Longtime Bridgeview resident Itedal Shalabi typically votes Democratic but when the time came to pick a candidate for U.S. president this year, she took a pass.
Shalabi saw both major party choices on the Nov. 5 ballot — Republican Donald Trump and his history of Islamophobic rhetoric and Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris and her ties to a Biden administration many Muslims lost faith in because of its unwavering support of Israel in the war in Gaza — as “seriously flawed,” and said she couldn’t bring herself to support either of them.
“There’s no way in all good conscience, I could have put my head down on a pillow and slept that night if I had voted for Kamala Harris,” Shalabi said. “They let us down — the whole system let us down.”
In Bridgeview — a southwest suburban community called “Little Palestine” because so many Muslims and Palestinians live there — Shalabi reflected a growing trend of Muslim voters who in the 2024 election either didn’t cast a vote for president, wrote in a third-party candidate as a protest vote or reversed course as a majority backed Trump after Joe Biden carried the suburb in 2020.
What happened with Muslim voters in Illinois didn’t affect the overall presidential race as Harris won the state, although by a smaller margin than when Biden or Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in Illinois. But the trends seen here do echo much of what was seen nationally as many Muslims once aghast at Trump’s comments and policies critical of their religion and culture said they supported him this time because they were fed up with Biden’s support of Israel amid the war in Gaza and Harris’ willingness to keep those policies going.
Since winning, however, Trump has proposed adding several individuals to his administration who have spurred a new wave of anxiety and uncertainty about what political choices Muslims have going forward.
Among Trump’s selections are U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who once said on X that Israel has “no choice but to seek the complete eradication of Hamas in Gaza,” as his secretary of state; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who in 2008 while running for president said there was “no such thing as a Palestinian,” as the next ambassador to Israel; and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, who called the United Nations a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its condemnation of deaths in Gaza, to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
“It’s like a pressure cooker situation that ultimately results in something bad,” said Haris Siddiqui, a resident of Naperville who wrote-in Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president. “If you thought as a Muslim, you were going to send a message to the Democrats, well, now you have to deal with the likes of Mike Huckabee. You have to deal with the likes of individuals that are no longer mincing their words … people who are openly Zionist.”
The unease about who Trump is empowering to enact his agenda is just the latest among a slew of political worries held by Illinois Muslims. Many say they don’t feel heard by either political party and have become especially frustrated with Democrats who they think have taken their vote for granted.
The results from November bear out some of that thinking.
More than 8% of voters in precincts in and around Bridgeview didn’t vote for any of the three presidential candidates on the ballot — Trump, Harris or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was on the ballot despite dropping his bid and supporting Trump, according to data from the Cook County clerk’s office. That’s compared to a little more than 2% across Cook County who either wrote in a candidate or abstained from voting for president.
While some, such as Shalabi, skipped the race altogether, others, such as Siddiqui, wrote in third-party candidates as a protest vote. Stein was the most popular as she gained support nationally among pro-Palestinian voters and those opposed to U.S. military aid to Israel.
At 57%, the Bridgeview area saw a lower voter turnout than the roughly 67% across Cook County. For those in the suburb who did cast ballots, the majority backed Trump. In those same Bridgeview-area precincts, which include a tapestry of Muslim and blue-collar individuals and families, Trump defeated Harris 52%-38%, vote totals show.
For many Muslim voters, as well as those in the anti-war movement, the situation in Gaza was the deciding factor. More than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 14 months since Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.
Siddiqui said he wrote in for Stein “not because I think she’s a great alternative at all, but because it was a way for us to reject the two-party system.”
“There were so many different messages within the community — a certain side said we’re just not going to partake at all and didn’t vote, the other side was adamant that we need to go vote for Jill Stein and punish the Democrats, then the third side was like ‘I think we’re actually going to go and support Trump because business is better and yada yada, plus it’ll punish the Democrats,’” he said.
Some of what Siddiqui described was also seen in the majority-Arab community of Dearborn, Michigan, just outside Detroit, in which the effort to vote third party was more organized and where the “uncommitted movement” first took off during the presidential primaries earlier this year.
