'Genocide must be our red line': Black Muslim leaders shun Harris for US president
Community leaders sign statement backing candidates supporting Gaza ceasefire and arms embargo against Israel
Pro-Palestinian
protesters demonstrate blocks away from the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on 22 August 2024 (John Moore/AFP)
Published date: 21 October 2024
A group of approximately 50 Black Muslim leaders have signed a statement urging Black and Muslim American
voters to shun Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for
the White House and instead back candidates who support a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel.
The new statement, first reported by Middle East Eye, is the latest
effort from Muslim community leaders - from imams to scholars, to
activists to politicians - telling voters not to choose Vice President
Harris in the upcoming November election over her unwillingness to
commit to policy changes that would hold Israel accountable for its
ongoing war on Gaza and now Lebanon, which has killed tens of thousands
of Palestinians and Lebanese people.
"Although some Muslim Americans have nevertheless argued that our
community must support Vice President Harris because of her positions on
domestic issues or their belief that Donald Trump might be even worse
on issues like Gaza, we respectfully disagree with their conclusion,"
the statement said.
"As Muslims obliged to uphold justice and as Black Americans whose
ancestors experienced the worst of crimes, genocide must be our red
line."
It adds that "we simply cannot support a candidate who participated
in a genocide and now refuses to lay out any plan to end that genocide".
The statement comes after a series of different statements and
letters from leading figures and organisations in the wider
Muslim-American community were published in recent weeks endorsing or
shunning candidates for the US 2024 election.
On 20 September, a coalition of leading Muslim organisations in the US released a statement calling on voters to vote for candidates that both support a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo against Israel.
Then, on 30 September, dozens of imams from across the country signed a letter endorsing
a call for Muslims to vote third-party in the election, with the goal
of sending the Democratic Party a message about their outrage over the
Biden-Harris administration's steadfast support for Israel's war on
Gaza. That letter has more than 130 signatories.
A week later, the Muslim-led Abandon Harris movement endorsed the Green Party's Jill Stein for president.
"We call on Muslim voters to support only a pro-ceasefire and
pro-arms embargo presidential candidate, as well as candidates down the
ballot who support other just policies, including economic justice,
religious freedom, healthcare for all, humane immigration policy,
reforming the criminal justice system, and racial equality," the
statement from Black Muslim leaders said.
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Ismahan Abdullahi, a Muslim community leader in San Diego and a
signatory of the statement, told Middle East Eye that the effort is an
opportunity for Americans to "reflect on our role in regards to
sustaining injustices globally".
"When we look back at the movements that have been successful in
asking this country to change course, Black communities have been at the
core of that change and were the drivers of that change," Abdullahi
said.
A copy of the statement was shared with MEE and organisers say they plan to share it on the same website hosting the previous letter from leading imams.
So far, 47 people from 17 states and Washington DC have signed the
letter, and organisers of the effort say they are working to gather
additional signatures.
False narratives
The statement from Black Muslim leaders comes several weeks after NBC News reported earlier this month that around 25 Black Muslims had endorsed Harris for president.
NBC's reporting, which made no mention of the significantly larger
group of imams endorsing third-party candidates, claimed that the 25
Black Muslims supporting Harris was a sign she was winning back Muslims
disaffected by her administration's Gaza policy.
The endorsement reported by NBC was also organised by a current Biden
administration appointee, which was not mentioned in the report.
Abdullahi said she and other organisers in the Black Muslim community
"might not have access to the mainstream media as others might", but
added that she hopes this new statement will highlight the
"interconnectedness between the Black and Palestinian struggle and how
undeniable that interconnection is".
While some Black Muslim leaders have expressed support for Harris, recent polling by the Yaqeen Institute has shown that only 32 percent of Black Muslims plan on voting for her in this upcoming election.
“There’s a false narrative that is being pushed that the majority of
Muslims who are Black are Kamala Harris supporters,” Imam Dawud Walid, a
community and faith leader in the state of Michigan, told MEE.
'There's a false narrative that is being pushed that the majority of Muslims who are Black are Kamala Harris supporters'
- Imam Dawud Walid
Walid is also a signatory to the initial letter where imams endorsed
the third-party vote but felt the need to also join this effort to show
many Black Muslim leaders are against a Harris presidency.
