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    Zohran Mamdani proudly embodies what I often feel alienated in: my own identity as an unapologetic Muslim and progressive | Sarah Malik

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    He eats biryani with his hands, references Bollywood, is an unapologetic Muslim and a progressive. He has also done something politically risky for a mainstream candidate: been vocal for Palestine. Zohran Mamdani proudly embodies what I have often felt alienated in: my own positioning as a Muslim progressive – one that has been treated as an oxymoron at best, or suspect at worst.From Australia, watching him feels like having my own personality projected large. I feel both an elation at his reception and win as Democratic candidate for mayor of New York as well as exhaustion at the double bind and suspicion brown Muslims inevitably experience in the public sphere. It’s echoed here in Australia with the treatment of the first hijab‑wearing senator Fatima Payman and deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi.The outright dog-whistling is expected, but as Tressie McMillan Cottom in The New York Times points out, it is the elite liberal panic which is most interesting, with critics scrambling to find a dent in Mamdani’s affable armour by zooming in on everything from code-switching accents to college applications.Mamdani should be a darling of the left and liberal press. But what the veiled racism echoes, in a more subtle way, is the same anxiety I feel writ large and explicit in the rise of Trumpism and its echoes in Australia. Demographic changes are irrevocably transforming power in western democracies. As we, the sons and daughters of migrants from formerly colonised nations, seek power in media and politics and transform the societies we have grown up in, we are still seen as threatening, and not just to the far right. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsWe are seen as having “broken the rules of multiculturalism” for disagreeing, and too often the very people championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) feel more comfortable offering a (conditional) hand than power sharing and equality.This idea of being too Muslim for progressives or too progressive for Muslim communities and somehow an impostor in both those worlds, which bar entry because of what they perceive as parts of you that are incompatible, is an experience I’ve often felt. But Mamdani’s ability to sit proudly in that, a respect for his heritage, a confidence in his self, and a vision for the future, is a real decolonial practice. Because so many of us are also sitting in the overlap of political Venn diagrams and showing others it is possible too.We are the natural evolution of the third culture kid identity, and a product of a pluralistic, multicultural west. At home with pop culture and the internet, online and intercultural dating. We are comfortable with difference and tradition, loving our Naanis, and often existing in the pointy, working-class ends of society, where surveillance and systemic violence as well as lack of access to affordable housing, education, safety and justice have forced a political savvy and urgency to mobilise and challenge systems that impact us the most.For a long time, the price of entry to these worlds of power was to capitulate to the model of the grateful migrant. The insanity of our current times has perhaps created an opportunity, an appetite, for the kind of boldness, cultural confidence and agility Mamdani embodies. As the fear-mongering and Islamophobia reach saturation point and doesn’t seem to work, especially in the age of social media, a new appetite emerges – for unapologetic voices who refuse to be silenced.Just like Mamdani, who visited a Shia mosque in the Muslim holy month of Muharram and represented for Pride, stepping out of the pigeonholes and private spaces I’m allowed to exist in has made me feel more confident and mentally healthy and helped me find the right people in my life. It’s not for me to explain myself, but to exist fully and allow society to absorb and become something new with that.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a city like New York, which prides itself at least symbolically on venerating the immigrant, the rebel and the outsider, Mamdani has a natural home. I hope in my own way I can try to do this too in Sydney more consciously. I belong to the beach and also to Eid, in swimmers and shalwar kameez. I’m a feminist who prays, and happy to wave both Pride flag and Palestinian keffiyeh.I want this confidence to translate into corporate, arts and media environments, where having this multiplicity is not seen as incongruous but increasingly reflective of the world we live in.This kind of confidence in forcing change in the face of our current catastrophes, both political and ecological, by refusing to budge and by being intentionally and fully our uncensored selves feels like the start of an answer. We’re here. Get used to it. More

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      Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

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      Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.On race
      If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

      If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

      Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

      If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
      On debate
      We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.
      – Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

      Prove me wrong.
      – Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.
      On gender, feminism and reproductive rights
      Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
      – Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

      The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
      – Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

      We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
      On gun violence
      I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.
      – Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023
      On immigration
      America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

      The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

      The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024
      On Islam
      America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

      We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025
      On religion
      There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
      – The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022 More

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      in US Politics

      For Muslims, Mamdani’s rise signifies a new way of looking at who represents America