In February’s Democratic primary in Michigan, Biden collected more than 625,000 votes but more than 100,000 cast ballots for “uncommitted,” which is allowed in Michigan. Muslim voters were further disenchanted with the party in August after Biden dropped out of the race and Harris took over the nomination but failed to include a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. More than 30 “uncommitted” delegates invited to the DNC held regular sit-ins and protests over the U.S. policy.
The dissatisfaction in Dearborn continued Election Day as Trump won Dearborn with 42% of the vote to Harris’ 36%, a massive drop-off from the nearly 69% Biden received over Trump in 2020. Stein received more than 18% of the vote in Dearborn.
Throughout much of the campaign, Trump’s strategy with the community wasn’t necessarily to win Muslim votes but to tamp down support for Harris.
“I don’t actually blame anyone from our community (for Harris’ loss) — I blame 100% the Democratic Party that was completely deaf and blind to their constituents,” said Dilara Sayeed, president of the Muslim Civic Coalition. “They really didn’t get it.”
Trump’s support in the Arab community may seem shocking given his comments and policies, including a travel ban of people from six Muslim-majority nations and calling for extreme vetting for travelers from Muslim-majority countries.
But Shalabi said many Muslims simply gravitated toward Trump’s promises to improve the economy.
“Many of our community members (in Bridgeview) are entrepreneurs who came with no language, no understanding of the system, and yet are very successful businessmen and women,” said Shalabi, who runs a social service organization. “So (it’s) that mentality of I’m going to give you a better economy, better this, better that.”
Others, she said, simply wanted to stick it to the Democrats for being too pro-Israel.
“A lot of the young people in our community really felt like, ‘Oh, to piss the Democrats off, I’m not even going to vote for Jill Stein. I’m just going to vote for Trump,” Shalabi said.
Democratic state Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, who represents parts of Bridgeview, said the Democratic Party has “a lot of work to do to regain the trust of Americans” and said many voters who opposed the U.S. backing Israel felt their concerns were ignored.
State Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid speaks, Oct. 18, 2023, during a news conference calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)“Millions of Americans, including many in Bridgeview, who were looking for a change in direction from President Biden’s disastrous support for Israel’s genocide were routinely dismissed,” said Rashid, the first Palestinian American to serve in the Illinois General Assembly.
Even outside Bridgeview, some of that dissatisfaction was clear from the election results.
West suburban Glendale Heights also has a sizable Muslim population, particularly in neighborhoods surrounding the local mosque, Muslim Society Inc. on Bloomingdale Road.
Out of 538 voters who cast ballots in the precinct that includes the mosque, 47% supported Harris, 35% backed Trump and more than 12% voted for Stein, according to vote totals from the DuPage County clerk. In 2020, election results show, Biden won the neighborhood with more than 54% of the vote.
Another Glendale Heights neighborhood that boasts a predominantly Muslim population generated about 48% of votes for Harris, 39% for Trump, and nearly 15% for Stein. In 2020, Biden won the area, which includes a quiet subdivision off North Avenue between Bloomingdale Road and Main Street, with more than 67% of the vote.
Nada Jazeh, who lives in the neighborhood and voted for Stein, said she noticed an “awakening” within the community after the Biden administration kept American weapons flowing to Israel as the death toll mounted in Gaza.
“From what I see right now, both parties are really not serving an ethical outlook of what my beliefs hold, which is justice and humanity — actually focusing on the people in need and listening to our needs,” Jazeh said. “If I can help bring out a third party instead of a two-party system, and be part of that progressive change, then why not do that?”
Jazeh, who identifies as politically independent and recently filed paperwork to run for village clerk in Glendale Heights, said people in government need to represent the constituency they serve, especially those running for president.
“I feel like this election wasn’t the end of it, like a vote for Stein and then we’re done,” Jazeh said. “We are actually waking up as a Muslim community, finally, and we’re saying, ‘Hey look at us, we’re here, we vote and we’re not going to go anywhere.”
