Why Muslim Americans Are Losing Faith in the U.S. Election: Disillusionment due to Bipartisan Islamophobia and Gaza Policy

This November, Americans will head to the polls to elect their next president. While several third-party candidates are in the running, the race ultimately comes down to Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump.

Amid the election season, one issue that has become central for many Muslim Americans is Israel’s war in Gaza. A July 2024 study by Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in partnership with Emgage and Change Research found that the ongoing violence in Gaza was the top issue among all American Muslims, and it was the key issue amongst American Muslim swing voters: 71 percent agreed that it was the most important policy issue on which they would base their vote on. The study noted that in 2020 American Muslims were some of President Joe Biden’s biggest supporters (65% voted for him) but due to his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, he has seen a sharp decline in support. In 2024, only 12 percent of Muslims said they intended to vote for Biden when he was still the nominee.

The significant shift in support is attributable to President Biden’s unwavering backing of Israel, despite findings from UN experts, the International Court of Justice, and numerous human rights experts that Israel has violated international humanitarian law and is committing genocide in Gaza. Furthermore, unlike its outreach to Jewish Americans, the Biden administration has not adopted a similar approach toward Palestinian Americans. The administration has failed to engage meaningfully or address the concerns of Palestinian Americans and has not adequately communicated with or responded to the needs of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans. All of this has occurred at a time when Islamophobia has drastically risen across the country, with several violent and deadly anti-Muslim attacks taking place.

In July, President Biden announced he would not seek re-election, leading to Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee. Although Harris has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and acknowledged Palestinian’s right to self-determination, her stance is perplexing, considering she is part of an administration that continues to send billions of dollars in weapons to Israel. On August 26th, 2024, the Israelis Defense ministry announced that the US military had completed its 500th flight airlifting over 50,000 tons of weapons and equipment to the Israeli army since October 7th. Further, during the DNC, Harris remained firm in her support for Israel and its ongoing deadly campaign in Gaza.

On the issue of Israel’s war in Gaza, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump express unwavering support for Israel. Regarding Palestinians and Palestine, they share a similar stance but differ in their approaches. Trump has openly engaged in anti-Palestinian rhetoric, even using Palestinian identity as a slur during the first debate with Biden. Meanwhile, Harris has ignored Palestinian voices, positioning herself as the “not Trump” candidate. This context highlights the presence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism within both the Democratic and Republican parties, leading many pro-Palestine voters to pledge not to vote this election season.

Many Palestinian Americans feel betrayed by the Biden-Harris administration and cannot support a candidate who has failed to acknowledge their suffering while continuing to send weapons and aid to Israel. Since the start of the war in Gaza, Yasmine El Agha, a Palestinian-American from Chicago, has lost more than 150 family members in the small strip. She told The National that come November 5th, “it’s hard for me to be able to sign off on someone’s name knowing that I’m directly contributing to my family’s murder. And so right now, not voting seems like the best option to me because I can’t justify voting for Kamala or voting for Trump.” Similar sentiments are shared by many Muslim Americans especially as they view both candidates unconditional support of Israel and failure to acknowledge the staggering death toll in Gaza as an indicator of anti-Muslim prejudice.

Former president Donald Trump‘s history of Islamophobia has been well-documented. It was under his administration that the government passed the Muslim ban, an Executive Order by Trump. which banned individuals from a number of Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Trump’s administration also included several individuals who held anti-Muslim views, some who were part of the Islamophobia industry and others who were connected to it. This resulted in an administration that was hostile to Muslim Americans and instituted policies that harmed the community. Additionally, there were a plethora of comments Trump made as both a presidential candidate as well as during his term that amplified anti-Muslim stereotypes and tropes, resulting in the skyrocketing of anti-Muslim incidents in the country. In 2015 during Trump’s campaign for president, the FBI recorded that the number of hate crimes against Muslims increased by 67% in comparison to the year before. In 2017, the year the Muslim Ban was enacted, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) recorded 2,599 anti-Muslim indicents, including 464 that were related to the ban.

While much attention has been given to Islamophobia within the Republican Party, it is important to recognize that Democrats are not immune to promoting anti-Muslim racism. In the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden and his administration, with Harris as Vice President, focused on reversing Trump’s discriminatory policies. One of Biden’s earliest actions was rescinding the Muslim Ban, allowing the reunification of Muslim American families who had been separated for years due to the policy. However, things changed in late 2023 after Israel launched another war in Gaza following a surprise attack by Hamas armed militants in Israel, which killed 1,139 individuals, and resulted in over 200 Israelis taken hostage by the group. The administration’s response and unwavering support of Israel has signaled to Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans that their concerns and lives don’t matter.

Israel’s enduring war in Gaza, which has been labelled as a genocide by UN experts and human rights organizations, has resulted in at least 41,000 deaths (including nearly 16,500 children). However, the likely death toll is much higher, and a June 2024 journal article in The Lancet noted that “up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” It’s difficult to obtain exact numbers due to the decimation of infrastructure and society at large in the tiny strip. It’s estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinians remain buried under the rubble, and due to the collapse of healthcare facilities, thousands more will likely die due to injuries. In December 2023, a study using satellite technology found that Israel’s bombing of Gaza was more intense than in Ukraine, Syria, and even World War II.The UN has said that Israel’s bombing campaign is “wiping out whole families and entire neighborhoods” in Gaza. Additionally, the vast majority of the population is facing starvation as “about 96 percent of the population in the Gaza Strip (2.15M people) face high levels of acute food insecurity through September 2024.” All of this has occurred under the Biden-Harris administration.

