Last month, Mohammed Hassan, a longtime city councilor in Hamtramck, Michigan, the only Muslim-majority city in the country, got a call from someone with Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign asking him what they needed to do to win back disaffected Michigan Muslims.
“I shouted at them. I shouted, really, I said, ‘You guys are not doing anything! You’re doing nothing! You need to do much much more,’” Hassan said. “I made a big noise.”
That message, which Hassan was hardly the only one delivering, appears to have finally gotten through to the Harris campaign, which has in the past two weeks dramatically ramped up efforts to win back a group of voters that could be critical in Michigan and other battleground states.
But Harris faces ongoing challenges in finding Muslim and Arab community leaders willing to publicly embrace her and risk blowback from their own constituents angered by the continued U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and Southern Lebanon.
Most Muslims have been reliable Democratic voters in recent years. But supporting Harris now can invite bitter and personal reproach from some parts of the community.
“They’re traumatized. They’re being threatened. They’re being cursed, spit on, saying that ‘you’re traitors. How could you support a genocidal candidate?’” Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn, Michigan-based Arab American News, said of Harris endorsers.
Dearborn, with its large Palestinian and Lebanese American communities, has been the epicenter of the blowback, with many families directly impacted by the war.
Arab America PAC, which has typically endorsed Democrats up and down the ballot, is meeting Saturday in Siblani’s office and virtually to make a final decision about its presidential endorsement. Siblani plans to personally advocate for leaving the top of the ticket blank and only endorsing down-ballot candidates.
Muslim voters, meanwhile, have expressed they have moral and religious concerns about supporting an administration they feel is complicit in what they view as genocide, even saying they don’t know if they could explain their vote for Harris on Judgement Day.
“No one in this community who is elected has stood with her so far because they know they’re going to lose their seat if they do that, if they’re Arab Americans or American Muslims,” Siblani added, with only some hyperbole.
A group called Muslim Women for Harris disbanded after the request was denied for a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention, only to re-form later.
Pro-Harris organizers speak of creating “permission structures” to make voters who otherwise agree with them on most issues and have a history of voting Democrat feel comfortable supporting Harris.
And they’ve found greater success in other parts of the hugely diverse Muslim community, which has roots on at least four continents far beyond the Levant, with Harris earning recent support from Somalis, South Asian and African-American Muslims.
That difference is also reflected among leaders, with Harris enjoying the support of prominent Muslim Democrats like Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Rep. Illhan Omar, D-Minn., but not Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American Democrat who represents Dearborn.
In nearby Hamtramck, for instance, which has a large Bengali and Yemeni population, Hassan said he is now confident that both communities will overwhelmingly support Harris -- especially after Trump this month said “a lot” of Yemeni refugees coming to the U.S. are “known terrorists.”
“Our people are not so worried about what’s happening to Gaza right now. Our people are worried about what happens after Donald Trump gets elected,” said Hassan, who has been on the city council for 16 years.
But the righteous anger at Harris and anyone who supports her is palpable as well.
Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, who is Palestinian-American and a vocal leader of the Uncommitted movement formed to protest President Joe Biden’s support for Israel, was heckled on stage at the National Arab American Convention in Dearborn last month.
As the audience cheered them on, one audience member accused Romman of “continuing to defend a genocider” while another said it was “disgusting” that Romman expressed willingness to give a speech at the Democratic National Convention.
“How do you plan to maintain trust and credibility within the Palestinian, Muslim and Arab communities when there is a perception that your support for Harris is at odds with advocating for an end to the genocide in Gaza?” a woman in a hijab asked Romman pointedly.
Romman had not endorsed Harris.
Recalling the moment weeks later, Romman said she was “totally unsurprised” by the hostility and that, while not representative, it is also not uncommon.
“We tried to warn people. I feel like people thought we were just making it up for attention,” Romman said of Muslim and Arab voter disaffection with Democrats over Gaza. “It is not the number one issue for the majority of voters. But it is the number one issue for enough voters to sway the election.”
The antipathy has been especially strong among supporters of Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who has cultivated unusually strong support among frustrated Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan and beyond.
In a rare move, the DNC Friday released a Harris-approved television ad that directly attacks Stein as a spoiler candidate for Trump, with a spokesperson saying the six-figure ad buy will be mostly focused on Michigan.
Stein’s vice presidential running mate, Butch Ware, a left-wing Muslim professor who has celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, said Muslims who support Harris will burn in hell for it.
“The ‘Muslims’ that have come out in support of Harris, have inscribed their names on the tablets of eternity alongside that of Nimrod, Pharoh, Caesar, and Yazid. Every soul slain in Gaza has a claim against them on Judgment Day. They best dress light- been hearing Hell is hot,” he said on X.
Hudhayfah Ahmad, spokesperson for the Abandon Harris Campaign, which grew out of an earlier effort to politically punish Biden for Gaza, dismissed groups that support Harris as merely “claiming to represent the Muslim-American community.
Harris’ supporters, meanwhile, have been candid about the unease they feel.
On a call last week with the largest Muslim group supporting her, Emgage, every single speaker said they felt conflicted and realized the decision would be “unpopular.” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., praised the group for their “courage to make this difficult choice in endorsing Kamala Harris.”
“We’re struggling because the candidate hasn’t given us anything to work with, beyond, ‘I really care and I’m upset,’” said Jim Zogby, the founder of Arab American Institute and a longtime Democratic National Committee member who hosted a panel on Palestinian rights at the Democratic Convention. “There is a very desperate need for them to do something that gives those of us who want to see a Democrat win something to take back to our people.”
Some of Harris’ supporters, both those public and private, say they understand the vice president cannot change foreign policy, they realize Jewish voters far outnumber and are better organized, and appreciate the effort she is making now.
But they say that she has not taken advantage of the chance to differentiate herself from Biden and lost critical time in the months between her ascension to the top of the ticket and now, when the big news about her engagement with Muslim and Arab voters was the decision not to allow a Palestinian speaker at the convention.
Zogby said he still hopes Harris will break with Biden on Israel like Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey did with the unpopular Vietnam War in the final days of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in 1968.
“There is an opening for her to create some distance with the administration,” he said. “It would be easy for her to win people back.”
Arab Americans for Harris-Walz, a new group composed largely of Washington staffers who were previously uncommitted on Harris, have also tried to draw a distinction between Harris and Biden — even though some of them currently work for his administration — but say their real focus is Trump.
This week, not only did Trump muse about turning Gaza into a glitzy resort “better than Monaco,” but his campaign said Gaza is a part of Israel, which Israel does not claim.
“We cannot allow Donald Trump, who is undoubtedly not our ally, to exploit our pain of today to return to the White House -- where he will further instigate violence and war in Gaza and the entire Middle East,” the group said in a statement announcing their launch last week.
Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, says they recognize the anger and think they have a good story to tell. They point to Harris’ support for a Gaza ceasefire in May during a civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, her vocal opposition to Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, and her tough rhetoric on Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Throughout her career, Vice President Harris has been steadfast in her support of our country’s diverse Muslim community,” said Nasrina Bargzie, the campaign’s director of Muslim and Arab American outreach. “She will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
