Abdullah Issaq has dedicated his life to public service. The son of Afghani refugees, Issaq has had an interest in politics since he was eight. After spending decades as a public school teacher, he now works for a teacher advocacy nonprofit in New York. Issaq has honed a career of passionate advocacy all on behalf of the Democratic Party, but this year, because of the war on Gaza, he found it challenging to maintain that unwavering support.
“I always find my way of getting in line and voting for the Democratic ticket. This is basically like ethnic cleansing, it’s genocide … if we vote for them when they’re committing genocide, there’s nothing they can do that we won’t vote for,” Issaq said.
His plan for Election Day was to write in “Free Palestine” instead of choosing Vice President Kamala Harris, but his ballot got lost in the mail and he was unable to vote.
Since the escalation of violence in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank following the Hamas-led attack in Israel in October 2023, many Muslim and Arab Americans have expressed anger with President Joe Biden’s administration. With the war being a top issue for these voters, it led many to question their party alliances and feel conflicted about how to vote in the presidential election.
Alongside Issaq, many interviewees for this story used the term “genocide” to describe the devastation occurring. However, neither the current administration nor the presidential candidates from either major political party have used this term. This highlights a broader issue for Muslim and Arab Americans: a lack of acknowledgment regarding the severity of what they see as war crimes and violations of international law taking place.
Reporting across the country revealed similar sentiments amongst Muslim and Arab Americans and their plans to stray from their habitual vote for the Democratic Party. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in the battleground state of Michigan, where the largest Arab American population in the country resides.
In late September, thousands gathered for the “All Out For Lebanon” vigil and rally in front of the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn. The clouds were heavy, keffiyehs were wrapped tightly around shoulders, and flags blanketed the growing crowd.
The youngest and oldest members of this community assembled in solidarity and grief. Toddlers clung to their parents and young children ran around a stage adorned with a banner that read: “Stand with Lebanon/Stop the war/Stop the killing.” Even at young ages, these children and teenagers were aware of what was happening and were taking action alongside their communities.
At just 9, Mehdi Al-Hussainon regularly attends pro-Palestinian protests with his older sister.
“I am here to tell the world to stop bombing, and we deserve to live,” Al-Hussainon said.
Alaa Elhourani is a 16-year-old high school student from Dearborn who has family in Lebanon and has lost friends since the airstrikes began.
“I want to sympathize with these people and show my support to them because they’re not alone, and the things that are happening in Palestine too, we won’t forget that,” she said.
As the speakers preached in Arabic and English, the crowd passionately chanted, “Let people live.” Community leaders shared their personal losses, expressed frustration with the U.S.’s recent foreign policies, and fervently stated neither Harris nor Donald Trump would receive their vote on Election Day.
Joseph Kishore ran as the presidential candidate for the Socialist Equality Party and was on the ballot in Michigan. Kishore attended the vigil to garner support and echoed the sentiments of speakers and attendees who view the U.S. as complicit in the war.
“The Biden-Harris administration is overseeing all of this. Not a single bomb can be dropped by Israel or a single person murdered without the support, financial, political and military of the United States, and both its parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are both equally culpable in this escalating war,” Kishore said.
The U.S. has spent at least $22.8 billion on Israel’s military operations and the latest casualty figures indicate that more than 44,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell has been serving in Congress since 2015 and with the Lebanese population making up 22% of Middle Eastern and North African residents in Michigan, the conflict has gravely impacted the communities in her district.
While awaiting Gov. Tim Walz’s airport arrival ahead of the University of Michigan versus the University of Minnesota rivalry game, Dingell spoke with a fiery passion to reporters amid persistent rain and wind. The sounds of brass instruments and excited students anticipating Walz’s arrival filled the air as Dingell expressed how personal the conflict has been, highlighting the pain within the communities she represents. Many of the families in her district are Lebanese and travel there each summer.
“I have one constituent in Camden who lost 40 members of their family in Gaza, and now you’re talking about Lebanon. … I know people that were killed last week. I’ve met them. We’re all hurting,” Dingell said.
In 2020, Muslim and Arab Americans played a crucial role in Biden’s narrow victory in Michigan. However, as promised during the vigil, most of these voters kept their pledge not to vote for Harris or Trump on Election Day. Exit polls from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) suggest that about 59% of American Muslim voters in Michigan cast their ballot for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
When reflecting on the results of the election, Stein said she believes the Democratic Party’s support for Israel is partially to blame for Trump’s victory.
