6 Ways American Muslim Political Organizing Has Been a Comprehensive Failure

They all seem to involve insults. Lots of them.

Our Engagement in Politics was Never about Success 

Are you concerned that politicians in the Democratic Party don’t care what you think? The problem is not you. The gross, insulting, and undignified style of Muslim political engagement we have in place is designed to fail. Despite a generation of Muslim political organizing with less than nothing to show for it, we can still hear familiar voices and organizations telling Muslims that we are not doing enough of the organizing/voting/donating/protesting/congressman-calling that we have been told we needed to be doing for years. 

Muslim donors and the community at large will not get better at navigating the political system until we understand how we got here.  

A Failed Muslim Political Class 

There is overwhelming evidence that the Muslim community has invested in a class of American Muslim leaders with an extremely high tolerance for insult. Because the nature of political engagement is undignified, stuffed with careerists, contractors, social climbers, assorted sycophants, and astroturf outfits, there is no reason why any American politician should ever need to respect these people (and they don’t, in case you have not noticed).  However, ordinary Muslim donors and voters have deferred to these people as experts. Maybe we should stop.

This recent genocidal campaign in Gaza, gleefully supported by the Biden administration and the vast majority of congressional Democrats, made me think of an incident during the 2020 Biden presidential campaign, when it engineered a calculated insult against Palestinian American leaders by contrasting their treatment with that of the Democratic Majority for Israel, which had an event with the current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.  The Palestinians had access to someone with no input on foreign policy whose presence was meant only as an insult. One of the Palestinian leaders called out the insult, leading to his immediate defenestration. To their credit, other Palestinian leaders left the event in protest. 

Muslim leaders have accepted insults from politicians and have been doing so for decades. The 2020 Palestinian case was an exception to the rule.   Civic engagement through insult is a time-tested technique Democratic politicians have used to handle Muslim leaders.  Muslim leaders not only accept the insults, they often mistake suffering indignities as an honor.  

However, simply walking out and calling out insulting conduct (which Muslim leaders seldom do) is often not enough.  

Calling your Congressman (or Donating then Calling) Does not Work

The Democratic Party is a coalition of interest groups; some are more important to the party leadership than others. Generally, the groups with the most money tend to be heard more than those with less (you already knew this). Money can help hire organizers and create political institutions for other interest groups so they can be in service of monied interests. This does not eliminate the conflict, though. So, for example, pro-Israel voters vote for Biden but so do those who want a free Palestine. About 100% of those who supported a Free Palestine and voted for Biden knew his administration supports occupation and apartheid.

People who support Palestinian freedom have been effectively put in their place.  The issue is resolved by Muslims voting for the interests of those who support subjugation, apartheid, and genocide.  Democrats have managed to keep Muslims loyal despite, and maybe because of, a well-practiced engagement through insult strategy. It’s kind of like what those in mental health refer to as codependency or “trauma bonding.” Muslim Americans, especially their leaders, have accepted their status as lessers.

Yes, you call your members of Congress, but their phones now go straight to voicemail. The politicians who once pretended to be your friends turned on you. But maybe you already knew they would do that.  Muslims are not respected or feared, even a little bit.  They are merely the butt of a joke they have been active participants in for decades.  

This is, however, a newsletter about educating Muslim donors. I want to focus on the various kinds of “civic engagement” that have taken place by Muslims since roughly around the 2000 election and (in part 2) offer an alternative that is more dignified and potentially more effective than the ones sold to us by the merchants of Muslim insult politics. 

These categories are not self-contained. One person or organization can be all of these things. Not everyone involved in these political models is malicious. 

Six Archetypes of Muslim “Civic Engagement”

The Foreign Agents 

A surprisingly large number of Muslims have been involved with politics largely in service of one foreign government or another. This has included some prominent Muslim leaders. Much of this is legally dicey (some of this has been subject to prosecution). However, none of it is meant to have a positive policy impact on Muslims beyond the governments the American Muslims are working for. 

In some ways, this form of “engagement” is amongst the most dignified, so long as people engaging in it are following the law. This type of engagement does not rely on the sort of ritual humiliation we see elsewhere, though sometimes it does.  

The Table-or-Menu People 

“You are either at the table or on the menu.”

Several years ago in Los Angeles, leaders of one Muslim group disputed a reported claim by the Los Angeles Police Department that got support from that group for a “Muslim Mapping Program”- an explicitly religious and ethnic profiling program predicated on the dangerousness of Muslims. A non-Muslim reporter at the time asked why Muslim leaders would even show up to a meeting with the premise being so obviously insulting. They had no useful response other than wanting to always be at the table.

That organization and several others continued to humiliate themselves by engaging with Democratic Administration efforts to portray Islam as a problem religion and Muslims as a problem community.

The principal pro-Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Muslim organization aligned with Democrats (though there were several) admitted to being wrong about the program. I wrote about that episode here.

Powerful people don’t respect sycophants. They often insult and belittle them. This is something many Muslim leaders in the American political space have not learned in over two decades.  President Obama repeatedly went out of his way to insult his Muslim supporters, as he did at a White House Iftar supporting mass murder in Gaza while inviting the Ambassador of the country committing the killings. 

In advance of the Obama Iftar, it was reported at the time that “no organizations critical of US foreign policy or that take a public stance on the Palestinian issue were on the guest list.” To be included, you had to meet an official White House criteria for “well-behaved.” The Obama Administration’s approach to Muslim political engagement resembled that of a puppy training school. Many Muslim leaders were eager to comply. Selfies are like treats.

