What Does It Mean for America’s Muslims to Achieve 82 Seats in the Midterm Elections?

Muslims in America increased their presence in several states, with former President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant trend not achieving a majority in the congressional midterm elections.

The Muslims of America set a new record in the elections for Congress, local councils, states, and federal councils, which started on November 9, 2022.

The process of counting the votes in the US midterm elections continues. US President Joe Biden has expressed his willingness to work with the Republicans regardless of the results, while ruling out the defeat of the Democrats.

It was not yet clear who would control the Senate, while Republicans came close to securing a majority in the House of Representatives, a day after Democrats performed better than expected and avoided a “red wave” of Republicans in the midterm elections.

82 Muslims succeeded in achieving a final electoral victory in the various councils, including three who won membership in Congress (the House of Representatives) and 38 in the state legislatures, compared to 71 who won in the 2020 elections.

The majority of the winners were candidates from the Democratic Party or independents, and a few of them from the Republican Party, according to monitoring by the Jetpac Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The US elections witnessed the progress of 146 Muslim American candidates competing for local, state, and federal positions, including 51 state legislative candidates competing in 23 states. The winning rate is excellent because it means 56 percent of the candidates win.

 

Winning Details

Three Muslim Representatives have finally won seats in Congress (House of Representatives). They are Andre Carson, the attorney general of Minnesota who has been a congressman since 2017 with re-election, Ilhan Omar (Democrat from Minnesota), and Rashida Tlaib (Democrat from Michigan) won for the second time.

The secular Muslim candidate, the popular American TV presenter, and Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz failed in his bid to become the first Muslim in the US Senate, losing narrowly to Democrat John Fetterman.

The Muslims of America expressed their satisfaction with Oz’s downfall, for he was described as a card pushed by Trump, who had previously threatened to close the country’s mosques, and owed his political rise to a figure who spread Islamophobia on a larger scale than any other American president.

On November 9, 2022, The New York Times quoted Muslims who had refused to elect him because of his disavowal of his Islamic roots and his penchant for secular teachings, including Abdul Majeed Chaudhry, vice president of the Islamic Society of Chester County, Philadelphia.

But other Muslim candidates, some of whom are veiled women, succeeded in securing important seats in the states of Minnesota, Illinois, Louisiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Florida, and California in the contests and consolidated their votes.

It is noteworthy that three of the winning Muslim candidates, including two in Congress (Rashida Tlaib and Abdel Nasser Rashid), and one veiled for membership in the Georgia State Assembly (Ruwa Romman), are of Palestinian origin.

Therefore, it is believed that this victory and the increase in the number of Muslims and Arabs in the House of Representatives will constitute a shock to the Zionist lobby, which for the past years has been waging hate campaigns against MPs Omar and Tlaib, and all representatives who support Arab and Islamic causes.

The Executive Director of the Jetpac Center, Mohammed Missouri, considered the defeated, for the second cycle, “Trumpism” as a phenomenon that represents a threat to democracy.

At the state level, 21 Muslims won the seat of a legislator (member of parliament) in the state, then 16 Muslim candidates who made history joined them, bringing the total number of these legislators in the US states to 43 across America.

 

What does winning mean?

The victory and these historic gains did not come randomly but rather as a result of years of the Muslim community building a solid infrastructure to achieve sustainable electoral success, said Jetpac Resource Center Executive Director Mohammed Missouri in a statement.

He emphasized that “political decisions regarding education, housing, climate, and civil rights are shaped by state legislatures, so it is critical that our voice [as Muslims] is represented in this policymaking.”

The continued victory of Muslims and their advancement in positions came as a result of the maturing strategy of entering political life and extracting their rights, and protecting them by themselves through parliamentary seats.

These are promising results that allow the Muslim community in America to come forward to defend Muslims vigorously and stand against waves of Islamophobia.

Muslim voter turnout in the US elections has grown since the 2022 elections, in which nearly 1.1 million Muslim voters cast their ballots and were large enough to influence the presidential race, according to what was published by Politico on April 26, 2022.

This was preceded by the achievement of historic breakthroughs by the Muslims of America in the local elections in November 2021, when 11 of them reached the municipal councils, including three in the position of “mayor” after the year 2020. 57 Muslims also won the congressional and municipal elections.

The Muslims of America also achieved a record in the legislative elections that took place in November 2020, when 111 of them ran in 25 American states, and 57 of them won.

On November 16, 2021, the British network, BBC, saw their victory as a strong indication of the change of Muslims and their confrontation of discrimination against them, by descending into the multicultural political arena, in which they constitute more than half of the population, and imposing their political vision.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) encouraged Muslims to vote and revealed that a poll it conducted showed that 91.2 percent of them participated in the midterm elections, which is close to their participation rate in the 2018 elections, which reached 95 percent.

CARE also provided a question form for candidates and government officials, encouraging Muslim voters to ask questions about issues such as religious freedom, civil rights, and anti-discrimination.