US Muslim leaders who supported Donald Trump’s campaign for presidency are disappointed with his cabinet picks.
The religious leaders, who supported the former president in protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon, expressed frustration over Trump’s recent selection of politicians to hold the positions of secretary of state and others, claiming he is “going on Zionist overdrive”, according to a Reuters report.
Trump made several visits to cities with large Arab American and Muslim populations, including a stop in Dearborn, Michigan where he said he loved Muslims, and Pittsburgh, where he called Muslims for Trump “a beautiful movement. They want peace. They want stability.”
Dearborn, Michigan is the largest majority Arab American city in the U.S. with 55 percent of the city’s 110,000 residents having Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, a 2023 census found. In previous election cycles it has always been a Democratic stronghold. Not this time. Trump won 47 percent of the votes, compared with 28 percent for Harris and 22 percent going to Jill Stein, the presidential candidate for the Green Party.
According to Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar the Arab Gulf States Institute writing in an opinion piece for MSNBC on November 11, “He [Trump] managed to convince significant numbers of Arab and Muslim American voters that he, in contrast to Harris, would end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon (though he never began to hint how, or on what terms), and that he would somehow be the American politician who could finally get Israel under control.”
Abed Hammoud, a well-respected figure in the Detroit-area legal community, was born in Lebanon and lives in Dearborn. He is the founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee (AAPAC). Although previously a committed Democrat – he was a delegate for Al Gore in 2000 – this election cycle was different for him and he struggled. He felt that Harris had shown unconditional support to Israel during the war in Gaza, and like many in his community, wanted to show the Democrats that the Arab American vote could no longer be taken for granted. “Don’t vote for Trump or Harris was our message,” he said. Instead, many voters opted for Jill Stein, who was vocal in her messages of support for the Arab American community and her calls for an immediate ceasefire, and who also had a Muslim vice presidential pick.
Hammoud, who was formerly an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office in Detroit, and an Assistant US Attorney in the US Attorney’s Office in Detroit and now has his own law firm, said that he knew of Arab American families that had voted for Trump, believing that Trump might be able to stop the war quicker. “Some people also feel a commonality with Trump’s so-called conservative values which they believe are more similar to Islam’s values,” explained Hammoud.
In some ways he is relieved that the election results were so resoundingly in favour of Trump across the country that Michigan’s swing state result in favour of Trump couldn’t be blamed on the Arab American vote. He says people’s reactions in the community, particularly among those that wanted to chastise Harris and the Democrats, are mixed. “The vocal ones were very excited saying “Peace is coming, peace is coming” but now the gloating has stopped,” he said.
Hammoud, along with many Arab Americans, is alarmed by the choices that President-elect Trump is making for his cabinet but adds: “I can’t say I’m shocked.” Mike Huckabee, the former Governor of Arkansas who once said “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” is nominated for the position of Ambassador to Israel.
“We were always extremely sceptical,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, told Reuters. “Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played.”
If you genuinely cared about Gaza, you would be outraged that the *current* Secretary of State allowed the 30-day deadline—set by him—for Israel to permit humanitarian aid into Gaza to pass without any consequences.
But the truth is, you’re not angry about Gaza. You’re upset… https://t.co/GgGVKwDP3j
— Abandon Harris (@Abandonbiden24) November 12, 2024
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, added: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
For the role of secretary of state, Trump selected Republican senator Marco Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel.
Earlier this year, Rubio said he would not call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and that Israel should destroy “every element” of Hamas. “These people are vicious animals,” he added.
To serve as US ambassador to the UN, Trump selected Republican Representative Elise Stefanik, who called the UN a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its condemnation of deaths in Gaza.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network (AMEEN), told Reuters.
Some political strategists believe Muslim support for Trump helped him win Michigan and may have factored into other swing state wins.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), said that Trump’s focus on pro-Israel nominees so early in the transition process is an indication of how his administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the US friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”