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      Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor has a group of Pakistani American aunties and uncles so excited that they are wondering if they should have given their own children more freedom in choosing their careers. “What if we let our kids become politicians, and not just doctors and engineers?” a member of the grassroots political organizing group, DRUM Beats, asked at a small celebration held at an Islamic school last month in south Brooklyn.DRUM Beats, which represents New York City’s working class South Asian and Indo-Caribbean populations, was one of the first grassroots groups to endorse Mamdani, when he launched his campaign in October – long before he became a household name. More than 300 volunteers, who spoke near a dozen languages, knocked on at least 10,000 doors to support him. DRUM Beats says these efforts helped increase voter turnout by almost 90% among Indo Caribbean and South Asians in some neighborhoods.The unabashed 33-year-old assemblyman ranked near the bottom of the pack when he began campaigning. Now, Mamdani has a chance to be New York City’s first Asian American and Muslim mayor. His family came to the United States when he was seven, and he became a citizen in 2018. He was born to Indian parents in Kampala, Uganda.View image in fullscreenMamdani’s campaign has piqued the interest of many South Asian Americans, as well as a diverse population of Muslims – not only because of his identity, but his platform, too. Many Muslims, even those who may not fully agree with Mamdani’s approach on every issue, see his rise as a sign of hope in a city where racism and Islamophobia erupted following the September 11 terrorist attacks.“We are stepping into leadership roles that challenge long-standing assumptions about who can represent the city of New York and Americans more broadly,” says Youssef Chouhoud, an associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University and expert on Muslim Americans.A leader for Muslims across the USSince winning the Democratic primary, Mamdani has faced Islamophobic smears online, and from both sides of the political aisle. Republican Congressman Andy Ogles demanded the use of material support for terrorism charges against Mamdani, without providing evidence, and urged that he be deported. (The Bush administration used these charges after 9/11 to shut down the nation’s biggest Muslim and pro-Palestinian charities, in what civil rights groups argue were often politically motivated investigations.) Donald Trump has since falsely questioned Mamdani’s citizenship and the administration’s Homeland Security Advisory Council is already looking into him.While New York City’s roughly 1 million Muslims aren’t enough to decide November’s election, Mamdani has become wildly popular with Muslims nationwide. Polling shows that Muslim Americans rank issues related to Gaza and affordability as their top priorities, which are reflective of broader trends and shifts within the Democratic base. It also aligns with the highpoints of Mamdani’s campaign such as affordable housing, and his frequent protest against US military support for Israel, said Nazita Lajevardi, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. She noted that Muslims – as well as many Democrats, including some Jewish Americans – were horrified by Israel’s attacks on Gaza and did not think they had good choices in the 2024 presidential election.View image in fullscreenMamdani’s campaign won almost over one-third of districts that Trump won in 2024, according to an analysis by the Gothamist.Mamdani’s advocacy for Palestinian rights includes authoring legislation that would have banned the city’s organizations from sending money to charities supporting Israeli settlement activity.He has been grilled repeatedly about his stance on Israel and whether he will condemn calls to “globalize the intifada”. He frequently responds with affirmations that he will protect Jewish New Yorkers. He has recognized Israel’s right to exist – but only as a state that enforces equal rights for its citizens.For some pro-Palestinian advocates, a formal recognition of Israel veers closely towards legitimizing the Nakba – when more than 750,000 Palestinians were permanently expelled from their homeland. Others say it’s largely a matter of semantics. And even Mamdani’s critics on this issue have appreciated his refusal to support a crack down on speech and his explanation that “intifada” also means “legitimate protest”. The Palestinian Youth Movement said in an Instagram statement that Mamdani’s victory shows that “being anti-genocide is not, in and of itself, politically costly with American voters in 2025”.‘He supported us at a critical moment’Asad Dandia, who successfully sued the NYPD in 2013 for illegally spying on Muslim New Yorkers, connected Mamdani’s campaign to dozens of mosques and imams across the city. The key message was still affordability, Dandia said. His campaign team visited more than 100 mosques, of which Mamdani personally visited almost 25, said Zara Rahim, a senior adviser for Mamdani’s campaign. “Many of the tenets of this campaign are inherently Muslim: justice, mercy, commitment to community,” she said.View image in fullscreenMamdani’s embrace of being Muslim and South Asian helped build excitement with many voters, from adopting the psychedelic aesthetic of Eid Mubarak WhatsApp forwards to using nostalgic Bollywood references. His strong support of LGBTQ+ and trans rights has not appeared to cost him votes among his more conservative Muslim supporters either.Still, Mamdani’s identity, alone, wasn’t enough. “One lesson the left needs to learn is that identity politics cannot win you elections,” said Raza Gillani, an organizer with DRUM Beats. “You need a political program for people that speaks to the grave inequalities in society.”SK M Mobinul Hoque, a Muslim Bangladeshi taxi driver who lives in Queens, said he voted for Mamdani in the Democratic primary – but he didn’t even know Mamdani was Muslim until after he cast his ballot. “I didn’t even care. He supported us at a critical moment; that’s why I’m supporting him,” he said.View image in fullscreenHoque fondly remembers Mamdani’s advocacy for taxi drivers like himself, who were wrecked by mounting debt caused by the city’s controversial medallion program. By 2021, Hoque had accumulated $800,000 of debt and had already heard about five fellow drivers who died by suicide. Mamdani went on a hunger strike for more than two weeks and joined the TWA Taxi Alliance, as they protested in front of City Hall. The city subsequently made a deal with the union for debt forgiveness.‘If you don’t keep your promises, we will hold you accountable’New York City possibly getting its first Muslim mayor is notable, given its history of surveilling Muslim Americans after 9/11. Many DRUM members in New York City were deeply affected by the NYPD and FBI’s sprawling infiltration of student groups and mosques. The federal government ran elaborate sting operations in which informants sometimes pressured vulnerable Muslims to agree to take part in violent plots – and used their subsequent cooperation to throw them in prison.The Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed in response to rhetoric that conflated Muslims with terrorists–and paved the way for the creation of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice). “Ice was born out of anti-Muslim hate,” said Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College.Ice’s sweeping detentions of immigrants, and ability to operate at Rikers Island after a deal was struck between Eric Adams, New York City’s current mayor, and the Trump administration, have triggered old fears about law enforcement. In Astoria, undocumented Middle Eastern and North African immigrants are scared that Ice will try to deport them, said Rana Abdelhamid, who runs Malikah – a local anti-violence nonprofit that operates in Mamdani’s assembly district, and has worked closely with him. Earlier this year, a street vendor ran into Malikah’s office after Ice’s increased activity in Astoria. “He was coming in frantic–asking, ‘can I take the train to go to work today?’”, she said.View image in fullscreenSouth Asian immigrants with DRUM Beats are scared, too. After 9/11, some Muslim communities based their electoral support on whichever candidate they thought would win, hoping that it could help them get something in return, said Gillani, with DRUM Beats. The organization is trying to move voters in a different direction –“a new politics rooted in community defense”, Gillani said. Mamdani has promised to protect immigrants – in part, by expanding the budget for legal representation.DRUM Beats is already thinking about turning out voters in November. At the June meeting, Gillani urged members: “Don’t let this energy die down.” He also emphasized the longterm goal of building power for working-class communities. “We don’t support (Mamdani) because we think he’s a messiah who will save New York City,” Gillani said. “If you don’t keep your promises, we will hold you accountable – regardless of whether you are Zohran, Cuomo or Eric Adams.” More

