The presidential election is a few months away, and American Muslim voters are weighing out their options for the next president.

Youssef Chouhoud, an associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, studies trends involving American Muslim voters. He says this year many American Muslims are concerned about Gaza.

“Certainly one of if not the top, if not for some American Muslims, the only issue that they care about is the crisis in Gaza, and so that holds particularly heavy weight this election cycle,” Chouhoud said.

He says American Muslims are nestled within the American fabric, concerned about the economy, climate change, health care and immigration policies.

After 9/11, Chouhoud says, American Muslims were against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says after 2010, many focused on domestic issues.

But he says that changed after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel — during which Hamas killed 1,200 people — and the invasion of Gaza that followed, where the latest death toll stands at more than 40,000 Palestinians killed.

Chouhoud says many American Muslims view themselves as part of the extended Muslim nation, or the ummah.

“One of the beliefs in Islam is that anything that affects one part of the Muslim ummah affects you as well,” he said.

Chouhoud says many American Muslims also have close connections to Gaza.

“Everybody in the American Muslim context, is probably only one degree removed from somebody in Gaza,” he said.

Chouhoud says American Muslims are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to voting for the next president.

“They don’t, by and large, support a Trump presidency, for the reason that during the Trump administration, and you know, the explicit policies that Trump wanted to and has enacted have negatively affected American Muslims.”

He says many American Muslims say they do not feel like they belong to either Republican or Democratic parties.

“The sense of homelessness, I think, that American Muslims feel politically, is something that weighs heavy on them, and something that you know is going to probably continue from now until they go into the voting booth,” he said.

Chouhoud says things are likely to remain up in the air until the November elections.

Read more:

• DNC hosts first ever panel on Palestinian human rights
• Uncommitted delegates at DNC aim to put pressure on Harris’ Gaza policy
• ‘Uncommitted’ delegates hold DNC sit-in after refusal to allow Palestinian speaker at convention

Organizers behind the national “uncommitted” movement are commending a decision to host an official panel discussion on Palestinian rights Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The movement began as the “Listen to Michigan” campaign to get 10,000 uncommitted votes in the state’s Democratic presidential primary in February, in protest of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The uncommitted campaign wildly exceeded expectations in Michigan, picking up more than 13% of the votes in the Democratic race, or roughly 101,000 votes.

“The Muslim community, not just in Michigan, but in nearly every state, is more active, more involved than ever before,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellsion told WDET before participating in Monday’s panel discussion. “Not just as candidates, but as people who are doing fundraising; people who are doing communications; I mean, Bernie Sanders campaign manager was a Muslim, right? So the Muslim community has stronger political muscles than ever before, and is making itself heard.”

Others on the panel, like pediatric intensive care surgeon Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan — who recently returned from serving in Gaza — say the Harris-Walz ticket needs to hear the cries of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“We feel like the only way to protect and preserve human life is to put political pressure at this point.”

-Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, pediatric physician in Gaza and DNC panelist

“I was asked to be here to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention, the civilian casualties that I myself witnessed while I was there, the entire families that were exterminated, health care workers, humanitarian workers, that have been killed in unprecedented numbers, child amputees, record numbers of child amputees, all the children who had survived and arrived injured at the hospital with no surviving family,” Haj-Hassan told WDET. “I myself treated several children who would fall into that category. And for these children, they would often die in our arms in the emergency department without any family around to comfort them, because their family were killed in the same attack, and without anybody to bury them once they were dead…it was honestly, completely, utterly devastating.

“So we feel like the only way to protect and preserve human life is to put political pressure at this point. The unconditional ongoing funding of the U.S. for this military campaign, it starkly contrasts with the documented realities on the ground, with the findings by the International Court of Justice — a plausible genocide — and with universal global condemnation from every human rights and humanitarian organization, saying ‘This has to stop.'”

Haj-Hassan says everyone in her immediate family and friends circle are “very afraid of a Trump presidency,” however, she says, “we have red lines for what we will support in a party that we’re going to vote for, and genocide is one of those lines.”

“If the Harris-Walz platform wants to win, then they’re going to need to start listening to all of these voters, and I hope they also start listening to their conscience, because I don’t know how you’d sleep at night knowing that you’re funding this,” she said.

In a statement from uncommitted movement co-founders Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, they called the panel “an important step toward recognizing the rightful place of human rights advocates for Palestinian rights within the Democratic Party.”

“Our focus remains on policy change,” the statement read. “Vice President Harris has an opportunity to unite the party against Trump this week by turning the page towards a human rights policy that saves lives and helps us re-engage key voters for whom Gaza is a top issue.”

Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were gathered outside the DNC on Monday, with some breaking through a security fence near the convention site. However, the protests have been mostly peaceful.

Elabed and Alewieh say they have formally requested that Haj-Hassan and a Palestinian American be granted speaking time on the convention stage this week to share their plight.

The Uncommitted National Movement’s organizers are attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, hoping to change policy toward Israel during the ongoing war in Gaza.

Abbas Alawieh is one of the leaders of the uncommitted movement and one of two uncommitted delegates from Michigan attending the DNC.

“We have a mandate to represent the hundreds of 1,000s of uncommitted pro peace voters who showed up in the Democratic primary to ensure that Gaza is a part of the discussion,” he said.

The uncommitted campaign continues to put pressure on the Democratic Party to listen to the multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and anti-war movement to stop U.S. money from going to Israel in its conflict with Gaza.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the past 10 months, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The war began after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas which killed 1,200 people.

