November 21, 2018
Page 13
O PINION
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The ‘Blue Wave’ was also a ‘Muslim Wave’
Bringing more
diversity to
Congress
D omenicA g hAnem
With the Muslim
Ban, the promotion of
torturer Gina Haspel
to CIA director, and in-
creases in hate crimes,
it’s been a rough year
for us Muslims in the United
States.
So hearing the words “Salam
Alaikum” as Ilhan Omar took the
national stage on Election Night
to accept her win as Representa-
tive of Minnesota’s 5th District
made it feel like I could finally
breathe a little bit easier.
The first Somali-American
elected to Congress, Omar joined
Rashida Tlaib, a daughter of
Palestinian refugees, as the first
Muslim women to be elected to
U.S. Congress.
The election of these women
to Congress is a direct repudia-
tion of the domestic and foreign
policies of a country that’s been
hostile to migrants and refugees
from a number of countries, in-
cluding Somalia, and has funded
by
Israel’s occupation and destruc-
tion of Palestine.
But even though Minnesota is
home to the largest Somali popu-
lation in the country, and
Tlaib’s state of Michigan
has a large population of
Arab and Muslim Ameri-
cans, this “Muslim wave”
was about more than faith
or ethnicity.
Omar and Tlaib ran on
unabashadley progres-
sive platforms, joining other suc-
cessful progressives like Alexan-
dria-Ocasio Cortez in New York,
Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in Illinois,
Veronica Escobar in Texas, and
Sharice Davids — the first open-
ly lesbian indigenous represen-
tative, who flipped a red seat in
Kansas.
They’re also joined by more
local progressive representatives
like 26-year-old Mari Manoo-
gian, who flipped a Michigan
state house seat blue, and Suda-
nese immigrant Mo Seifeldein,
who joined the Alexandria, Vir-
ginia city council. Both were
endorsed by the Emgage PAC,
which calls itself the “policy
home of American Muslims.”
These candidates ran on health
care for all, taking on our corpo-
rate welfare system, protecting
black lives, and reversing our
climate disaster. And many were
unafraid to speak out against U.S.
foreign policies that cause refu-
gee crises and domestic policies
that punish the desperate people
feeling them.
The progressive Muslim wave,
with the most Muslims running
for office since 9/11, thrived even
as it faced one of the most Islam-
ophobic elections of our time.
A report by Muslim Advocates
called Running On Hate out-
lined how, though anti-Muslim
politicians have been lurking on
the fringe for decades, “Trump’s
presidency emboldened a new
wave of anti-Muslim conspiracy
theorists to run for office nation-
wide and at all levels of govern-
ment.”
Anti-Muslim hate groups
falsely attacked Omar and Tlaib
as anti-Semites supporting ter-
rorism. Groups supporting Dave
Brat, a Republican candidate
from Virginia, attacked his op-
ponent for serving as a substi-
tute teacher at a Muslim school,
calling it “terror high.” Kansas
gubernatorial candidate Kris Ko-
bach brought Trump a proposal to
question “high-risk immigrants
over support for Sharia Law.” Joe
Kaufman, the head of anti-Mus-
lim group Americans Against
Hate, ran in Florida’s 23rd Dis-
trict.
But what many of those candi-
dates have since learned the hard
way is that smearing Muslims is
not a successful campaign strat-
egy. They all lost to Democrats,
with Brat’s race flipping a Virgin-
ia seat blue.
And even some Islamophobes
who did make it, like Reps.
Steve King and Duncan Hunter,
won by smaller margins in part
because voters soured on their
anti-Muslim, white supremacist
rhetoric.
What all of this tells me about
the U.S. electorate is that they
care about issues like raising
the minimum wage, expanding
Medicare, and funding for edu-
cation at the same time that they
reject racist Muslim and immi-
grant-bashing.
And I have a feeling this is just
a drop in the bucket of an even
bigger progressive, young, wom-
an, Muslim wave to come.
Domenica Ghanem is the me-
dia manager at the Institute for
Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
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