"There's this narrative that is trying to divide the community to say
that the majority of Muslims who aren't Black are supporting third
party, but the majority of Muslims who are Black are somehow divided
from the rest of the community, and that's not true," Walid said.
"It's sowing racial division amongst American Muslims during a genocide of our brothers and sisters in Gaza."
Organisers of the letter of this group of Black Muslims say it is the
latest effort in what is a long and deep-rooted history of
Black-Palestinian solidarity.
"Black communities have fought tirelessly against slavery, against
segregation, against racial violence, so it recognises the Palestinian
struggle is the same fight for freedom, for dignity and the right to
self-determination," Abdullahi said.
"Just as Jim Crow saw a South try to keep the Black community
subjugated, we're seeing Palestinians undergoing that, Israel using
their apartheid system to strip them of their land, of their rights. It
goes beyond solidarity."
Many leading Black American activists and intellectuals throughout
the past several decades have supported Palestinian rights and spoken
against Zionism and US support for Israel, including Malcolm X, Kwame
Ture, James Baldwin, and Angela Davis.
In 2015, when residents of Ferguson, Missouri, came out to protest on
the streets after the police killing of Michael Brown, a young unarmed
Black teenager, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and those
in the diaspora signed a statement of solidarity, and some Palestinians also sent tips via social media on the best ways to deal with the militarised tactics used by Israeli and American police forces.
"We are rooted in our shared experience of resilience and resistance and hope for a better world," said Abdullahi.
A major shift
Current polls show that Harris and Trump are neck and neck, with both
candidates making efforts to draw support from Muslim and Arab
Americans who say that they could decide the presidency in swing states
like Michigan.
The November election is shaping up to be a major shift in the voting patterns of Muslim Americans.
Over the past few months, there has been a large departure in the
Muslim-American community away from the Democratic Party as a result of
US support for the war on Gaza.
So far, Israeli forces have killed over 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza,
according to the official death toll released by the health ministry in
Gaza.
However, Israel's military has destroyed much of Gaza's civilian
infrastructure, including Gaza's hospitals where deaths are officially
registered. Other estimates by experts have the death toll near 200,000
Palestinians, which is about one percent of the total population in
Gaza.
Israeli forces have targeted schools, mosques, UN shelters, and in
addition to killing civilians, Israeli soldiers have killed medical
workers, foreign aid workers, and journalists throughout this conflict.
Throughout the war, the Biden-Harris administration has supported Israel with diplomatic cover and military aid.
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While media reports have said Harris has shown greater sympathy to Palestinians than President Biden, Harris advisors recently told The New York Times that any sympathy shouldn't be confused with a break from US foreign policy towards Israel.
For two decades, a majority of the faith community voted Democrat in presidential elections.
In 2020, 69 percent of Muslims voted for Biden over Trump. However,
polling from the Council on American Islamic Relations showed that this
past summer, Stein, the Green Party's presidential candidate, was tied
with Harris among Muslim voters.
Yaqeen Institute's polling conducted between 27 August to 8 September
found that more than 50 percent of Muslims were voting for someone
other than Harris or Trump. In that poll, Harris only received 14
percent of Muslim voters, while Trump got four percent.
Earlier this month, the Abandon Harris movement, a Muslim-led
organisation aimed at electorally punishing the Democrats for their Gaza
policies, announced they were endorsing Stein and her running-mate,
Butch Ware, for the presidential ticket.
"I believe that this is going to be a generational shift in the
American Muslim community toward not giving blind allegiance to the
Democratic Party," Walid said.
Walid noted that the majority of Muslim Americans voted for George W
Bush prior to the 9/11 attacks, but "after the bloodshed in Iraq and the
draconian policies that were signed into law by President Bush",
Muslims in large part shifted towards the Democrats, "even though the
majority of Democrats supported those same domestic policies".
"I believe that besides some failed domestic policies, the
Biden-Harris administration's active support of genocide will cause a
significant percentage of American Muslims to abandon the Democratic
Party for a generation," Walid said.