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      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani won by being himself – and his victory has revealed the Islamophobic ugliness of others | Nesrine Malik

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      Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win in New York’s mayoral primary has been a tale of two cities, and two Americas. In one, a young man with hopeful, progressive politics went up against the decaying gods of the establishment, with their giant funding and networks and endorsements from Democratic scions, and won. In another, in an appalling paroxysm of racism and Islamophobia, a Muslim antisemite has taken over the most important city in the US, with an aim to impose some socialist/Islamist regime. Like effluent, pungent and smearing, anti-Muslim hate spread unchecked and unchallenged after Mamdani’s win. It takes a lot from the US to shock these days, but Mamdani has managed to stir, or expose, an obscene degree of mainstreamed prejudice.Politicians, public figures, members of Donald Trump’s administration and the cesspit of social media clout-chasers all combined to produce what can only be described as a collective self-induced hallucination; an image of a burqa swathed over the Statue of Liberty; the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, stating that Mamdani’s win is what happens when a country fails to control immigration. Republican congressman Andy Ogles has decided to call Mamdani “little muhammad” and is petitioning to have him denaturalised and deported. He has been called a “Hamas terrorist sympathiser”, and a “jihadist terrorist”.It is a measure of how racist the reaction has been that Donald Trump calling Mamdani a “communist lunatic” seems restrained in comparison. Some of the responses have been so hysterical that I often couldn’t tell what was real and what was parody. Because the idea that Mamdani, whose style is, above anything else, wide-grinned earnestness, was some sinister Islamist sleeper agent is so clearly a joke.But it’s not a joke, and if it is then it’s on me for still, after all these years, underestimating what Muslims in the public sphere do to people’s brains. And how utterly comfortable many are with anti-Muslim hate. And why shouldn’t they be? To date, the most senior figures in Mamdani’s own party, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, have not called out this onslaught, and those politicians and public figures who made them will suffer no censure or consequence. Because, fundamentally, anti-Muslim hate, like all racism when it becomes normalised, thrives when there is a systemic blessing of it through not even registering its offensiveness.But the apathy towards assaults against Mamdani is because he is an outsider in more meaningful ways, not just in his religious background. His crime is not one of daring to be Muslim and a politician – he might have “passed” if he was a conventional Democratic apparatchik – but of having strong opinions about economics and politics that mark him out as a challenger of mainstream orthodoxies regarding capitalism and Israel.Given his leftwing opinions on taxation and rent control, and objections to the slaughter of Palestinians on the US’s dime, a backlash to Mamdani was always likely. But he has done much to counter it. He has made thorough explanations of his abhorrence of antisemitism, of his pledge to combat all hate crime, and of the fact that his economic agenda is based on making the city, from its food to its childcare, more affordable.His offence has been in his unwillingness to water down his principles, not toeing the line on Israel, and not making frankly embarrassing assertions, like those running against him did, that Israel would be his first foreign trip. He has refrained from debasing himself through serial condemnations of phrases that have arbitrarily been erected as litmus tests of a Muslim’s acceptability in the public domain.Mamdani’s refusal to reject the phrase “globalise the intifada”, on the grounds that it expresses “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights” has been seized upon as an indication that he supports some kind of violent jihad – a reading that ignores his frequent assertions that Israel has the right to exist and condemnations of any violence against Jews. What are we doing here?There is no degree to which Mamdani could have become acceptably Muslim while holding these opinions – even though they are clearly universal enough for him to receive emphatic support from New Yorkers, including from Jews who voted for him, and the Jewish candidate Brad Lander, who endorsed him. He cannot be secular enough, American enough, or elite enough, as the son of a film-maker and a professor, to hold politics that will not be reducible to his inherently suspect identity.Even in demeanour, he has spoken of how he constantly has to measure his tone, lest he be smeared as a “beast”. And in this, he mirrors a broader, exasperating reality – one where Muslims and pro-Palestinians are condemned as threatening, while there is a colossal attack on their rights and safety across the world, simply for opposing an incontrovertible crime being perpetrated in Gaza. From detention and deportation proceedings against activists such as Mahmoud Khalil in the US, to the vilification and securitisation of pro-Palestinian speech and activism in the UK and Europe, the messenger is shot, and then framed as the aggressor.But smears and diversions and outrageous extrapolations will not change the facts on the ground, which are that the Israeli state is occupying the West Bank, starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza, and accused of war crimes and genocide, all with the sponsorship of the US and support of western regimes. In that sense, Mamdani’s victory is a threat, because it reveals how finally, all attempts to maintain an indefensible and intolerable situation have lost their grip on the growing number of people who are thinking for themselves.Mamdani isn’t even mayor yet, and he will probably face an escalating campaign using his identity as a way of discrediting his beliefs, both economic and political. And here is where the response to his win is both alarming and potentially propulsive, like the clammy buildup to the final breaking of a fever. Mamdani is where he is because he is not alone. Not by a long shot. And in drawing out such naked and explicit anti-Muslim hate, Mamdani has inadvertently revealed the ugliness and weakness not just of his opponents, but of the wider political establishment, as well as their anti-democratic impulses.In drawing them out, Mamdani has shown how prejudice is rarely about individuals, but the fear that marginalised minority views could ever become powerful majority ones. In this mayoral race, from Palestine to local policing, anti-Muslim hate is not just a repellent phenomenon confined to Mamdani, it is a barricade against the desires of the voting public. Once people start making that connection, it really is over.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      in US Politics