The uncommitted campaign recently launched an effort aimed at getting Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to commit to an arms embargo.

Listen: Uncommitted delegates at DNC to put pressure on Harris’ Gaza policy

Ronald Stockton, professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Michigan -Dearborn, says it’s unlikely that Harris will take a stronger stance.

“Harris is not going to come out and renounce Israel. She’s not going to call for an arms embargo,” he said. “That’s not realistic.”

Stockton says privately Harris’ national security advisor is saying more to support a permanent ceasefire in exchange for Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees.

The Uncommitted National Movement began as the Listen to Michigan organization in February ahead of the primaries to get 10,000 uncommitted Democratic votes in protest of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

They garnered more than 100,000 uncommitted votes – birthing the Uncommitted National Movement across the U.S., with more than 700,000 uncommitted voters and now 30 uncommitted delegates.

Earlier this month hundreds of people gathered for a rally to support the Harris campaign at Detroit Metro Airport.

Just before the event, Alawieh and Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Layla Elabed asked Harris to set up a formal meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza. They say Harris seemed receptive to the idea, but a meeting has not yet been confirmed.

Alawieh says the uncommitted movement will endorse Harris if she chooses an arms embargo, one of the recent asks by the organization along with the “not another bomb” campaign to stop funding bombs in the conflict.

“We will drop everything we’re doing, endorse Vice President Harris and make sure that we proactively encourage the voters who have believed in this movement to vote for Vice President Harris,” he said.

Some uncommitted voters, like Saleema Nawab — who voted uncommitted in the February primary — say that’s not enough to get their vote, however.

Nawab says before the conflict in Gaza she wasn’t very involved in politics but typically voted Democratic. She hopes the Democratic Party realizes that voters should not be taken for granted and they will no longer vote “for the lesser of two evils.”

“I understand that the threat of Trump is going to have, you know, consequences for not only my community but other communities. But I think that this two-party system needs to be shaken up, and our voices — that are beyond the Muslim and Arab voice — need to be heard in a serious way,” she said.

Nawab is considering voting for a third-party candidate, Green Party’s Jill Stein.

Critics say that uncommitted voters will likely have to decide between the two-party system in the end.

Wayne State University Professor Saeed Khan says uncommitted voters are engaged.

“If they were not interested in considering the Democratic Party in November, then one could say that they would be completely disengaged and put all of their efforts into third party candidates or just simply staying home,” Khan said. “But the fact that we’re seeing this level of engagement and interaction then suggests that they are possibly moving toward making a decision of voting for what is now the Harris-Walz ticket.”

Like many voters, Janae Wilson of Detroit says she’s waiting to see if Harris makes any strides in Gaza policy.

“Putting pressure on Kamala is not equal to electing Trump, in my opinion,” she said.

She hopes Harris addresses the arms embargo and addresses the Islamophobia in the U.S.

Alawieh says the uncommitted movement isn’t going anywhere.

“I hope that the Democratic Party doesn’t inadvertently help Donald Trump by failing to unite the base of our party around a more humane approach to Gaza policy,” he said.

The Uncommitted National Movement is speaking at the DNC this week about Gaza while tens of thousands of Pro-Palestinian protestors are also protesting the DNC over the Biden administration’s funding of the war in Gaza.

It’s been 10 months since the war in Gaza started.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces after Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking 251 hostage.

With the ongoing violence, President Joe Biden faced backlash for his Middle East policy. Michigan voters started the “uncommitted” movement during the February primary to protest the U.S. government supplying arms to Israel.

Read: Dearborn Mayor Hammoud: ‘There must be a timeline of how we achieve a just Palestinian state’

Now that Biden stepped aside, Vice President Kamala Harris’ nomination presents an opportunity for change in policies surrounding the war. Her views appear to be in line with Biden’s in regards to Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Yet, she has also urged Israeli forces to allow humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip through a temporary ceasefire. 

Today on Created Equal, host Stephen Henderson talks to former Democratic Congressman Andy Levin and Abbas Alweih, an uncommitted delegate to the Democratic Party convention, about politics inside the Democratic Party, and how the war in Gaza — and the United States’ support for Israel — is affecting those politics.

Guests

Andy Levin is a Senior Fellow for the Center for American Progress and former U.S. Representative of Michigan’s 9th Congressional District. He’s concerned VP Harris won’t be able to win in Michigan in November’s election because of its large Arab American population.

“I don’t see how [Democrats] could win Michigan without changing policy on Gaza, because we’re the most densely Arab American state [and] we have many other Muslim Americans who are so upset about this,” Levin said. “Remember the AME bishops writing about this: thousands of Black pastors and many people in the African American community, progressives, Jewish progressives, students on our campuses [are upset]. Even though Biden beat Trump 14 times [more] in 2020 [than] Trump beat Hillary in 2016 in Michigan, he still only won by 154,000 votes.”

Abbas Alaweih is the spokesperson for the Listen to Michigan Campaign, and an uncommitted delegate. Though he feels he has a place in the Democratic party, its Middle East foreign policy is difficult to handle as someone with family members in Lebanon.

“[The] experience of going to work on Capitol Hill, even during Democratic leadership, oftentimes, was an experience of going to work in institutions that were actively funding the harming and killing [of] people like me,” Alaweih said. “For whatever reason, in our politics, there is just this sort of assumed idea that Palestinian lives, Arab lives, Muslim lives — matter just a little bit less.”