Just one week after his inauguration in January 2017, President Donald Trump banned travel for immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Sam Alasri’s home country, Yemen.
That’s why Alasri, a Muslim American who became a naturalized citizen in 2005, backed Joe Biden in 2020, after the Democrat vowed to overturn Trump’s “Muslim ban.”
But Alasri, who leaned blue in his voting history, changed his mind about Democrats this year. On Nov. 5, he voted for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.
His reasoning? Trump’s promise to make peace in the Middle East.
“Trump 2020 is different from Trump 2024,” said Alasri, the chairman of the Yemen American Political Action Committee. “We’re looking for peace, we’re not looking for anything else.”
For the first time in two decades, Muslims shifted away from overwhelmingly backing Democrats in presidential elections. A Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) survey of 1,575 Muslim voters taken on Nov. 5-6 found Harris garnered just 20% of the Muslim vote, compared to Biden who pulled 69% in 2020. Green Party nominee Jill Stein had 53%, while Trump won 21%. In Dearborn, Michigan — home to the largest Muslim population in the U.S. — Trump dominated, winning nearly 47% of votes, according to city results.
This level of support for Trump might seem unthinkable given his earlier rhetoric.
During his 2016 campaign, Trump made no effort distinguishing radical extremism from Islam, telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I think Islam hates us.”
Yet, conversations with dozens of Muslim voters across Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania revealed a stark shift: the war in Gaza — and the Democrats’ refusal to alter their stance on Israel — became a decisive factor, even pushing some toward Trump.
After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, Israel declared war. The Gaza Health Ministry has since reported over 45,000 Palestinians killed as a result of the airstrikes, including more than 17,000 children, with at least 10,500 injured and more than 11,000 missing.
In the battleground state of Michigan, Albert Abbas, a Muslim businessman, hosted a meet-and-greet for Trump on Nov. 1 at his brother’s restaurant, The Great Commoner, where more than 200 Muslim and Arab leaders and supporters gathered. Abbas credited the Republican Party, particularly Massad Boulos — a Lebanese American businessman and Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law — for their outreach to the Muslim community.
“[Boulos] came to our meeting with about 40 people in Dearborn, and he listened to our concerns,” Abbas said. “He ensured that they are going to be working on not just a ceasefire, but an everlasting peace in the region.”
By contrast, Harris’ team only met with a select group of leaders about the war in Gaza during a closed-door session in September, according to Abbas.
“Unfortunately, the first thing that came out of their mouth is that there will be no change in foreign policy in regards to Lebanon and Israel,” he said. “It was during a time of intense bombing and a lot of our family members perished because of the result of American funding and support of the genocide.”
Around this time, the war in the Middle East reached its peak with an intense exchange between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. During the lead-up to this escalation, Israeli air strikes killed around 500 people and wounded more than 1,600, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
Members of the Muslim and Arab community in Michigan — including the mayor of the only all-Muslim-led city in the U.S. and a prominent Muslim cleric — endorsed Trump in September. Alasri stood on stage with the former president at a Michigan rally as Imam Belal Alzuhairi offered his blessing.
Alasri, Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib and Alzuhairi share more than just their public support for Trump: All three trace their roots to Yemen, a country plagued by civil war for almost a decade. Some even have families directly impacted by the travel restrictions imposed during Trump’s first term.
“I didn’t agree with the system,” Alasri, 48, said of the ban. Yet, he said, he feels a stronger alignment with the Republican Party this election cycle than with the Democrats, particularly on family values.
“Republicans understand a woman is a woman and a man is a man,” he said. “Democrats have broken that value.”
The appeal of Trump’s campaign extends beyond middle-aged Muslims. Younger voters like Rabiul Chowdhury, 29, also rallied behind him. Chowdhury co-founded Muslims for Trump, an organization with a single mission: “to ensure that Democrats, who have betrayed our community, lose this critical election.”
“I lived under him from 2016 to 2020. And I knew that this guy is not pro-war, he is anti-war, pro-America first. Pro-common sense, I should say,” he said. He referred to Biden as “one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.”
Chowdhury and his family, who are registered independents in Philadelphia, found themselves unwilling to cast their ballots for Harris, despite the family’s history of leaning heavily toward Democrats in past elections.
Chowdhury accused Harris and the Democratic Party of betraying Muslim voters and ignoring their concerns. He criticized Harris for failing to distance herself from Biden’s pro-Israel policies, blocking a Palestinian activist from speaking at the Democratic National Convention following a sit-in by 30 uncommitted delegates, and removing Muslim congressional candidate Ahmed Ghanim from a Michigan rally. He also called Harris’ “I’m speaking” remark to pro-Palestinian groups disrupting her rallies across the country “dismissive.”
“Muslims were taken for granted. And even the way the Democratic Party was behaving with us, they had the gangster mindset when they were talking to the Muslim community,” said Chowdhury, who also serves on the executive board for CAIR-Pennsylvania.
CAIR estimates there are more than 2.5 million registered Muslim voters in the United States. This is a significant increase from the previous estimate of 1.2 million or more in 2022.
One common sentiment among Muslims in this election, regardless of their chosen candidate, is the power of their vote and the Democrats’ loss of their once-strong foothold.
“Muslim voters were the kingmakers in U.S. elections, even though we are only 1.5% or 2%,” said Chowdhury, vindicated in his mission to unseat Democrats. “Allah has put us strategically in swing states.”
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR-Minnesota and co-founder of the national Abandon Harris campaign, voted for a third-party candidate. While the Muslim ban remains a concern for Hussein, having lived through its first implementation, he said it feels less daunting.
“He is the president-elect. He will be the president for the next four years. Muslims have to do everything they can to encourage him to continue to be the peaceful president that he claimed he was,” Hussein said.
He also offered a defense for Trump’s Muslim ban, claiming that the restrictions on seven countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — were already in place under President Barack Obama.
“Let’s be very fair to him in the sense that some of these politics, policy issues are oftentimes used as a way to magnify some aspects of issues,” Hussein said. “He did say the Muslim ban. So we’re not denying that. He also did say African ban. We’re not denying any of that.”
While Obama did identify the seven nations as “countries of concern” in 2015, his administration only placed restrictions on travelers who had recently visited these regions, focusing on heightened visa scrutiny rather than nationality-based bans.
Obama’s policy tightened visa-waiver rules for travelers from certain countries and dual nationals of Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. However, dual nationals from Libya, Somalia, and Yemen remained eligible for the visa-waiver program unless they had traveled to one of the listed countries since 2011. Obama also allowed case-by-case waivers for legitimate reasons, such as journalism or business, ensuring targeted rather than blanket measures.
Trump, however, expanded the ban to all citizens from these countries and subjected green card holders to additional scrutiny.
For many Muslims, the war in Gaza was the breaking point that led them to abandon their loyalty to Democrats, choosing instead to vote third-party or for Trump. For others, it was broader frustrations with Democrats’ foreign policy and their handling of the economy.
“The U.S. was shouldering most of the financial burden when it came to supplying military aid and foreign aid to Ukraine,” said Faye Nemar, CEO of the Middle Eastern and North African American Chamber of Commerce. “It limited our ability to focus on domestic priorities. One of those was Hurricane Helene.”
Nemar highlighted what she referred to as a contrast between funding priorities, referring to events on Oct. 1, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported a nearly $9 billion deficit for Hurricane Helene recovery. The same day, the Congress allocated $8.7 billion in military aid to Israel.
This made her vote for Trump, despite having backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
“I was very hopeful myself to finally be able to vote for a woman for president,” she said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to bring myself to do so.”