Daily Kos Celebrates Muslim American Heritage Month, July 2023

Muslim American Heritage Month: Our Equity Commitment at Daily Kos

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In July 2023, it seems more important than ever to highlight both the successes of the long-established Muslim American community as well as the ongoing bigotry its members endure.

Two years ago, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) and 22 co-sponsors introduced House Resolution 541, “Expressing support for the recognition of July as ‘Muslim-American Heritage Month’ and celebrating the heritage and culture of Muslim Americans in the United States.” Despite the prospects of passing a comparable bill during this session being zero, given the current Republican majority in the U.S. House, the details cited in that proposed legislation remain steadfastly relevant.

In calling for a special national observance, the resolution acknowledges the groundbreaking accomplishments of many Muslim Americans in fields ranging from sports to medicine to entrepreneurship to politics. It also refers to the great racial and ethnic diversity among Muslim Americans, who can claim roots in nearly half the countries of the world and who include people identifying as Black, Asian, Latino, and white. Indeed, the history of Muslims in America goes back at least 400 years if not longer, since a sizable proportion of Africans kidnapped and forced into chattel slavery in the U.S. were Muslim.

Robert McCaw, government affairs director for the Council for American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, recently observed in connection with this year’s National Muslim Advocacy Days lobbying event:

The American Muslim community is the most ethnically diverse religious community in the U.S. and has been in this country since its founding…. But so much of that history has been lost on the average American who only views Muslim Americans as recent immigrants.

While popular imagination tends to associate Muslim identity with Arab religion, especially since 9/11, Muslim Americans have fought in every war since the Revolution and claim Black and Asian Americans as part of their ethnic community.

Religious intolerance has deep roots in American culture and history. Like other religious minorities (read: non-Christians), Muslim Americans have too often been the targets of xenophobia and bigotry. Many parts of the country have had long established Muslim communities, some dating back to the 1800s. But starting in the early 1920s—and continuing for two full generations until modest reforms were implemented in 1965—exclusionary, racist immigration laws restricted immigration of Muslims from most regions of the world.

At the beginning of the 21st century, white Christian nationalists and those who were susceptible to their arguments pounced on the terror attacks of 9/11 to rationalize increased hostility toward all Muslims, including their fellow citizens. Islamophobia has also played a major role in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in general has negatively influenced U.S. foreign policy toward Middle Eastern and North African nations.

Donald Trump issued an Executive Order in January 2017 which banned the entry of citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries to the U.S. and showed us just how far his administration would go in attacking foundational principles of religious tolerance.

Although the Trump Administration was forced to modify the original ban, the reactionary members of the Supreme Court eventually ruled in the administration’s favor in Trump v. Hawaii, downplaying the religious bias still present in the slightly milder version of the ban and undermining the protections offered by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. That travel/immigration ban is still in effect.

The federal government has been slow to accord Muslim Americans their full protections under the U.S. Constitution, and the effort to diversify the federal judiciary offers a striking example of the lag in full representation. The first Muslim American judge appointed to the federal bench, Zahid Quraishi, was confirmed only two years ago; last month, Nusrat Chowdhury became the first Muslim American woman to be seated as a U.S. District Court judge, serving the Eastern District of New York.

As has often been the case for other people coping with marginalization and systemic bias from the white Christian supremacist social and political infrastructure in the United States, Muslim Americans find strength and validation, joy and sustenance in community.

Both intra- and inter-community-building efforts have begun to bear fruit, particularly in electoral politics. Three current members of the U.S. House of Representatives are Muslim, down from four following the departure in 2019 of Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim Congressperson who was first elected in 2006. These three—André Carson (D-IN), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)—are all Midwesterners besides being Muslim, but their different backgrounds help represent the broad range of the American Muslim experience.

On the state and local level as well, Muslim candidates achieved remarkable success in 2020 and 2021. In November 2020, five Muslim candidates won their races and thus became the first Muslims to hold a seat in their respective state legislatures of Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Their victories almost doubled the number of Muslims serving in state legislatures, which demonstrates just how much more representation is needed.

In November 2021, the small city of Hamtramck, Michigan, became the first U.S. city with an all-Muslim city council. Once a Polish Catholic enclave, the city has experienced major demographic changes in the past few years. Last month, however, the council of this small enclave garnered international news coverage for an entirely different matter, namely their vote to prohibit the display of any variation of an LGBTQ flag on city property.

Conservatives of all backgrounds often resort to the divide and conquer game. By no means is this decision meeting universal support among Hamtramck residents, Muslim or otherwise. It has also prompted a strong critical reaction from a number of progressive Muslims with ties to the community, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American Muslim ally of the LGBTQ community whose original district abutted Hamtramck. On June 16, Tlaib tweeted

I can’t imagine how it feels for our LGBTQ+ neighbors in Hamtramck to watch their own elected reps decide their existence doesn’t matter. This is painful to see in a city that has always fought for equal justice for all. This action divides our communities.

Tom Perkins, a veteran reporter on the city’s political dynamics, wrote:

While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election….The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide, and other US cities have passed similar bans, with the vast majority driven by often white politically conservative Americans….

On one level, the discord that has flared between Muslim and non-Muslim populations in recent years has its root in a culture clash that is unique to a partly liberal small US city now under conservative Muslim leadership, residents say….However, race and religion add more fraught layers to Hamtramck’s issues. Islamophobia exists here, and some Muslims say they saw bigotry in local voter fraud investigations, and in LGBTQ+ supporters not respecting their religion.

In the face of the worsening threat posed by American Christian theocrats to a healthy civil society in this country, the successes of American Muslims in the public arena are indeed cause for gratitude and appreciation. These accomplishments also signal a different stage in the process of creating a truly multicultural democracy respecting the rights and the values of all.

No single individual can encompass the range of experiences and perspectives; being Muslim in America may indicate some commonalities but the population is not at all monolithic. The links provided below offer only a tiny sample of perspectives and commentary on the vast, complex, and ever-evolving lived experiences of Muslim Americans.

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