Muslim votes

POSTED BY Marc Boxser, 13 February 2008

It is interesting that, certainly in the democratic primaries, the ethnicity of the electorate has come so much into play- hispanics seem to favor Hillary, African American's Barack Obama- with pollsters and pundits now scrambling to figure out the ethnic make up of places like Hawaii and Wisconsin. With Muslim's numbering between 2 and 7 million in this country, it seems sad that in an election where every candidate is running around trying desperately to show their ethnic credentials, Muslims and Arabs have been pro-actively completely absent. As my friend Ahmad Sadri put it in a recent email:

"One candidate who based his bid on racist attacks on Muslims has dropped out for unrelated reasons.  Another who is accused of being a Muslim is busy emphatically denying these vicious
rumors.  It appears that (given the political atmosphere created by right wing and religious institutions) the only way Muslims can influence the elections is not through promising but by "threatening" to
offer their full support, which would be a kiss of death to any candidate."

There seems something inherently tragic about this situation. Islam and Muslims feature prominently in the public dialogue- from Rudy's down right racist scare-mongering ad to Mitt Romney being asked if he would want to have a Muslim in his cabinet, and yet the Muslim and Arab population seems to be, at least as a bloc, to be silent.