Biden, in his campaign for President, named an actual Hindu Nationalist as his “Muslim Outreach Coordinator.” His choice of “Muslim representation” appointments, with few exceptions, was an exercise in the appointees humiliating themselves. Like a Federal Judge appointee saying he knew less about “Sharia law” than a senator (since he claimed to know nothing) or a Small Business Administration Deputy Administrator nominee who made his case for Senate confirmation by the senate almost entirely about his love of a foreign country and his opposition to boycotting it. 

The “table or menu” ideology largely dominates the Muslim political engagement scene. Step one: make friends with politicians. Step two: invite them to your events and have them invite you to their events. Step three: get publicly kicked in the teeth while accomplishing nothing meaningful for anybody except maybe some careerists who lack personal dignity or shame. Rinse and repeat. 

The Careerists

Muslim careerists tend to focus on employment or business opportunities.  They not only care about who butters their bread now but who might butter it in the future. Many Muslims who work for Muslim organizations involved in politics are often looking for the next better-paid and more prestigious career opportunity. This tendency will often influence their actions and priorities. 

There are two major problems with careerists. The first is that they will tend to put the objectives of their career or business path ahead of the interests of the most marginalized within the global Muslim community. The second is that community members tend to give them far more deference than they usually deserve because of the appeal to accomplishment fallacy.  

The Astroturf Scammers

In my first article for this newsletter back in 2020, I wrote about an organization that suddenly appeared on the scene, well-funded almost exclusively from outside of the Muslim community and was started by a non-Muslim family as well as a Muslim lawyer with an apparent interest in defense contracting. All these individuals had established bona fides supporting an apartheid state.

The Biden campaign had anointed the group as their interlocutor with Muslims despite having (at best) tenuous ties with the Muslim community. 

Two individuals from this astroturf outfit have since been appointed to posts in the Biden administration. One was appointed to the Department of Defense, directing an office dedicated to doling out small business contracts. Another board member, now the Deputy SBA Administrator (and who is often introduced as the most “senior Muslim in the Biden Administration”), spoke at a recent event in Chicago after the stabbing murder of six-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume. He was booed by Muslims at the event. 

Ordinary Muslims understand what is going on. They have far more dignity than “leaders” designated for them by the Democrats.  

The Vassal Coalitionists

For several years, progressive nonprofits have started coalition-building exercises with “marginalized groups,” understanding that there is a commonality with oppressed groups under oppressive systems. Nonprofits have started to use the term AMEMSA (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, Muslim, and South Asian) as a common “political identity construction grouping” of people commonly found in nonprofit marketing, requests for proposals by funders, and funding proposals by various nonprofits outside the Muslim community.  Ordinary people in these communities, of course, have no idea what any of this is. 

Many of the same large funders tend to fund political and policy nonprofits. All the initials, including the “M,” are part of a funder’s “portfolio” to build coalition support for their priorities.  This is why some Muslim political activists have spent much of their energy on abortion politics, LGBTQ+ issues, healthcare reform, police reform, the Women’s March, or other priorities for progressive funders in the Democratic Party. Much of this universe has the same tradition of insulting Muslim leaders and putting them in their place.

The other area of “coalition building” that is often related is “interfaith.” Much of it is grant or donation-funded interreligious friendship and media relations programming. Some examples of interfaith activity are precision-engineered to be an insult to Muslims, and some participants in such farces have later recognized this. Muslims in interfaith coalitions are often mere vassals of other political interests.  

Without question, there are political issues of concern to the Muslim community beyond foreign policy and civil rights, and not all of the issues progressive funders care about are bad. I am also not claiming there isn’t validity to entering coalitions with diverse groups with common interests. However, Muslim political priorities should be sovereign and authentic to the Muslim community.  Unfortunately, the system we have has grouped Muslims into vassalage.  

The Professional Activists

Grassroots political organizing and activism can be quite effective, especially locally. One concern with political activists, however, is that it is relatively easy for an organizer to move into another role, to ingratiate themselves with politicians and funding sources (see vassal coalitionists above), or to seek fame and fortune as a celebrity. Grassroots advocacy is often a stepping stone for opportunists and can easily morph into vainglorious personal brand-building. 

Even in the best of situations, though, without an infrastructure dedicated to punishing politicians who insult Muslim leaders and the Muslim community, there is no real reason to fear them. Even famous activists can easily easily be marginalized. One of the best-known Muslim political activists and organizers of the post-9/11 era was publicly disavowed and attacked as an anti-semite by the Biden campaign. The rest of the Muslim community cannot do much more than shrug its collective shoulders. 

Being Insulted Repeatedly Does Not Work

These past few decades have shown us that nearly all of what Muslims have been doing in politics has been ineffective and a waste of resources. Democratic politicians indeed invite Muslims to iftars; they have also shown up at airports during the “Muslim Ban” and various Muslim fundraising events.  Muslim organizations often fundraise off of being “at the table.” Ramadan fundraising emails will sell donors on some variation of -we were invited to the White House iftar, now give us money. 

Even though getting through the airport may have been a bit easier for Muslims in the last few years, the infrastructure of the war on terrorism remains, and American foreign policy, if anything, is far worse than it was forty years ago (and it was pretty bad back then).

A different model of Muslim political organizing is needed. In response to this crisis, it’s possible that American Muslim politics can become more scammy and sleazy than anything we have yet seen.   My hope, however, is that we will do better. I will get to this in part two of this series.  

Any solution would have to involve protecting the dignity of the umma of Muhammad ﷺ.  Unfortunately, the efforts of the Muslim political class to date have not considered this.   

If you care about the Muslim community and its organizations and want to know what they are doing, subscribe to this newsletter and wait for part two of this series.