For A Lot Of Muslim Republicans, Their Party's Over - 0 views
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Khalifa’s loyalty to the GOP runs deep, and yet he’s down to maybe two Republican candidates he says he can vote for in good conscience in the November midterm elections. His East Texas ballot will include a candidate who apologized after approving a white nationalist rally, a bankruptcy-plagued radio host nicknamed “the Trump of Texas,” and a state official who compared Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes. Oh, and Sen. Ted Cruz. (“Just evil,” Khalifa said.)
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“I can’t vote for people who are not just anti-Muslim, but who are anti anything that isn’t like them,” he said. “Unless you’re a white person in this country, you don’t matter to them.”
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Muslims left the GOP en masse in the post-9/11 era of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act.Now, under Trump, Muslims who stayed Republican are once again navigating what it means to be in a party where they no longer feel welcome. As the episodes become uglier and more frequent, they face a choice: Leave the party in protest or stay and fight?
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Despite the Trump era’s lack of official channels between the White House and Islamic groups, a handful of Muslim Republicans say they’re still using personal connections to lobby on issues such as the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, or attempts to block mosque-building projects in the United States. Those slivers of access aren’t nearly enough, they say, making them all the more determined to push back against their party’s narrowing definition of who counts as American.
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As a Dallas-based security analyst, Elibiary has helped counterterrorism officials craft policy and handle sensitive cases involving Muslims. In 2011, the FBI, led at the time by Robert Mueller, gave Elibiary the agency’s highest award for public service. Even so, right-wing Republicans called Elibiary a terrorist sympathizer and a secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also was asked to step down from local GOP posts because he accepted an appointment to a Homeland Security committee during the Obama administration.
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Fatima Elkabti, 30 and Mohammad Arif, 29, a Democratic Muslim couple Khalifa befriended when they moved to Texas four years ago, said they’ve watched Khalifa’s disappointment grow as Trumpism spreads through the party and state he loves.Sometimes, they said, it seems like Khalifa refuses to accept that the Texas that welcomed his Egyptian parents is now a place where Arif’s dental office was defaced with white nationalist stickers within a week of opening last year. At Elkabti’s optometry office, a photo of her in a hijab is displayed prominently outside the door in part to weed out bigots who might cause trouble if they show up for an appointment to find that their eye doctor is Muslim.
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Ahmed, a patent attorney who lives in Oregon, said she was such a novelty at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland that she got face time with leaders she might never have met otherwise. When Ahmed was introduced to former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Peter King of New York, she said, she spent several minutes confronting them about their anti-Muslim remarks.The main critique of her approach is that it starts by arguing for Muslims’ humanity, as if the onus is on Muslims to prove not all 1.7 billion of them are terrorists. Many young Muslims are done with condemning attacks they had nothing to do with, or ingratiating themselves to politicians who lash out at Islam. Ahmed defends her methods by arguing pragmatism rather than ideology: Isn’t face-to-face dialogue more effective than shouting from the sidelines?“I shouldn’t be the first Muslim people talk to,” Ahmed said. “But talking directly makes a huge difference in presenting a different image of Islam, and of Muslims.”
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Khalifa feels the squeeze from the Republican side, too. There was a time, Khalifa said, when he could get just about any politician to come to the mosque. Khalifa said even Rep. Louie Gohmert, a tea party stalwart, paid a visit before he transformed into one of the most strident anti-Muslim voices in Congress. Now, he said, Gohmert won’t take his calls.
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“I don’t ever try to push young Muslim Americans into the party, because they don’t deserve that kind of bigotry or intolerance,” Elibiary said. “I can put up with it as a 43-year-old. They can’t as a 23-year-old.”