      Outrage after Republican representative disparages Sikh prayer in the US House

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      A Republican congresswoman is facing widespread backlash after saying that a Sikh should not have conducted a prayer in the US House.Mary Miller, an Illinois representative, on Friday published – then deleted – a post on X saying that Giani Singh, a Sikh Granthi from southern New Jersey, should not have delivered the House’s morning prayer.Miller at first mistakenly identified Singh as a Muslim and said that it was “deeply troubling” someone of that faith had been allowed to lead prayer in the House and it “should never have been allowed”, Miller posted on X.“America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it,” Miller continued. “May God have mercy.”Miller first edited her post to change Muslim to Sikh – then opted to delete it.Her comments triggered swift outrage, with the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, saying: “It’s deeply troubling that such an ignorant and hateful extremist is serving in the United States Congress. That would be you, Mary.”Similarly, David Valadao, a Republican congressman of California, said on Friday: “I’m troubled by my colleague’s remarks about this morning’s Sikh prayer, which have since been deleted. Throughout the country – and in the Central Valley – Sikh-Americans are valued and respected members of our communities, yet they continue to face harassment and discrimination.”Jared Huffman, another Democratic US House member from California, wrote on X: “I often say that I serve in Congress with some of the greatest minds of the 18th century. With [representative] Miller I may need to take it back a few more centuries.”Meanwhile, the Democratic congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey said on X: “It’s deeply troubling that someone with such contempt for religious freedom is allowed to serve in this body. This should have never been allowed to happen. America was founded as free nation, and I believe the conduct of its legislators should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.”Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, also weighed in on Miller’s tweets, saying: “What’s deeply disturbing is the blatant ignorance and anti-Sikh, anti-Muslim xenophobia coming from my colleague across the aisle. There is no place in our country, and especially the halls of Congress, for this hate and intolerance.”Meng went on to add: “The tweet may have been deleted, but we still have the receipts.”The Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus (Capac) also condemned Miller, saying she had engaged in “anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim bigotry”.“Sikhs and Muslims practice two separate and distinct religions, and conflating the two based on how someone looks is not only ignorant, but also racist,” Capac said in a statement.The Sikh Coalition also responded on X, saying: “To be clear, deleting the tweet is not enough. Congresswoman Miller should apologize for her remarks – to both the Sikh and Muslim communities, because no one should be targeted on the basis of their identity.”Similarly, the Hindu American Foundation said: “Whichever version of the tweet [Miller] was going with, it is racist, xenophobic and plainly un-American to lash out over a Sikh prayer. When you took your oath of office [congresswoman] Miller, you swore to uphold our constitution, whose first amendment prohibits your establishing an official religion or favoring one religion over another.”Miller’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth’s books foreground anti-Muslim rhetoric

