Stop Trump. There's only one way.
vote against the greater evil
My friend Irfan Rydhan and I decided to engage in a cross-blog conversation about our disagreement on voting for Kamala Harris vs. Jill Stein in this election. Irfan’s post is the first in this conversation. This is my reply.
I am proudly voting for Kamala Harris. There is a positive case to be made for this on policy alone, and I think absent the issue of Gaza, there would be little need for debate. However, given that the Gaza genocide will be 13 months by Election Day, there is an obligation to do so. But this is a time of great emotion, which is not conducive to reasoned discussion. We are angry, afraid, and anxious. The negative case against Harris is founded on these emotions, at precisely the time when we as a community of Muslim Americans are considering whether we have any influence and if so, how best to use it.
The case against Harris is simple. Her major sin is that she has not committed to a policy position of refusing arms to Israel. This is a monumentally unreasonable expectation that we, Muslims, have never held for any other candidate for President: not Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama. It would be instant political suicide, because denying Israel’s Orwellian-named “right to self-defense” is the one thing that no candidate can do.
The Gaza genocide is worse than everything that came before. Harris and Biden should have used the leverage of arms sales against Israel months ago, at least rhetorically. However, it is not as simple as saying in dramatic baritone, “make it so.” U.S. law since 2008 requires supplying Israel to maintain a “qualitative military edge” against all its armed enemies (state and non-state alike). The weapons lobby is not to be underestimated. And AIPAC has been greasing the wheels for decades.
Despite this, Biden and Harris have moved the needle. In summer, they stopped providing the huge 2,000 lb. bombs that can flatten entire blocks. And Biden has, for the first time, linked arms to humanitarian aid, albeit with a 30-day delay to avoid any impact on the election. And for this, they are successfully painted as anti-semites and traitors by the opportunistic, hypocritical right wing.
Harris’ minor sin is not letting Palestinian activists on stage, either at the convention or subsequent rallies. This is understandable because that stage is for her allies, and we, the Muslim community, are not acting like allies. We are publicly saying, “You will commit political suicide for us, or we will ruin this election for you.”
And that’s exactly what we have threatened, haven’t we? As Irfan points out,
But in the end the only real leverage and power that our community has at the moment is to block vote in swing states which will ensure that the current party in power, who is enabling and no doubt complicit in this modern day holocaust in Gaza, will lose!
If Harris loses in the swing states like Michigan which has the largest population of Arab and Muslim voters in the country, then she will most likely lose the presidential election.
This will send a clear and strong message to the democrats, and others that they cannot just brush aside an active genocide as a small "one issue" item which they assume no one, except Muslims cares about.
The Democrats will certainly receive the message, which is that Muslims are not reliable when there is an existential threat to democracy at home. But even worse, Muslims themselves have violated their values and morals because regardless of how they plan to vote, every Muslim agrees that a Trump Administration will be worse for Palestine than a Harris Administration. Irfan doesn’t deny this, because it is undeniable, except among the most committed leftists who read Jacobin and would not be voting for Harris even if there were no genocide. Moreover, no Muslim voting for Jill Stein believes she will win. It is purely a protest vote intended to cause Harris to lose and Trump to win.
In other words, Muslims who vote for Stein are saying, we want the Palestinians to suffer more (as they will under Trump instead of Harris) so that we can make a political point! The Palestinians are used to being political pawns, at best. But they themselves are clear - they want Harris to win.
And if you are making a protest vote, based on principles against genocide, then Jill Stein is the worst choice because she has cynically used Gaza to gain political power and relevance. Is this a principled stand? It seems not, since she has denied the cultural and physical genocide against the Uyghurs:
This is a pro-autocracy, pro-genocide, pro-China candidate, not a pro-peace candidate. She is, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, a predator:
If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can't peruse any successful strategy...and all you do is show up every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, you're not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.
Irfan suggests that if enough people vote for Stein, she may cross a 5% threshold, which would somehow lead to third-party viability in future elections. However, this 5% funding is a poorly understood red herring. They would get 5% of the funding from people voluntarily checking that $1 donation box on their tax returns. This might be at best $10 million. This is all post-facto rationalization and in any case, sacrificing not just the Palestinians but also your fellow Americans to a second Trump Administration for the sake of a future election someday where you can vote for a lesser of three evils is hardly a principled stand.
Where I do agree with Irfan is this:
the American Muslim community is politically weak, we do not have major lobby groups which pour in millions of dollars to political campaigns all over the country, nor do we actively volunteer for campaigns or even run in local elections, except for the past 4 years when we have seen some growth in that sector.
Correct! And if you were to articulate a vision for a political identity for Muslim Americans, then you’d find that vision doesn’t exactly align neatly with progressive leftists, libertarians, or whatever the heck the Greens are. And then we are right back where we started.
And if we are going to get real, let’s ask ourselves, what exactly is wrong with voting for the lesser of N evils? In fact, according to certain Islamic principles such as taqleel al mafaasid, voting for the lesser evil is not just permitted, but obligatory!
There are no easy answers. I am no scholar. I am just this guy, you know? These are my opinions and my best shot at persuading my fellow Muslim of my point of view.
But I do know, and so do you, that Trump will hurt our fellow Americans. Trump will hurt the Palestinians. Trump will damage our democracy. There is only one way to stop him. Jill Stein is going to lose, and a magic 5% vote share won’t help the Palestinians today. And demanding that Kamala commit political suicide in the middle of the hardest-fought political campaign of our lifetimes, down to literal coin-toss poll forecasts and averages, is not just unrealistic, but performative self-sabotage.
We must stop Trump. We must vote for Harris.
Addendum - read this letter from a coalition of 100 Muslim leaders in Arizona.
Read the letter and sign your name to it here.