Tehran Institute For International Studies tiis
A new poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations has Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein beating Kamala Harris among American Muslims in three key battleground states, with an especially large lead in Michigan.
Among Muslims, Stein leads Harris 35 percent to 29 percent in Arizona, 44 percent to 39 percent in Wisconsin, and a whopping 40 percent to 12 percent in Michigan.
This would be interesting in and of itself, but what really stands out for me is the extreme contrast between how American Muslims and the rest of the US population are polling right now. An August report by the Statista Research Department has Jill Stein polling at just 0.2 percent overall among the general population, with Harris leading the Green Party candidate by 46.8 percent to 0.2 percent in Arizona, by 47.7 percent to 0.8 percent in Wisconsin, and by 46.1 percent to 0.9 percent in Michigan.
To call this a night and day difference would be a severe understatement. Clearly Muslim Americans are seeing something they care deeply about this election season which the rest of the population has decided doesn’t matter very much.
That something is of course the US-backed genocide in Gaza, which the Biden-Harris administration has been forcefully supporting for nearly a year. Stein opposes these atrocities, while Harris is currently serving in the administration that’s making them possible. Activist campaigns like the Uncommitted National Movement have been rallying pro-Palestinian voters to pressure Biden and Harris to stop the slaughter in Gaza under the threat of losing their votes, and now polls show that those votes are hemorrhaging into the Green Party among Muslims.
And I just think it says a lot that American liberals have decided to simply ignore this. Not just the leadership of the Democratic Party — who famously refused to allow any Palestinian Americans to even speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month — but ordinary members of the public as well.
White non-Muslim liberals, who would normally claim to stand with Muslim Americans and support listening to black and brown voices, have decided to simply turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what their Muslim neighbors are saying this election cycle.
Everything this particular marginalized community is saying gets met with fingers in the ears. Any other minority group on any other issue at any other time and it would be “I hear you, I see you,” but when it comes to this particular religious minority group with regard to ending an actual genocide, they are saying the exact opposite.
Which, just like the destruction of Gaza itself, says so much about where the real values of mainstream western liberalism actually lie. It’s not about being good, it’s about feeling good. It’s not about being moral, it’s about feeling moral. It’s not about fighting for justice and equality, it’s about fighting for electoral wins and emotional comfort. While people who actually care are trying to wake everyone up to the reality of the nightmare in Gaza, American liberals are trying to get everyone to shut up and stop shaking the bed so everyone can go back to sleep.
What’s happening in Gaza should radicalize you against status quo politics, and if you are a good person, it will. The fact that Democrats of all levels are so completely incurious and indifferent toward what Muslims in their country have been saying since October shows they are not good people, and shows they are not what they pretend to be.