Following the October 7th attacks, CAIR received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023, a 178% rise from complaints about anti-Muslim incidents in the same period from a year earlier. “Islamophobic bias has reached unprecedented levels, surpassing in some ways even the appalling track record of the previous [Trump] administration,” wrote Corey Saylor and Farah Afify of CAIR. This has occurred under an administration that has not only “provided unconditional political and military support to Israel amid accusations of genocide against Palestinians, but also repeated Islamophobic Israeli propaganda.”

Biden’s words have failed to acknowledge the drastic civilian death toll caused by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which the UN chief described as the “collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” Instead, the administration has reiterated that Israel is targeting Hamas militants, with President Biden even casting doubt on the death toll reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. By doing this, the US government promotes Islamophobic tropes, framing all Palestinians as Hamas. This has resulted in the dehumanization of millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the administration has repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire and instead continues to send billions of dollars in weapons to Israel. This approach further dehumanizes Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, sending a message to the wider public that they are deserving of death.

Islamophobic sentiment amongst the Democratic party was also visible at this year’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) where party leadership refused to allow a Palestinian-American voice on stage. Dozens of uncommitted delegates at the DNC called on the Harris campaign to commit to a ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel. The “Uncommitted Movement”, which includes uncommitted delegates as well as hundreds of thousands of uncommitted voters across the US, presented a number of voices to the Democratic leadership to be given a space on stage to talk about Gaza and Palestine. One of those potential speakers was Representative Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian-American elected to the Georgia legislature. However, the Harris campaign declined to give her a space to speak on stage, and effectively communicated to the movement and pro-Palestine supporters that their views did not matter. This was in stark contrast to the party giving space to the American-Israeli parents of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was seized by Hamas militants on October 7th (Hersh’s body was recovered from the Gaza Strip on August 31, 2024). As journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in an August 2024 piece for Zeteo, “The erasure of the Palestinians in Chicago was a choice by the Democratic Party leadership.” In response to the silencing of Palestinian voices by the Harris campaign, Representative Rashida Tlaib (the sole Palestinian-American member of Congress) said “The DNC made it clear with their speakers that they value Israeli children more than Palestinian children.”

Another episode of Islamophobia at the DNC was an incident in which three men repeatedly assaulted Nadia Ahmad. Ahmad, who wears a hijab, and two other delegates held a banner stating “Stop Arming Israel”. The three men targeted Ahmad only and hit her repeatedly on the head with “We Love Joe” signs. Ahmad noted that Harris’s principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, watched the entire attack unfold but did “nothing about it.”

Even prior to the convention, there were instances of prejudice and discrimination within the Democratic party. In July 2024, the Michigan Democratic Party held a zoom call asking delegates to support Harris as the party’s nominee. During this call, Delegate Abbas Alawieh, an organizer with the Uncommitted Movement, voiced his position to not endorse Harris until her policy on Israel was made clear. As he expressed his views, another individual on the call said “shut up, asshole.” These incidents demonstrate the pervasiveness of anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hostility amongst the Democratic party.

Harris has “voiced sympathy for Palestinians and said that she is working towards a ceasefire in Gaza, but she has also said she would not support an arms embargo on Israel.” At the DNC, Harris doubled down on her support for Israel, stating “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” signaling to the wider public that her policy will not differ from that of President Biden’s. Despite acknowledging that “the scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” in Gaza, Harris has failed to recognize that the US has played a direct role in the violence by continuing to supply Israel with the weapons it is using to create the suffering in Gaza. When Pro-Palestine voices expressed their outrage at Harris during a rally in Michigan in early August, she reprimanded and shut them down, saying “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Presenting herself as a “not Trump” candidate does little to comfort those whose families and loved ones are being murdered by weapons supplied by the Biden-Harris administration. As Layla Saliba wrote in an August 2024 piece for The Nation, “Palestinian Americans have learned that the Democratic Party will bomb your homeland, kill your family, use your own money to do it, and still expect your vote.”

Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans have stated they will “no longer accept crumbs,” from the Democratic party and cannot in good conscience support a party that has enabled and funded a genocide, one that has been the most documented in history. This does not translate to a vote for the Republican candidate, rather it instead demonstrates how the pervasiveness of Islamophobia in both parties has meant that many Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans feel devalued and increasingly marginalized within society.  For many Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans, they no longer see value in the process of voting because when it comes to Gaza, the outcome will likely be the same no matter who is in power. Neither candidate has addressed the concerns of the communities, instead one has openly expressed hostility against them while the other ignores their plight and continues to support those who attack them. The US’s unconditional support of Israel, despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza, has become a red line for many Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans and this will be felt in the ballot box come November. The communities are sending a message to leading politicians that their votes, views, and lives will not be taken for granted.