The letter comes as polling within the Muslim American community shows a major departure from the Democratic Party over the Biden-Harris administration’s unfettered support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which they along with rights groups and legal experts view is a genocide against Palestinians.
The letter calls on Muslims to instead vote for any of the third-party candidates, including the Green Party’s Jill Stein whose support has swelled among the Muslim American community in recent weeks.
“We want to be absolutely clear: don’t stay home and skip voting. This year, make a statement by voting third party for the presidential ticket,” the letter said.
“Equally important, vote all the way down the ballot for candidates and policies that stand for truth and justice, ensuring your voice is heard at every level.”
The letter, written and released in collaboration with the Abandon Harris campaign, was signed by more than three dozen religious leaders from all around the country, including Dawud Walid, Dr Shadee Elmasry, Imam Omar Suleiman, Dr Yasir Qadhi, and Imam Tom Facchine.
The imams who have signed the letter say the calls for Muslims to uncritically support Harris is fear-mongering.
“None of this is an endorsement of Donald Trump’s vile, racist agenda, which includes advancing the apartheid and genocidal interests of a foreign state while falsely claiming to put America first,” the letter said.
Oh look, we are both misunderstanding each other, posting protests as if I am against them. Look friend, neither of us like genocide. We both recognize it as a genocide. We both think action against the state in protest of the genocide to be a good thing. We both have probably participated in similar forms of action to that effect. Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt on that front. My argument is that voting does not diminish any of those actions. But not voting does nothing but increase the chance of a worse outcome overall both in relation to the genocide of palastinians and the harm that would come domestically to other at risk folk.
Terms like “it legitimizes electoral politics” or similar are nice self justifications for ignoring that choice, but you and I both know regardless of choice in the matter, the genocide will continue. So keep protesting. Keep direct actioning up the place. But also, take the half second to engage in a wee bit of lesser evilism, even if it hurts our pride to do so.
There. I didn’t do any shut up middle school lines. I made an argument.
Of course it doesn’t diminish other action, which is why I never said such a thing.
Democrats love to say that Orange Man will do genocide but more. There is no evidence for this, as Biden has already given his unconditional support to Israel in their extermination efforts, even to the point of using executive authority to circumvent Congress twice early in the effort. Biden has already put his full weight behind it, usually has the full support of Congress, and is willing to circumvent Congress when that’s not the case.
The only demonstrable difference is how they talk about it and how the media chooses to characterize it. Like with Obama and the border, expect a lot more reporting on the devastation in Gaza if Trump wins, but don’t labor under the delusion that it’s because circumstances changed. There were already kids in cages at the border; There were already kids crucified on rebar on the side of a ruined building in Gaza.
[Also, just since this is the second time you wrote it that way, I’ll point out that in English they are called Palestinians with an e as that second vowel]
So, beyond just using minorities as a prop to cover for supporting Democrats, there are still a few other problems I have with this:
They aren’t having 2000-pound bombs dropped on them. They aren’t having their ambulances blasted of the street and their journalists shot in the head. The magnitude of harm here is different.
From a long-term perspective, the purpose of not voting for Dems is to create a left opposition. This wouldn’t just help Palestinians, it would help all marginalized people the US impacts.
Pledging unending fealty to the Democrats likewise has consequences. Democrats have already taken up Trump’s 2020 border policy and, while paying lipservice to vaguely progressive things, they have been drifting further and further right because the logic that leftists must vote for them so long as they are at least an inch to the left of Republicans means that they have no reason to move to the left for the sake of leftists. They already own the leftists, what the hell would they make concessions for? So we must do something to force concessions out of them, as all concessions are won.
It’s a good thing I never said that either, then. What I did say is that voting for Kamala legitimizes Kamala, which is also something Kamala will say, just like Joe has said. My position, and the position of any decent Marxist, is to vote third party, because that’s the only way to generate a coherent message that a certain platform has elements that a substantial segment of the population demands.
You know, the thing that always tells me that someone is whipped by the Democrats is how they purport to hate the Democrats and what they are doing and are purely seeking a “pragmatic” solution, but then go “Please, please, please, vote for Kamala” without inquiring into other details like if the person they are talking to lives in a contested state. If you were really serious about opposition to the reactionary policies of the Democrats and we were talking about voting, it seems like the very first thing to investigate even assuming you were correct about everything you’ve said because cutting down the popular vote winnings in favor of non-genocidal third parties is absolutely, obviously correct.
So don’t worry, I’ll vote for someone, but you’ll never get me to support the claim that ending genocide is off the table or that the Palestinian people should be seen as sacrificial lambs who need to die for the sake of Americans.