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      Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who has the crusader motto “deus vult” tattooed on his arm, has put bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric at the center of several of his published books, according to a Guardian review of the materials.Hegseth, especially in 2020’s American Crusade, depicts Islam as a natural, historic enemy of the west; presents distorted versions of Muslim doctrine in “great replacement”-style racist conspiracy theories; treats leftists and Muslims as bound together in their efforts to subvert the US; and idolises medieval crusaders.Experts say that Hegseth’s view of Islam is riven with falsehoods, misconceptions and far-right conspiracy theories. Yet Hegseth, if his nomination is successful, will head the world’s largest military force at a time of conflict and instability in the Middle East.The Guardian emailed Hegseth and the Trump transition team for comment and received no response.The Guardian has previously reported that in his 2020 book Hegseth calls for an “American Crusade”, targeting both “internal” or “domestic enemies” and the enemies of Israel. Hegseth also connected the two, writing: “We have domestic enemies, and we have international allies … it’s time to reach out to people who value the same principles, relearn lessons from them, and form stronger bonds.”‘False, totally wrong’In American Crusade, Hegseth presents the medieval crusades as a model for Christian-Muslim relations, but one historian of the period says his presentation of the history of that period is “just totally wrong”.In a chapter entitled Make the Crusade Great Again, Hegseth writes: “By the eleventh century, Christianity in the Mediterranean region, including the holy sites in Jerusalem, was so besieged by Islam that Christians had a stark choice: to wage defensive war or continue to allow Islam’s expansion and face existential war at home in Europe,” adding: “The leftists of today would have argued for ‘diplomacy’ … We know how that would have turned out.”Hegseth continues: “The pope, the Catholic Church, and European Christians chose to fight – and the crusades were born,” and “Pope Urban II urged the faithful to fight the Muslims with his famous battle cry on their lips: ‘Deus vult!,’ or ‘God wills it!’”Hegseth has a tattoo of the same crusader slogan, which is also associated with Christian nationalism, white supremacist and other far-right tendencies.For Hegseth, the crusaders’ short-lived victories in the Holy Land means they can be credited with safeguarding modern values. “Enjoy Western civilization? Freedom? Equal justice under the law? Thank a crusader,” having written the same thing again earlier in the chapter.Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, and the author, with David Perry, of Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.In a telephone conversation, he said that Hegseth’s picture of Muslim encroachment in the 11th century was misplaced.“There were absolutely no incursions into mainland Europe,” he said, adding “If anything, Islam was kind of on the retreat in Iberia and other places as well. So there was no large geopolitical shift or any kind of immediate threat of Islam taking over Europe.”On Hegseth’s presentation of the crusades as a victory for the west against Islam, Gabriele said: “The Crusaders lost. They lost everything.“The idea that they kind of like emerged victorious is absolutely false.“This narrative of the crusades as a defensive war, where if the Christians didn’t launch this offensive towards Jerusalem that Europe would be overrun has been a bog-standard narrative on the right: it’s something that was espoused by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, in 2011 and by the Christchurch shooter a few years ago.”On Hegseth drawing a direct line between the crusaders and the modern west, Gabriele said: “It’s the worst kind of simplistic thinking,” adding: “Anybody who tells you these simple stories is selling something.”“The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it”Elsewhere in American Crusade, Hegseth repeatedly characterizes Muslim immigration to Europe as an “invasion” in a way that mimics racist “great replacement”-style conspiracy theories about immigrants displacing white populations.At one point he tries to connect – an expert says falsely – an aspect of Islamic history with the purported “capture” of Europe.Hegseth writes: “In Islamist circles, there’s a principle known as hegira,” and then claims: “This term refers to the nonviolent capture of a non-Muslim country.”Hegseth writes: “Hegira is a cultural, physical, psychological, political, and eventually religious takeover. History is replete with examples of this; and because history is not over, it’s happening in the most inconceivable places right now.”Hegseth posits the US as an example where, he claims: “Radical mosques and schools are allowed to operate. Religious police control certain sections of many towns. Sharia councils dot the underground landscape. Pervasive political correctness prevents dissent against disastrous policies such as open borders and nonassimilation.”Adducing proof, Hegseth bizarrely writes: “Take the British cities of London, Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale. What do they all have in common? They have all had Muslim mayors.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor Hegseth, this shows: “The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it. In one generation – absent radical policy change – the United Kingdom will be neither united nor a Western kingdom. The United Kingdom is done for.”He adds: “The same can be said across Europe, especially following the disastrous open-borders, pro-migrant policies of the past few decades. Countries such as Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands threw open their doors to Muslim ‘refugees’ and will never be the same because of it.”According to Hegseth, countries that do not restrict Muslim immigration ignore that “Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government. On the other hand, countries that want to stay free … are fighting like hell to block Islam’s spread.”Jasmin Zine is professor of Sociology and Muslim Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the author of a book-length report, The Canadian Islamophobia Industry: Mapping Islamophobia’s Ecosystem in the Great White North.Zine said Hegseth’s narrative appeared to be an “Islamophobic conspiracy theory distorting the practice of ‘hijra’ or the migration of the Prophet Muhammad and early Muslims from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD looking for safety from persecution”, which “is now being used to promote the xenophobic idea of a Muslim ‘takeover’ of the west”.Zine added: “These ideas are also linked to white nationalist demographic replacement conspiracies about Muslim birth rates in the west (AKA ‘demographic jihad’) and scare stories about ‘creeping shariah’, which have spawned retaliatory ‘crusader’ narratives in far-right subcultures.”‘Hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for Islamism’At other points in American Crusade, Hegseth appears to try to scapegoat Muslims for familiar conservative grievances, in narratives that suggest Muslims and leftists are colluding to undermine the US.In case of a Biden victory in 2020, Hegseth predicted that an “anti-Israel and pro-Islamist foreign policy” would be introduced along with “speech codes instead of free speech, bye-bye Second Amendment” and “naked socialism, government-run everything, Common Core education for everyone, a tiny military, and abortion on demand – even postbirth”.Hegseth also tries to connect his narrative with gripes about supposed censorship on social media platforms. “Who are the first people being banned on social media?” he asks, answering: “Not intolerant jihadists or filthy leftists but outspoken conservatives.”At times he seems to admire what he imagines to be the thoroughgoing religious zealotry of Muslims compared with an increasingly secular west.“Almost every single Muslim child grows up listening to, and learning to read from, the Quran,” Hegseth writes. “Contrast this with our secular American schools – in which the Bible is nowhere to be found – and you’ll understand why Muslims’ worldview is more coherent than ours.”At another point in the book he engages in a lengthy diatribe about the Council for American Islamic Relations (Cair), which has been a bugbear for US conservatives since the “war on terror”, and claims Democrats are helping the organization cement a radical “Islamist” agenda.“Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and [Cair] have advanced the radical mission of Islamism for decades,” Hegseth claims, adding: “In the past two years alone, more than one hundred members of Congress – including Ilhan Omar, Adam Schiff, Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar – have signed letters endorsing CAIR.”Hegseth then singles out “Socialist Bernie Sanders”, who he claims is “a favorite among Muslim Americans due to his support for Palestinian causes and distaste for Israel”.Sanders has repeatedly publicly supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even after the commencement of the current war in Gaza, while also saying: “Innocent Palestinians also have a right to life and security,” and calling for humanitarian pauses and ceasefires, and last week leading efforts to restrict the sale of offensive weapons to Israel on the grounds that it was in violation of the international laws of war.Some of Sanders’s positions since 7 October 2023 have drawn criticism from the left, who have seen them as insufficiently critical of Israel and insufficiently supportive of Palestine.Hegseth meanwhile, as previously reported in the Guardian, is unconditionally supportive of Israel, and has appeared to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions in favor of “winning our wars according to our own rules”.According to Hegseth in American Crusade, though: “Leaders of CAIR speak very highly of Bernie because his hard-core leftism provides the best gateway for their Islamism.” More

