"Let's Get the Muslims Out": Islamophobia in Local Political Campaigns

            Anti-Muslim fear and animus – or “Islamophobia” – has been prominently featured in this year’s presidential campaign.  Donald Trump has regularly appealed to societal derision for Islam and Muslims during his campaign for the Republican nomination. Last month, Ben Carson (in)famously proclaimed that “[He] would not advocate to put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” a position based on his belief that Islam is irreconcilable with the U.S. Constitution.

            Hardly a new phenomenon, this campaign cycle illustrates the saliency of political Islamophobia in national elections.  Far more than rhetoric, for Trump, Carson, Republican and even Democratic candidates, anti-Muslim hate-mongering is not only rhetorical, but intentional strategy and political priority.

            While perceived as a strategic staple for national candidates, Political Islamophobia is also central to local elections and campaigns.  Particularly elections and campaigns with concentrated Muslim communities, emergent Muslim populations, or host cities for recent Muslim immigrant waves.

            Hamtramck, Michigan is a community that meets the criteria for all three.  With a population of roughly 23,000, the intimate, urban town surrounded by the City of Detroit was once home to a concentrated Polish community.  However, over the last several decades, Hamtramck has morphed into a Muslim-majority town, where Polish – and other White Americans – comprise less than 19% of the city’s population.  That figure is misleading, given that the City’s sizable Arab American population – dominated by Yemeni Americans – also figures into the White demographic figures.

            Roughly 25% of Hamtramck is Arab American, the vast majority of whom are Muslims.  In addition, the City is home to a sizable Bangladeshi and Bosnian populations, who also overwhelmingly practice Muslims.  A vibrant, blue-collar and working class town, Hamtramck’s tapestry of Arab, Bengali, Bosnian and other ethnic restaurants, shops, and Mosques signal that it is “Polish Town” no more.  But rather, hub and headquarters for a diverse Muslim American population still growing in number, and in the years to come, political influence.  

            "Let's Get the Muslims Out" followed by “Lets Take Back Our City,” read the flyer featuring three Hamtramck candidates - Susan Dunn, Cathie Gordon and Robert Zwolak – vying for City Council seats.  Dawud Walid, head of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), brought the flier to public attention on October 21^st.     

            Take back the city from whom?   Riddled with the nativism and xenophobia saturating national campaigning, this flier appeals to the racial and religious hate of voters – largely white voters – angry with Hamtramck’s identity shift, and Muslim makeover.  This "Get the Muslims Out" sentiment has been bubbling in the City for decades, and growing more intense with the gradual growth of the Muslim and minority population in Hamtramck, combined with the steady decline of the City's white residents.    

            Certainly, messaging in national elections influence local campaign strategy.  However, proximate concerns and issues idiosyncratic to a specific community are more determinative of what local candidates say in speech, or feature on campaign literature.  Anti-Muslim animus in Hamtramck has risen in proportion with the growing Muslim population, and with each passing day, the rising prominence of the Muslim community’s economic and political profile. 

            The nearby City of Dearborn has witnessed similar deployment of Political Islamophobia in years past, and other cities with prominent and emerging Muslim communities will surely experience the same.  The rising tide of Political Islamophobia in national campaigns, combined with societal animus and hate-mongering and the expansion of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policing – injecting anti-terror policing in Muslim concentrated communities – all but guarantees it. 

            Therefore, while framed and featured as a national matter – Political Islamophobia is one that hits very close to home.  And indeed, in the very local campaigns and elections a large number of Muslim Americans – particularly indigent and working class Muslim Americans – call home.  While Trump's scorn for Muslims, and Carson's stance against Islam, are cause for alarm; the Political Islamophobia surreptitiously unfolding in the heart of Muslim American communities - where surveillance of, and violence against, Muslim Americans overwhelmingly unfolds - is just as alarming. And, cause for immediate action with these very communities.