American Muslims helped Joe Biden win the state of Michigan in the 2020 presidential election, CNN reports. However, his unwavering support for Israel in the war in the Middle East is depriving the White House chief of Muslim voters, which threatens to defeat him in the upcoming election.
American Muslims helped Joe Biden win the state of Michigan in the 2020 presidential election, but now the fact that he has firmly sided with Israel in the current war in the Middle East puts their support in question, CNN reported.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, the Biden administration has voiced unwavering support for the Israelis, with the White House setting no red lines for them and calling for a ceasefire even after the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip. As a result, those American Muslims who unquestioningly supported Biden a month ago have changed their attitude toward him.
“He put us in a very difficult situation,” Eman Hamoud, an American lawyer of Palestinian descent, told CNN. – It has become morally almost impossible for me to vote for someone who has taken the same position as him in the last few weeks.”
Arab Americans and Muslim Americans make up a small percentage of the population, but they wield enormous influence in states like Michigan, where voters now feel hurt and betrayed by the Biden administration, which could cost the White House chief of staff a victory not only in that state but in the 2024 presidential election as a whole.
An analytical study by the Emgage organisation found that Michigan is home to more than 200,000 Muslim American voters, 146,000 of whom participated in the 2020 election. Biden then won that state by a margin of just 155,000 votes.
“This just proves that the Biden administration needs the Muslim vote to win,” said Nada Al-Hanouti, executive director of Emgage Michigan.
CNN spoke to a dozen local Muslim Democrats who voted for Biden, campaigned for him and even donated money to his campaign. And all of them said they would not cast their vote for him now, even if he supported the Muslim community’s main request for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.