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      Ex-official exits running for Trump team over Sebastian Gorka appointment

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      A frontrunner to be deputy national security adviser in Donald Trump’s administration reportedly withdrew from the running after learning that he would have to work with Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s choice as counter-terrorism adviser.Michael Anton, a conservative speech writer and national security official in Trump’s first presidency, removed his name from contention over Gorka’s appointment against a backdrop of acrimonious past relations between the pair, the Washington Post reported.His withdrawal graphically signifies the unease provoked by the prospective return to the White House of Gorka, a controversial figure who was forced out of Trump’s first administration, where he worked closely with Steve Bannon, within its first seven months.His departure is believed to have been engineered by John Kelly, who became White House chief of staff in July 2017 with the task of bringing order to the chaos that characterised Trump’s first months. Kelly, who later resigned, has since turned against Trump, saying he met “the general definition of a fascist” in interviews given shortly before this month’s presidential election.Gorka, who has worked at the National Defense University, has drawn multiple accusations of Islamophobia.Being considered anathema by Anton – who was believed to be under consideration to become deputy to the prospective national security advisor, Mike Waltz – is all the more striking given Anton’s own hardline views on Islam, which he has called “a militant faith”. He argued that “only an insane society” would accept Muslim immigrants following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.But his opinions have paled in comparison to those of Gorka, who has depicted the religion as a threat to western civilisation and has peddled fears about America falling under sharia law.He was a vocal supporter of the Muslim travel ban enacted against citizens of seven majority Muslim countries during Trump’s first administration. When he departed, he wrote a resignation letter lamenting the president’s failure to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” in a speech on Afghanistan.The Washington Post cited a source in Trump’s national security transition team as saying there was widespread dismay at the prospect of Gorka’s return, which does not need to be confirmed by Senate hearings.“Almost universally, the entire team considers Gorka a clown,” the source said. “They are dreading working with him.”Anton has previously written about the animosity between Gorka and himself. He recounted how Gorka called him a “coward” and scolded him in a Fox News green room.Gorka, who first came to attention as a firebrand pundit working at the rightwing Breitbart News, declined comment, telling the Post: “I don’t comment to the fake failing news.”Anton’s reported withdrawal follows scathing comments on Gorka’s qualifications by John Bolton, who was national security in Trump’s first term before being fired.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to CNN, he called Gorka “a conman” and said the FBI should investigate his credentials.“I wouldn’t have him in any U.S. government,” Bolton told the network’s Kaitlan Collins. “I don’t think it will bode well for counterterrorism efforts.”Gorka, a US-British citizen and the son of Hungarian immigrants to the UK, drew criticism when he appeared at Trump’s first inauguration ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organisation, Vitézi Rend. The World Jewish Congress has said some members of the outfit were complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust.His views on Islam have been distinguished by a rejection of interpretations attributing the root causes of Islamist terrorism to poverty, repression or US foreign policy mistakes.“This is what I completely jettison,” he told the Washington Post in 2017. “Anybody who downplays the role of religious ideology … they are deleting reality to fit their own world.”In a video filmed after Hamas’s murderous 7 October attack on Israel last year, he said he had watched unedited footage of the episode and offered advice to Israeli leaders on how to deal with the Palestinian militant group.“Kill every single one of them,” he said. “God bless Israel. God bless Judeo-Christian civilisation.” More

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      ‘They blew it’: Democrats lost 22,000 votes in Michigan’s heavily Arab American cities

