AMID TIGHT US SENATE RACES in Michigan and Texas this fall, American Muslims have faced a torrent of bigotry.
Attacks on Muslims have been a permanent feature of the post-9/11 political landscape. Abdul El-Sayed’s August 4th victory in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary—and the possibility of him becoming the first Muslim senator in US history—has led to a renewed outpouring of Islamophobic sentiment; in the week after El-Sayed’s win, there was a twenty-fold increase in anti-Muslim social media posts targeting him, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent, has falselyclaimed that El-Sayed thinks the US “deserved” the September 11th attacks and that he has taken campaign contributions from “terrorist” organizations.
These attacks could find purchase in a landscape where anti-Muslim bigotry runs fairly high: A September Washington Post poll found that 45% of likely Michigan voters would not back a Muslim presidential candidate, and that voters among that group were less likely to support El-Sayed.