friday with Muslim Democratic leaders to try and hold onto Muslim votes.
Three-fifths of Muslim voters place the war in Gaza among their three top issues, according to a survey by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, an Islamic non-profit organization founded after 9/11.
Most Muslim voters I interviewed in Michigan did not endorse terrorism, but some clearly do, at least implicitly, like Fatima. Most express disapproval of Hamas and Hezbollah. But their feelings toward these designated terrorist groups were complicated by their dislike for Israel and their focus on the Palestinian plight.
“A terrorist to us, is a freedom fighter to somebody else,” said Ameer Ghalib, the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, who has endorsed Trump.
“Right now, the Democrats, they are supporting Israel, even though they kill children and women and destroy houses. They destroy everything there,” said Mohamad, a middle-aged Muslim father raising his children in Hamtramck. Yet Democrats “still keep supporting Israel. They should stop them.”
Mohammad says he will not vote for either party. “They are fighting over who supports Israel more.”
“Muslim people are blaming Biden because he is not trying his best to stop Israel from killing Palestinian people,” said Ahmed, a Muslim man in Hamtramck who immigrated from Bangladesh nearly 30 years ago. “The American government is giving [Israel] funds, as well as giving them arms and ammunition,” Ahmed says. He adds that Biden is “going against Muslims” by doing so.
Ahmed blames Hamas for causing Palestinian suffering. “I don’t like Hamas either.” This is the standard view Muslim voters express: dislike of both Hamas and Israel.
“Before they were communicating with us,” says Mohammad, a middle-aged Muslim father in Hamtramck. “But this election, it’s like they ignore us. I don’t know why.”
Biden, Harris, and Walz do not hesitate to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations. Nor do they blur the lines about the Oct. 7 attacks.
But Harris does play footsie with terrorist sympathizers. Speaking of student protesters who shut down campuses, condemning Israel and praising Hamas, Harris said: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”
Michigan’s Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is still in good graces with the party, even though she has glossed the Oct. 7 massacres as “resistance,” and has approvingly posted online the chant “from the River to the Sea, Palestine shall be free,” which taken literally calls for the eradication of Israel and is unabashedly used to mean that by many people who chant it.
Few Muslim voters are explicit terrorist sympathizers, but they are in touch with the wider Muslim public, and this creates tension.
Perhaps the best image for understanding Democrats and the Muslim vote in 2024 involves circles, increasing in diameter, of different Muslim populations
The smallest circle is actual terrorists. Almost all American Muslims and Democratic politicians condemn this circle.
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The slightly larger circle is terrorist-sympathizers — those who refuse to call Hezbollah a terrorist group or who vocally support Hamas. This group is often loud. They probably wouldn’t vote for Harris, but they make noise and get heard.
This is the group Harris is trying to placate in order to not turn off the largest group: Muslim voters who dislike Hamas, but who believe Israel is the principal offender in the Middle East region. In an effort to avoid alienating average Muslim voters, Harris believes she has to play nice with the terrorist sympathizers.