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      Kamala Harris received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years ago in Michigan’s most heavily Arab American and Muslim cities, a Guardian analysis of raw vote data in the critical swing state finds.The numbers also show Trump made small gains – about 9,000 votes – across those areas, suggesting Harris’s loss there is more attributable to Arab Americans either not voting or casting ballots for third-party candidates.Support for Democrats also fell in seven precincts around the country with significant Arab American or Muslim populations, according to data compiled by the Arab American Institute. It found a combined drop in the seven precincts, from about 4,900 votes in 2020 to just 3,400 this election.Another analysis, based on nationwide exit polling by the Council on American Islamic Relations, found 53% of Muslim Americans voted for Jill Stein. The same poll showed 21% of Muslims cast a ballot for Trump and 20.3% for Harris.The drop in Democratic support in Hamtramck, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights – three Michigan cities with the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations per capita – represent nearly 27% of the 81,000-vote difference between Harris and Donald Trump’s tallies in the state.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      The number of votes Harris lost in Michigan over the White House’s Israel policy is almost certainly higher. The analysis only looked at the three population centers, not the large Arab American population scattered throughout the region. Some estimated before the election that Harris could lose as many as 90,000 votes in the state.In Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that is nearly 60% Arab American, Biden received about 31,000 votes in 2020, while Harris received just over 15,000. Trump, who campaigned in Dearborn in the election’s waning days, received about 18,000 votes, up from 13,000 last election. Meanwhile, Stein picked up about 7,600 Dearborn votes this year.Stein and Cornell West, third-party candidates who made inroads with voters frustrated with Harris but unwilling to vote for Trump, combined for about 50,000 votes statewide.Michigan is virtually a must-win swing state, and frustration here with the Biden administration’s Gaza policy was viewed as a major Harris liability. Though the issue accounts for a significant portion of Harris’s loss in the state, she also underperformed with Michigan voters across multiple demographics, and inflation was a top issue for many.But Arab American and Muslim voters who defected from the Democratic party made a “key difference” across upper midwest swing states, said the Muslims for Trump founder Rabiul Chowdhury. He said Trump and his surrogates worked in heavily Arab American areas to make amends for his past anti-Muslim record, and promised peace in Gaza and the Middle East. Harris did not, he said.“Everyone’s ultimate goal was to punish Harris and the best way to do this was to vote for Trump,” Chowdhury said.Representative Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian American and Congress’s most vocal critic of US-Israel policy, received more than 24,000 votes in Dearborn, doubling Harris’s total. However, she only slightly outran Harris in neighboring Dearborn Heights.In Hamtramck, a city neighboring Detroit that is about 60% Muslim or Arab American, Biden received about 6,500 votes in 2020, while Harris dropped to 3,200. Meanwhile, Trump’s vote total in the city increased by about 2,000, while Stein received just over 600 votes.Trump increasing his votes in Hamtramck but not Dearborn may reflect that Yemeni and Bangladeshi American immigrants in Hamtramck are broadly considered to be more conservative than Dearborn’s largely Lebanese population, observers say. Dearborn heavily backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and its mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, was once among the most progressive representatives in the statehouse.Hamtramck’s mayor, Amer Ghalib, is deeply socially conservative. He endorsed Trump for the presidential election, and on Monday spoke at Trump’s final campaign rally in the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Dearborn Heights, a city that is about half Arab American, Biden won with more than 12,000 votes in 2020; this election, Trump won the city with 11,000 votes, and Harris received 9,000.Meanwhile, in a Houston precinct with a significant Arab American population, Democratic support fell from 520 votes to 300 votes. Democratic support in a Minneapolis precinct where Muslim or Arab Americans comprise a majority of voters fell from about 2,100 votes to 1,100 votes.Arab American pollster and Democratic National Committee member James Zogby noted the Harris campaign was repeatedly warned of the votes she would lose if she did not change course on Gaza or meet with key community leaders.“They blew it,” Zogby said. “We gave [the Harris campaign] multiple opportunities and ideas as to how to do this, and they finally started with three days out, but it was way too late in the game.”Mohamed Gula, director of Emgage, a Muslim political advocacy group, said “a lot has to change and there’s a lot Democrats would have to do” to win back Arab and Muslim voters.“There wasn’t a full belief that Trump was better than Harris – it was that the situation was not acceptable and there needs to be change, and we will take whatever comes from that and do what we need to,” he said.Chowdury said Muslim voters in 2028 will support the party that most promotes peace.“We don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “Today it’s a matter of ending the war and supporting the guy who is giving us the assurance of ending the war.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      ‘They will vote against Harris’: Arab Americans in Michigan desert Democrats over Gaza

