American Muslims and the 1996 Presidential Election

by Richard H. Curtiss

Recently I attended a conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC held by the Council for American Islamic Relations, CAIR.

Several speakers described a poll of Muslim political opinion, Muslim voter registration activities and also introduced the organizers of a new Muslim women’s group.

When a journalist asked the executive director if her new organization planned to recommend specific candidates, she said it first wanted its members to listen to the candidates and then to discuss the candidates among themselves. After that, she said, “we hope to agree on recommendations.”

After the press conference a non-Muslim journalist struck up a conversation with me in the elevator.

“Quite an unusual group of people,” he said. “Do you think they know what they’re doing?”

“Yes,” I said, “because there are about six million of them and they’re working hard to turn out their community to vote. So if they all vote for the same candidate, there are enough of them to swing the elections in several key states this year. For instance, they might be able to swing the election to either candidate in California. And without California, Bill Clinton probably can’t win.

“No,” he said. “They can never be a swing vote because, even if they do all turn out to vote, they’ll never all agree on the same candidate.”

That’s what I want to talk about in this last issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs most readers will receive before the Nov. 5, 1996 national election.

But first, let me explain my interest. I am not a Muslim, but I lived more than 13 years in five Islamic countries, and have spent many years since working on, and worrying about, U.S. relations with the Muslim world. I know that the United States has no real conflict of interest with any Islamic country that does not grow directly out of lopsided U.S. support for Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians.

I’m also old enough to recall that when I lived in Indonesia, the Indonesians credited the United States with helping them secure their independence from the Dutch; and that when I lived in Turkey, the Turks fondly recalled that the U.S. was the only one of the Allied powers that didn’t declare war on Turkey in World War I. And I recall vividly that when I first went to live in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, citizens of those countries thought of Americans as the people who had helped modernize and expand their educational and medical facilities, without seeking colonial or other special privileges.

What a different time that was! Now America is regarded as the superpower that makes continued Israeli occupation of Arab lands possible. And, if the power of the Israel lobby is not halted, I believe Americans eventually may find themselves in a series of Israeli-instigated wars aimed at keeping any Muslim country from developing enough political, military or economic strength to become a serious player on the world scene.

But, I believe, the Muslims of America have the power to change this—and very rapidly—despite the overwhelming Zionist power in the American media and in Hollywood, and despite the present dominance of Congress by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal lobby in Washington, DC. The key to this change is for America’s Muslims to come off the political margins, and onto the political playing field.

The reason American Muslims can do this successfully, without attracting criticism from their non-Muslim fellow Americans, is that they are not asking the U.S. government for favors for themselves, or for Muslim countries overseas. All they are asking for is an even-handed U.S. foreign policy that supports peace with justice, human rights, and self-determination everywhere, and specifically for the Palestinians in the Middle East, for the Kashmiris in South Asia, and for the Bosnians and Chechens in Europe.

In my opinion, to achieve this there are three steps for America’s Muslim community to take. The first is to get Muslims to register to vote and then to get all registered Muslim voters to the polls. A few years ago this was a controversial matter, with many Muslims criticizing participation in a non-Islamic political system. It’s my understanding that most mosques in the U.S. now agree on getting out the vote, and will be taking active steps in November to do so.

The second step is no more difficult. That is to invite local candidates at all levels to present their ideas to local Muslim communities and afterwards to discuss these candidates and their issues. If candidates are invited, most will come. And if some don’t, that makes choosing who to vote for even easier. Again, it’s my understanding that such efforts already are underway in many parts of the United States.

It’s the third step that is far more difficult. That is to agree, as a community, on support for a single presidential candidate.

But it can be done. The American Jewish community, less than 2.5 percent of the American electorate, has done it—over and over again. We all know how successful the pro-Israel lobby has been—not only on American Middle East policy, but on U.S. foreign policy in many parts of the world, and on some domestic policies as well.

Even though the Jewish community as a whole historically has favored the Democratic Party, there are Jewish activists in both political parties. That way, no matter who wins election, there always are Zionists close to the winning candidate, successfully demanding veto power over political appointees involved with U.S. Middle East policy.

But when the general election is held, American Jews often vote as a bloc. In 1976 they voted for Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican President Gerald Ford. In 1980 many no longer supported Carter, splitting their vote between independent John Anderson and Republican Ronald Reagan.

In 1984 both Republican Reagan and his opponent, Democrat Walter (Fritz) Mondale, were equally pro-Israel. So Jews generally voted for the Democrat, but largely on domestic issues. In 1988 nearly all of the Jewish vote went to Democrat Michael Dukakis, but Republican George Bush won.

In 1992, exit polls showed 85 percent of the American Jewish vote went to Democrat Bill Clinton, who defeated Bush. At a reception for Clinton afterward, members of one pro-Israel political action committee all wore T-shirts that said “85 percent.” It was a reminder to the winning candidate that Jews can vote, and donate, as a bloc—and that he had better not forget it.