“From their unconditional support for the endless war machine and genocide in Gaza, to their subservience to Wall Street, to their indifference to human rights … on all these issues and many more the Democratic Party has betrayed the trust of the people,” Stein said in a statement on the Green Party’s website.
Michigan alone did not decide the presidency. CAIR’s national exit polls highlight this nationwide frustration among Muslim and Arab Americans with the Democratic Party and reveal the community’s story.
“It was a story about the heartbreak of Muslim voters and how tone-deaf Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris were to the pain that our community channeled into the voting booth, and how for the first time in 20 years the majority of Muslim voters did not vote for a Democratic presidential candidate,” Robert S. McCaw, CAIR’s national government affairs director, said.
McCaw’s mission this election cycle was to empower Muslims to vote regardless of their preferred candidate. He considers this to be the first election where Muslim voters were so dissatisfied with the policies and positions of both major parties that it became a three-way race.
As a 501(c)(3) organization, CAIR does not support any candidate or party. McCaw noted that the views he expressed were his personal reflections on the campaign cycle.
“For over a year, Muslim voters were telling any politician running for office or party who would listen that the top issue in our hearts and minds was the U.S.’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, and in the last two months of the election, Israel’s slaughter of Lebanese civilians,” McCaw said.
Thus, McCaw believes that Harris could have won the Muslim vote in CAIR’s exit poll if she had done things differently, starting at the Democratic National Convention. He believes that if she had acknowledged that a genocide was occurring with the U.S. government’s support or had a Muslim or Palestinian speaker to address the community’s pain and concerns, things could have been different.
“Harris dropped the ball in how she engaged and platformed the Muslim community’s concerns, and it cost her the election,” McCaw said. “No one owns the Muslim vote. It has to be earned.”
He also acknowledged that, unlike Harris, Trump came to the realization of the importance of the Muslim and Arab American vote and took action by attempting to appeal to them. Trump went directly to Dearborn to meet with Arab Americans just days before the election and ultimately won the city.
“Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with their neighbors, and that can only happen with peace and stability in the Middle East. I look forward to working with the Lebanese community living in the United States of America to ensure the safety and security of the great people of Lebanon,” Trump said on X in late October.
As the country started to process the results of the election, blame was quickly placed on certain racial and ethnic groups for Harris’ loss. However, McCaw pointed out that Trump won a broad coalition of people in every swing state.
“The Muslim community was definitely a deciding factor, but we were one of many dissatisfied communities that included Black, Latino, and Asian voters and how the Biden administration was handling U.S. foreign policy and kitchen table items like the economy and education. Any discrimination of the Muslim community for how they voted is rooted in Islamophobia,” McCaw said.
In February, CAIR estimated that there were more than 2.5 million registered American Muslim voters. This number has risen since 2022, when CAIR estimated 1.2 million. Amongst these voters, party identification has leaned heavily to the left, with 66% of Muslim voters considering themselves Democrats or independents who lean Democrat, according to findings from the Pew Research Center earlier this year.
As for the future of Muslim and Arab American voters and their party affiliations, everyone has different feelings.
“I think lots of people voted in anger in response to what was happening at the moment. I don’t see the Republican Party making real, meaningful gains amongst Muslim Americans,” Issaq said.
Rashad Al-Dabbagh is the executive director and founder of The Arab American Civic Council, based in Orange County. After working closely with California Arab voters during the campaign, Al-Dabbagh has a different outlook on the future. He recalls a time before the Bush administration when many Muslim and Arab Americans were Republicans.
“I think the next few years there’s still going to be a lot of involvement of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the Democratic Party, but we’ll see more and more in the Republican Party,” said Al-Dabbagh.
McCaw said he believes the midterm election cycle in two years will offer insight into whether Muslims voting three ways is a temporary trend or part of a broader political realignment. He also thinks the election results are a sign to take the Muslim and Arab American vote more seriously.
“Every candidate and party should be put on notice that to win a presidential election, they’re going to need to engage and listen to American Muslims, just as they need to listen to Black, Latino, Asian, and white voters about their concerns,” McCaw said. “We can no longer be ignored, and we won’t be.”