Why so many Muslims are taking a punt on Trump

Perhaps one of the most eye-catching trends ahead of the 2024 election is that Muslim Americans are turning away from the Democratic Party and pledging their support to the ‘Islamophobic’ Donald Trump.

For years, the Democrats have complacently assumed that America’s increasing racial, cultural and religious diversity would hand them a permanent majority in elections. But this theory of ‘demographic destiny’ has proven to be a complete myth. Indeed, there have been many recent signs of this. Even though Trump was comfortably defeated in the last presidential election, he managed to win the highest share of non-white voters for a Republican presidential candidate in 60 years. While the shifting voting patterns among Hispanic and African-American voters are now well known, more attention should be paid to Muslim Americans.

The growing Muslim support for Trump might seem surprising, not least as he is so often condemned as an anti-Muslim bigot. After all, this is the same Donald Trump who instituted a so-called Muslim ban within a week of taking office in 2017 – nationals from several Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, were temporarily banned from entering the US. This is also a man once described by London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, as ‘one of the most egregious examples’ of the global far-right threat.

Nevertheless, in recent years, Trump has only helped to rebuild the GOP’s standing among America’s Muslim voters. Exit polls for the last presidential election suggested he won about 35 per cent of Muslim voters, exceeding his support among Jewish Americans (30 per cent) and voters with no religious affiliation (26 per cent).

To put this in perspective, Muslim support for George W Bush after the post-9/11 so-called War on Terror, as well as heightened domestic surveillance through the Patriot Act, plummeted to a paltry seven per cent in the 2004 presidential election.

What could possibly explain this turnaround? Foreign and domestic policy both play their part. Many Muslim Americans are furious with the Democrats for their backing of Israel amid the war in Gaza. And while Trump has never claimed to be on the side of the Palestinians – he even describes himself as Israel’s sole ‘protector’ – his non-interventionist approach to foreign policy is looked upon favourably by those who have long been fed up with the many destabilising US-led military campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa.

Domestically, the social conservatism of many Muslim Americans is a world apart from the radical wokism that prevails within the Democratic Party – whether it is on same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia or trans rights. A growing number of Muslim-American businesses and self-employed contractors are also thriving in the so-called land of opportunity, meaning that they may be attracted to the GOP’s traditional championing of business and entrepreneurialism. For both economic and social reasons, there is a growing chasm between Muslim Americans and the Democratic Party that the Republicans can exploit.

While Muslim Americans may only represent a sliver of the American national population, they are a critical voter constituency in the swing state of Michigan – which includes the cities of Dearborn and Hamtramck in Wayne County. Dearborn is home to the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America. And Hamtramck is the only Muslim-majority city in the US. Last year, the city council voted to ban the flying of Pride flags on city property. More recently, the Democratic mayor of Hamtramck, Amer Ghalib, welcomed Donald Trump to the city and even endorsed him for president. No wonder Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is going all out to win back Muslim voters in battleground states such as Michigan.

Much like how Florida’s Muslim voters helped George W Bush over the line in his razor-thin victory over Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, it could well be Muslim Americans in Michigan who end up delivering Donald Trump to the White House in 2024. Stranger things have happened in this election.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.