Why Muslim-Americans Should Vote for Biden

By Yousuf Ali

In November, the country is going to take a crucial decision which will shape its course for many years to come. I’m of course referring to the presidential election between the incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. In order to get a sense of the importance of this election, we need only look at the state of the country and the world itself. Because of incompetent and inefficient leadership, the world is currently paralyzed by a pandemic which has killed 100s of thousands of people world wide with America taking a disproportionate amounts of death.

Without a doubt, some harm from this virus was unavoidable, but the blatant disparate impact against the United States makes it so we cannot exempt the leadership from a significant portion of the responsibility for these deaths. In addition, when deciding how to vote, we have to be clear about one thing, only one of two people will become president, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump.

We can complain about the unfairness of the two-party system all day long, but good decisions are based on how things are, not how we want them to be. For that reason, we must look at the records of both Biden and Trump and decide which is better for the Muslim community and the country in general. After performing that analysis, Biden emerges as the clear choice.

Firstly, let’s make it clear that whatever issues we may have about how Bernie Sanders was treated in the primary or the inherent unfairness of the two-party system do not change the fact that the choice is between two candidates. While there may technically be more than 1 ballot, the fact is that no third party candidate has ever won the presidential election since at least 1856, and there is no good reason to vote for 1 in a national election since it would have no positive effect but as a deranged expression of outrage or protest. At the end of the day, this is not the chactionoice of a person who wants to make a difference. It certainly is not a productive method of protest or activism.

If these people wanted to truly make a difference, they would find more productive ways of doing politics rather than simply wasting their votes on candidates they know will not win. Before doing any of this, it is important to prevent Trump from doing further harm by voting for the only thing standing in the way of doing that, Joe Biden.

While many Mulims raise legitimate criticisms of Biden, there can be no doubt that his record concerning their issues is far better than that of Trump’s. For example, let’s take the issue of Uyghurs. These people are undergoing what can only be described as a modern genocide reminiscent of what we saw against Jews during the Holocaust. What was Trump’s first reaction? According to his former national security advisor John Bolton, it was to oppose any retaliation out of fear it would upset any new trade deals. Sure, there were sanctions that came later, but the revelations of the initial reaction cast doubts upon the intentions and long term sustainability of such actions if these human rights abuses against Uyghurs persist.

If we contrast that with Joe Biden, he made it an explicit part of his campaign even bringing it up during campaigns. The consequence of this is that we have clear words to hold Joe Biden to if he is elected where we have at best mixed signals if Trump chooses to give China a free-pass. Furthermore, Biden spoke directly to one of the premier Muslim oranizing groups, Emgage even quoting a famous hadith, where as Trump has only given, at best, token support to Muslim rights. In fact, he has done several things to undermine their rights including passing his infamous travel ban and appointing two supreme court justices which  denied a condemned Muslim inmate an Imam to be present at his execution in Alabama.

Contrary to the meaningless cliches of all “politicians “being the same”, these are areas in which Biden could make a difference, and that difference is worth voting for. With that, I appreciate your time and hope you will consider voting for Biden in November.