Muslim Voters and the Hillary-Obama Primary Contest
By Kaleem Kawaja
Washington, DC
The Democratic Party Presidential Primary election contest between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barrack Obama is in full swing. Impressive wins in the primaries in the important states of Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island have enthused Senator Clinton’s campaign and has stopped the earlier impressive momentum of Senator Obama who had recorded a string of victories in caucuses and primaries in several smaller states. The see-saw close contest between the two frontrunners and the upcoming primaries in the important states of Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina in late April are generating a lot of excitement among not only Democrats but Independents and Republicans too.
In the weeks since February 5th – Super Tuesday - the Democratic Party’s primaries have become the focus of electioneering and generated a great deal of excitement. That excitement has been felt by the American Muslim voters also. As the media is bringing up more news about the past records and positions of both candidates, the electorate at large is continuing to refresh its views and positions in this razor thin race that is going to go down to the wire to the Democratic Party’s Denver convention itself.
One expects that like other voters Muslims will be in all camps, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama. It was expected that McCain having differed from President Bush on several key issues, e.g. immigration, campaign finance reform, abortion, and having positioned himself only slightly to the right of the Center, some Muslim voters would support him. But the picture of the community is otherwise. Today you will find very few Muslims supporting John McCain, perhaps because of his pro-Iraq war stance. When we turn to the Democratic primary contest between Clinton and Obama the expectation is that Muslim voters will look at the detailed backgrounds of both candidates, their experience and electability against John McCain in the November election in making a decision for the most important job on earth.
Surprisingly what we find is that quite a few Muslim voters, including the well-educated folks, are getting swayed into the Obama camp. Instead of looking at the fact that President Clinton did provide significant support to Muslims around the globe, namely in Bosnia, Kosovo, Russia, China, the Muslim nations in Africa, and his sincere effort to resolve the Palestinian problem in 2000, Muslims seem to have developed a tunnel vision. In their vision what a lot of Muslim voters see are emotional factors, namely Senator Obama’s middle name ‘Hussain’; his late father being a Muslim; him being a colored person; and his very idealistic rhetoric.
Surprisingly, when news broke about the frequent, overblown, anti-American rhetoric of Senator Obama’s long time pastor and close friend Rev Jeremiah Wright (“God Damn America”, “praise for the 9/11 Al Qaeda terrorist attack on US”, “allegations that US Government disseminated germs of lethal diseases like HIV in the African-American community”), it was strange to see quite a few Muslim supporters of Senator Obama not cringe from it and look the other way, rather than condemn it. Surprisingly, Muslim voters are ignoring the fact that Senator Obama is maintaining a lot of distance from the Muslim community to the point of not even recognizing the sizeable existence of Muslims in the US, and is the only Presidential candidate who unilaterally proclaimed more than a year before the election that as President he will unilaterally bomb Pakistan. Have Muslims reflected on the possibility that if elected President, Barrack Obama may, in his own interest, totally ignore the interests of Muslim Americans?
At the same time in discussing Senator Clinton’s campaign with Muslim voters I often hear some of them mention with distaste her connections with the American Jewish community, and her female gender. Also, many of them believe negative rumors about her background without verifying them.
Such one-sidedness by a significant proportion of US Muslim voters against Senator Clinton in a very close primary contest, with so many primaries to go, makes me wonder why our community is not more balanced and mature. The Jewish people in the US are another immigrant religious minority like us who have worked themselves into an influential position in the US society with sheer hard work. In the 1400-year global history of the Muslims, except for the last sixty years, Muslims and Jews have always gotten along very well. Yes, the brutal activities of the state of Israel in behaving in a beastly manner against the Palestinians in the last sixty years is abominable. Yet, in both Israel and the US a significant number of Jews oppose the harsh policies of Israel towards the Palestinians.
We American Muslims and our children are destined to live in the US for a long time to come. Is it logical for us American Muslims to maintain such intense antipathy towards the very influential and well-entrenched US Jewish population that, the mere support of many (not all) US Jews to Senator Clinton’s campaign is making us oppose her without properly reviewing the merits of her candidacy and her electability in November? Is it good that we allow the male supremacist and reverse racial tendencies to overtake our better senses and oppose in significant numbers Senator Clinton’s campaign, ignoring her overall superior strength compared to Senator Obama?
In the 2000 Presidential election the American Muslim voters made a similar error of judgment when they overlooked the many strengths of the Gore-Lieberman ticket, and were swayed into the Bush-Cheney camp simply because George Bush promised to review the government policy of profiling of Muslim passengers at US airports, and because Lieberman was a Jew.
Does it not behoove the well-educated American Muslim voters that they dispassionately look at the merits of the candidacy of both, the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from New York, and that consequently they be divided in the two camps somewhat evenly as is happening in most places in the US? Should not American Muslims reflect on the reality that their not properly thought out support for a candidate, who does not match well against Senator McCain, may result in the Republican Party capturing the White House for another eight years? The time to think and act is now.
(The writer is a community activist in Washington DC. He can be reached at kaleemkawaja@ hotmail.com)
