The Khizr Khan voters

As this ghoulish, absurd spectacle of an American presidential election sputters to the finish line, we can confidently say there is one winner: American Muslims.

We are asserting our rights with swagger and demanding to be treated with fairness instead of being used as political props, the “eyes and ears” you can plug in to be a front-line defence against Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). We’re not Mr Potato Head counter-terrorism experts. We are Americans, and alienating us could prove to be politically costly.

Rampant Islamophobia has inspired Muslims to get more politically engaged. We’re not a huge group of voters; we make up about 1 per cent of the population in the United States. But many of us live in states such as Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Florida, where swing voters — and voters who might be turned off by a candidate who pledges “extreme vetting” of Muslims — can make a difference. One Muslim advocacy group reports an increase of more than 30 per cent in Muslim voter registration since 2012.

Two weeks ago, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton began running a powerful ad featuring Khizr Khan — the Pakistani Muslim father of United States Army captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq — who beat down Republican candidate Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention with his worn-out copy of the US Constitution. I spoke to Khan, the very unlikely star of this election season, shortly after the ad featuring him was released. He is affectionately known as “Khizr Uncle” to many of us South Asians who are not related to him, but still proudly claim kinship due to shared immigrant roots. I asked if he’d considered stepping back from the campaign because of the spotlight on his family and the nasty trolling. “Those are my words and I have spoken them a million times,” he said. “That criticism is worth it. We will do this a million times over and over again.”

Khan, who refers to Trump as “the bogus candidate”, says that after his convention speech and being criticised by Trump, he has received encouragement from people all over America, who tell his wife and him that they are “testaments to the goodness of America”.

In 2008, it was unlikely that Khan would have been the star of a campaign ad or a symbol of American goodness. That year, two Muslim women in headscarves were barred from sitting behind the podium by volunteers for the then Democrat candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. That shameful act was done to protect Obama from the “Muslim” rumour he’s had to endure for years, one that was fanned enthusiastically by the current Republican presidential nominee.

Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, says for some Muslim voters, this year, “fear is a motivator”, but for others, “Islamophobia fuels us to demonstrate our political power in the face of the opposition”. In a poll, Muslims cited civil rights as the key election issue for them, next to education, the economy and a concern about harassment of Muslim students.

Khurrum Wahid, a Florida lawyer who helped found Emerge USA, a non-profit group that encourages Muslim political engagement, explained the uptick in registration as a response to both outrage at the Republican nominee and Muslims being embraced by the Democrats.

Thanks to Trump, however, Democrats don’t need to work too hard to convince Muslim women. By suggesting that Gazala Khan, Khizr’s wife, “may not have been allowed to speak” at the Democratic convention because of her religion, Trump unintentionally prompted the creation of the American Muslim Women PAC (Political Action Committee) — the first of its kind.

“Most Muslim women didn’t realise they were being viewed like that,” said Shailee Seddiqi, communications director for the PAC. “They didn’t know people thought we weren’t allowed to speak.” Seeme Gull Khan Hassan, a co-founder of the group Muslims for America, also helped found the group Muslims for former US president George W. Bush in 2003 and raised a significant amount of money for the 2008 John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign. This year, she’s with Clinton — “by default”. “Muslims are almost like leprosy for Republicans, who do not want to come near us,” she said. “Even if we promise them voters. Because their base does not want them to talk to us.”

There are Muslims who support Trump too, loyal to the very candidate who demands loyalty oaths. A Virginia businessman, Sajid Tarar, started something he called American Muslims for Trump and gave the closing prayer at the Republican convention. He was booed.

Although one poll shows that Clinton is likely to get about 70 per cent of the Muslim vote, some believe she isn’t so much better than Trump and would stand in the way of the radical change needed to improve the lives of average Juans and Mohammads. That’s why some Muslim voters I spoke to were considering third-party candidates.

Tauhid Mahmoud, a graduate student in New York, said he was planning to vote for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, as a way of saying: “No, I’m not going to vote for you just because you’re not Trump. You need to earn it.”

Wahid understands this impulse. But he wants Muslim voters to understand that lasting change has proved to be evolutionary, not revolutionary. “It takes sustained engagement and the building of pressure to move the giant cruise ship known as American policy,” he said. “Do not give up so quickly.”

It is affirming to see that eight years after America elected its first “Muslim, socialist, Kenyan” president, some people are openly embracing Muslims, rejecting bigotry and inviting us to their dinner tables to taste this strange phenomenon known as meatloaf. However, I’m not content with table scraps, pity invitations and opportunistic photo ops. We’re speaking out, voting and throwing down. To echo ‘Khizr Uncle’, we’ll keep doing it — a million times over and over again.

— New York Times News Service

Wajahat Ali is the creative director of Affinis Labs, a hub for social entrepreneurship and innovation.