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      That the Trump campaign would open an office in Hamtramck, a tiny city of around 28,000 people north of downtown Detroit, less than a month before the election, speaks to a particular curiosity of the 2024 presidential race.About 40% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Middle Eastern or north African descent, 60% are believed to be Muslim Americans, and the city has an all-Muslim city council.Last week, as Israel was expanding its war into Lebanon and continuing its daily bombardment of Gaza, scores of locals – many immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen and other Arab- and Muslim-majority countries – lined Joseph Campau Avenue to attend the official opening of Trump’s office.“Peace in the Middle East will not happen under a Harris administration – she’s too weak,” said Barry Altman, a Republican party candidate who is running for a seat in Michigan’s house of representatives next month, and who was running the new Trump campaign office on a recent afternoon. “Trump is the only hope for peace.”Altman is not alone. Last month, Amer Ghalib, the Democratic mayor of Hamtramck, announced his endorsement of Donald Trump after meeting the former president at a rally in Flint, Michigan, where the pair spoke for about 20 minutes.In past elections, Arab Americans were a solidly Democratic voting bloc, especially in the years following 9/11 and given Trump’s overtly anti-Muslim rhetoric. But with Kamala Harris reportedly “underwater” in Michigan – now three points behind Trump among likely voters, having led the former president by five points as recently as last month, according to one recent poll – Muslim and Arab American communities across Michigan could play a major role in the outcome of the presidential election.View image in fullscreenAngry with the Biden administration – and, by extension, Kamala Harris – for its support for Israel, Arab Americans may be willing to overlook Trump’s history of closeness with Israel’s hard-right leaders. “If, and when, they say, when I’m president, the US will once again be stronger and closer [to Israel] than it ever was,” he said last week. “I will support Israel’s right to win its war.”Yet national polls show Arab Americans slightly favoring the former president; others are increasingly vocal in support of the Green party’s Jill Stein.While Hamtramck may not sway a national election all by itself, it offers a window into how many Muslim and Arab Americans feel about their political leaders, as Israel’s war on Gaza enters a second year and spreads into Lebanon.Hamtramck aside, Macomb and Oakland counties, north of downtown Detroit, are home to an estimated 140,000 people – around 45% of Michigan’s entire Arab American community, which numbers more than 300,000.Previous elections show that voting in these counties historically runs very close.In 2020, Trump won 53% of the Macomb county vote, a community that is home to an estimated 65,000-80,000 Arab Americans. Even within Macomb county, voters are divided: Trump won Sterling Heights, a city home to a large Iraqi Chaldean community, by 11%, while Biden won Warren, a neighboring city, by 14%.Next door in Oakland county, a largely suburban community that’s home to around 60,000 people who identify as Arab American, Biden won 56% of the vote four years ago.But over the past year, Biden and Harris have been repeatedly rebuked by Michigan’s Arab and Muslim communities. Earlier this year, a number of community leaders refused to meet with Democratic campaign officials rather than Biden administration representatives to discuss the war in Gaza. Weeks later, more than 100,000 people in Michigan voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries in a protest vote against Biden’s Gaza policy.View image in fullscreenDespite initial cautious optimism, Biden’s replacement by Harris at the top of the ticket hasn’t much changed this picture, especially as the Middle East has grown more volatile.“Harris made it very clear that she wanted to continue funding the state of Israel,” said Hassan Abdel Salam, the director of the Abandon Harris campaign, at a press conference in Dearborn on Wednesday to officially endorse Jill Stein for president.Harris has maintained her stance on Israel’s right to defend itself and has largely ignored the conditions laid out by the uncommitted movement, which declined to endorse her (but has forcefully come out against Trump). A poll by the Arab American Institute has Harris 18 points below Biden’s 2020 level of support among Arab Americans.“We know that we have 40,000 voters just in Dearborn. They are highly persuadable to our cause, and we believe fundamentally that if they come out to vote, they will vote against Harris,” said Abdel Salam.View image in fullscreen“The former president prevented our families, our friends, our colleagues from entering the country,” he continued, referring to Trump’s 2017 travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries. “But the vice-president killed them.”Trump’s visit to Detroit on Thursday marks the 11th time the former president has come to the state. Harris, for her part, has campaigned here five times.Four years ago, Hamtramck voters overwhelmingly backed Biden, with the president winning 86% of the vote. One of them was Muhammad Hashim, who emigrated to the US from Bangladesh more than three decades ago and today runs a grocery store catering to the south Asian community in the heart of Hamtramck.But the Democrats won’t get his vote this time around.“Biden messed up the country, he’s really not good for the middle class. We’re struggling to survive and today we don’t get any help,” he says.He hopes that Trump, on the other hand, uses his business acumen to bring down the cost of the products he sells in his store, many of which are imported from overseas. “Trump is not perfect, but we have no choice,” he says.Hashim’s other major concern is Gaza, where more than 42,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks. “The No 1 reason [to not vote for Harris] is that she is supporting Israel 100%,” he said.Hamtramck is considered one of the most diverse cities in the country and is the first in the US to have an all-Muslim city council.Still, even as Hamtramck’s mayor has come out in favor of Trump, residents and other local leaders say that doesn’t necessarily represent the whole community. Several Hamtramck city leaders are attempting to mobilize support for Harris. In recent weeks, dozens of prominent Muslim leaders have endorsed Harris, as has Emgage Action, a Muslim voter-registration group. On 3 October, a group established to activate Arab American supporters for the Harris-Walz ticket nationwide was announced.“We are in a moment where our community is suffering and hurting in more ways than we can count. We have also seen four years under a Trump presidency and what that did to our community, and the risks that come with that,” said a spokesperson for Arab Americans for Harris-Walz. “We’re not saying that with a Harris administration there is no risk, but under a Trump administration, the risk is much higher. We believe [backing Harris] is a more favorable path forward for us here in the United States and in our home countries.”Meanwhile in Hamtramck, outside the new Trump campaign office, Altman, a pastor who says he was an independent until last year, invites high school students inside for a bottle of pop. He hands them Trump flyers and literature from his own campaign and tells them to share them with their parents. More