Patrick Kennelly, director of Marquette University’s Center for Peacemaking, said the ethos of the anti-war movement is also the essence of why the Democratic Party lost so much support from Muslim voters and other anti-war activists.
“You had a lot of people who really opposed any sort of excessive U.S. militarism with Biden and Harris allowing the flow of arms. And they voted on a belief that more weapons leads to more violence,” Kennelly said. “And within the peace movement, there were a lot of individuals who saw the billions being spent on these various conflicts overseas that could be used to meet domestic needs.”
Although a growing number of Americans want the United States to play a role in diplomatically resolving the war, the U.S. has so far vetoed four United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire in the region.
Disenchanted with the current administration and tired of American foreign policy, Kennelly said voters rejected the status quo.
Omer Mohammed, a Michigan resident who previously lived in Illinois, said he voted for Stein this year in what he viewed as a morally confusing election.
“A couple months before the election, my plan was to reluctantly vote for Harris, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted her to say that she is for an arms embargo on Israel, at the very least,” Mohammed said. “If she would have clearly articulated that, or if she would have pushed for that while as a vice president and said she’ll take on that policy when she assumed the presidency, then I would have voted for her.”
Another Stein voter, recent University of Illinois Chicago graduate Jenin Alharithi, said she spent countless hours during her senior year organizing protests, rallies and small-scale seminars about the crisis in Gaza much like the wave of pro-Palestinian campus events across the country. But Alharithi said all that messaging was lost on the Democratic Party.
“The rhetoric that was going around was condescending, and it was also very criminalizing of the Palestinian community and the Arab community in general,” Alharithi said. “It came off as ‘you guys don’t matter, your movement does not matter.’”
Alharithi said the past year unearthed some hard truths, especially young, progressive-minded voters pushing for tangible change.
“There was a realization that maybe both parties are bad; they contribute to a larger system of American imperialism that will ultimately always be very harmful to our community in the Middle East and for communities here as well,” she added. “Voting third party isn’t going to solve our problems, but at least there was an organized effort to show that we’re not going to engage in the two-party system anymore. We’re not going to vote blue or vote for the lesser of two evils anymore. We want our voices to be heard.”
Siddiqui said in the weeks leading up to the election there were efforts by some in the Muslim community to remind others of the horrors of “Trump’s America,” but those individuals were sometimes criticized for, by default, backing Harris despite her stance on Gaza only to avoid “another four years of Trump.”
Siddiqui said the strategy to vote for Stein over Harris was to show the power of the Muslim vote, which helped Biden significantly in 2020. If the Democrats notice the drop-off, it could matter in future elections, he said.
Sayeed, who as president of the Muslim Civic Coalition works with various faith-based non-profits nationwide to gauge the cultural and political climate of those it represents, said it was a tough year for those organizations to issue recommended voting strategies.
“We have a very diverse community and it is very hard to bring diverse voices to agree on one thing, and that’s OK,” Sayeed said.
The consensus among the Muslim Civic Coalition and its partners was ultimately for voters to write in Stein. But Sayeed said her preferred messaging would have been for people to vote with their conscience, knowing there wasn’t a single ideal option.
Deanna Othman, an educator and journalist who lives in Bridgeview, said Democrats have repressed those sounding the alarm on Gaza and, like Shalabi, she chose not to vote for anyone for president this year. She said she was sad going to the polls, something she had never felt before.
“Nearly everyone voting in my polling place was a minority — older Palestinian men, Polish women, Hispanic men, a few Black women,” she said. “I felt sad for many of these people who were divorced from their homelands for a ‘better life’ only to be pushed into making a choice within a sham of a democracy.”
Kennelly, a Chicago native, said the shift seen in places such as Dearborn and Bridgeview could be viewed as the long game. At the very least, he said, it proves that votes in a democratic system are earned — not given.
“Our votes are not to be taken for granted,” added Othman, who like many Americans views the war in Gaza as a genocide. “It is not one issue among many — it is the issue.”
zsyed@chicagotribune.com