Notice, too, that even when their bloc vote went to the loser in a national election, it didn’t decrease the strength of the Israel lobby. The important thing was that its supporters had demonstrated the discipline to vote together as a community, and the potential ability to do it again.

By contrast, up to now Muslims haven’t voted as a bloc on the national level. That’s why candidates of both parties—Dole and Kemp, Clinton and Goreare pandering only to Jewish voters, and ignoring Muslim Americans and Christian Arab Americans. They will stop doing this only when all American politicians come to believe that the Muslim community is politically active and unified—both in its voting and in its donations.

Although American Muslims are divided among themselves on many important domestic issues, I know they are not divided on the specific foreign policy issues I’ve listed above, or on their desire to make America, to whose destiny they are inextricably linked, into a bastion of human rights for all peoples—not just the rich and powerful—everywhere.

Given the importance of the issue, I don’t think it’s too much to hope that a significant majority of American Muslims can agree on one of the two leading candidates for president in 1996. If they do, and vote as a bloc, and exit polls demonstrate they have done so, America’s political landscape will change for all time.

It no longer will be safe for national candidates to pander solely to Israel. Nor will it be safe to fulminate about “Islamic fundamentalism,” “Islamic terrorism,” and “Islamic bombs.” American politicians will have to find a new strawman to attack.

I think everything I’ve said so far is relatively non-controversial. I’ll conclude by venturing onto more controversial ground. It certainly is not for me, as a non-Muslim, to say which presidential candidate the Muslim community should support. The CAIR poll I mentioned at the beginning of this editorial showed American Muslims about evenly split in support for the two major parties. Most Muslims found the Republicans closer to their own conservative views on social issues, but the Democrats seemingly more inclusive and welcoming for religious and ethnic minorities (see p. 48).

In my opinion, however, this is one election in which the records of the two candidates on foreign policy are very different. Senator Dole has probably done more speaking before Arab-American and Muslim-American audiences than all the rest of the senators combined.

On the Israel-Palestine dispute he has been one of the very few senators who has called specifically for a cut in aid to Israel. On this issue I think he, along with Senators Byrd and Hatfield, are the three best of the 100 members of the Senate.

Even on the issue in which he so angered us all last year by voting to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by 1999, he is one of only a handful who ever have dared oppose such a move. In 1984 he blocked such a bill. In 1990 he first voted for it, but then publicly changed sides and opposed it after he had visited the Middle East.

You don’t have to take my word on the Dole record, however, In our August/September issue we printed four pages of vituperation extracted from a much longer publication by the National Jewish Democratic Council assailing what it described as a Dole record on Israel “replete with inconsistencies, contradictions and outbursts of hostility.”

Summarizing all this, the National Jewish Democratic Council publication raged that “in between presidential campaigns, Dole advocates cutting aid to Israel, neglects the U.S. commitment to Israel, and urges an even-handed Middle East policy.” In the current issue we print more of the same, an article from former AIPAC legislative director Douglas Bloomfield in the Washington Jewish Week warning his readers that Dole has been “one of Israel’s harsher critics” and predicting that “if Dole becomes president, he and Netanyahu are sure to collide.”

In contrast to such organized attacks by Jewish Democrats on Dole, Jewish Republicans are limited to praising Dole’s current pandering to Israel. There is no way they can attack Bill Clinton’s record on Israel. The Israeli press itself has dubbed him “the friendliest president to Israel in U.S. history.” On that assesssment, I rest my case.

I think further that those who follow South Asian affairs will agree that the Republicans historically have been closer to Pakistan, just as the Democrats historically have been more supportive of India. And, finally, on Bosnia, Senator Dole’s record has been the best in the Senate. He was the first to call for lifting the U.N. embargo that was keeping the Bosnian Muslims from obtaining arms to defend their borders. It was his goading that finally forced President Clinton to send U.S. military aircraft to stop the war, and U.S. troops to keep it from starting again.

Those are my own opinionswith a little help from Jewish Democratsas to which candidate has the best record on foreign policy. I offer them for consideration by Muslim-American leaders trying to seize this opportunity to unite around one of the candidates. I’m not sure when there will be another such opportunity.

Certainly, in the absence of evidence in 1996 that American Muslims can vote as a bloc, a contest in the year 2000 between a pro-Israel Al Gore and a pro-Israel Jack Kemp will offer no apparent difference. On the other hand, if the Muslim community shows its strength in 1996, perhaps Kemp or Gore will have a change of heart. They’re politicians, not ideologues.

The biggest gift American Muslims could give Muslims overseas is to organize themselves into a unified political force for an even-handed U.S. foreign policy that supports human rights and peace with justice abroad. Such a force, in the heart of the American political system, will make a difference.

Similarly, the biggest gift American Muslims can give their fellow Americans is by organizing themselves into a unified political force for social justice and morality at home. Such a force, in the heart of the American political system, also will make a difference.

As a non-Muslim, all I can wish for American Muslims is the strength and perseverence to unite for this vitally important task. If you can do it, the entire human race will be the beneficiary.