Al Jazeera – August 25
The Muslim American vote matters and it can no longer be taken for granted
In key swing states the Democrats won narrowly in 2020, Muslim Americans make up a significant voting bloc. And they have a single voting priority: Gaza.
By Dalia Mogahed and Saher Selod
As the United States presidential election approaches, the race to attract voters has intensified. Among the different constituencies the Democrats and Republicans are battling over, there is one that stands out: the Muslim community.
Although Muslims constitute roughly 1 percent of the American population, they are an important voting bloc because they are concentrated in swing states, which are often narrowly won in elections.
In this election cycle, the Muslim community seems more united than ever over a single political issue: the war in Gaza. Any candidate hoping to win over large segments of Muslim voters would have to address community demands for an end to the bloodshed in Palestine.
This is according to a new study published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in partnership with Emgage and Change Research. It is based on a survey conducted in late June and early July focused on how Muslims in three swing states – Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan – intend to vote in the 2024 presidential election.
What we found is that President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza has turned Muslims, who in 2020 were some of his biggest supporters, into his sharpest detractors.
In 2020, about 65 percent of Muslim voters in these states showed up to cast their ballots for Biden. This support was vital to his electoral victory because he won key swing states by small margins. He won Georgia by just 12,000 votes, a state where more than 61,000 Muslims voted, and Pennsylvania by 81,000 votes, where 125,000 Muslims voted.
By contrast, in our survey, conducted before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, only 12 percent of respondents said they would vote for him, marking a dramatic drop in support not seen among any other group studied. While this impacts the presidential race, it has also manifested in a broader disillusionment with the establishment of the Democratic Party.
The war on Gaza has unified Muslim voters in a way that no other issue has in recent memory. According to the 2020 American Muslim Poll conducted by ISPU, healthcare (19 percent), the economy (14 percent) and social justice (13 percent) were the top voting issues for Muslim voters.
Compare that with 2024: Across the partisan spectrum, the top priority of Muslim voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan is the war in Gaza (61 percent), followed by keeping the US out of foreign wars (22 percent).
Reduction of military aid to Israel also garnered the support of the vast majority of Muslim voters in our study, who, regardless of partisan sentiments, all overwhelmingly see this policy as a reason to vote for a candidate. While a war overseas may seem far from the daily concerns of American Muslim voters, many see the US role – providing unconditional aid and diplomatic cover to Israel – as complicity in the continued oppression of Palestinians.
The importance of the war in Gaza for Muslim voters was made clear months before we conducted our survey. The Muslim community played a leading role in the Uncommitted National Movement, which urged Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted” in presidential primaries in their states. The initiative managed to get more than 700,000 Democrats to do so, making clear their demand for a change in the Biden administration’s tone and policy on Israel and Palestine.
This dramatic Muslim migration away from Biden is not a wholesale leap to the other side of the aisle, however. Muslim support for Trump inched up from 18 percent in 2020 to 22 percent in 2024 in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Overwhelmingly, former Muslim supporters of Biden are moving to third parties or are still undecided. Our study found that nearly a third of Muslim voters will either vote a third-party candidate (27 percent) or write in a candidate (3 percent). About 17 percent of Muslims said they have yet to decide on a candidate compared with 6 percent of the general public.
This means there is still room and time for candidates to win over this vital constituency. And it seems they are trying.
Not only has Biden pulled out of the race, but Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has signalled she is distancing herself from his unflinching support for Israel’s war on Gaza. In July, the vice president did not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, said she will not be silent about the suffering in Gaza and made clear her support for a ceasefire.
In August, she picked as her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is widely regarded as more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than short-listed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. This year, Walz praised uncommitted voters in Minnesota, calling them “civically engaged” and saying, “This issue is a humanitarian crisis. They have every right to be heard.”
And while Muslims were cautiously optimistic at best, the Harris campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian American to speak at the Democratic National Convention last week has soured this hope.
Third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West have both been vocal in their support for the people of Gaza. West chose Melina Abdullah, a Black Muslim woman as his running mate. Stein chose Muslim activist and academic Rudolph “Butch” Ware.
Even Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign is reaching out to Arab American voters – a surprise given the anti-Muslim rhetoric he used when campaigning in 2016. People associated with his campaign have been trying to woo Arab voters in swing states. Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, married the son of a Lebanese American businessman, Massad Boulous, who has been trying to persuade Arabs in Michigan to vote for the former president due to the current administration’s failed policy in Gaza.
The Muslim community’s mobilisation on Palestine has come at a heavy cost for many. The Council on American Islamic Relations reported an unprecedented spike in incidents of bias: a 56 percent increase in reports of Islamophobia in 2023. Anti-Palestinian racism has also skyrocketed, a worrying trend reflected in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont who were wearing the keffiyeh scarf. Thousands – many of them Muslim students – were arrested at campus protests, and many were threatened with expulsion or faced criminal charges for their pro-Palestinian activism at colleges and universities across the US.
And yet even with the consequences of taking a public stance on Palestine, Muslim voters appear to be undeterred this time around. Solidarity with the people of Gaza has emerged as the single most important issue for American Muslim voters, a group no candidate can afford to ignore.
Dalia Mogahed is former Research Director at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). She is also the CEO of Mogahed Consulting.
Saher Selod is Director of Research at Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU). She is also an Associate Professor and previous Chair of the Department of Sociology at Simmons University in Boston, MA.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/25/the-muslim-american-vote-matters-and-it-can-no-longer-be-taken-for
What’s behind Pakistan’s deadly Balochistan attacks, which left 74 dead?
The targeted killings of workers from Punjab and security forces point to a dangerous escalation in tensions between separatists and the state, warn analysts.
By Abid Hussain
Islamabad, Pakistan – Nearly two dozen civilians travelling from Pakistan’s Punjab province were pulled from their vehicles and shot dead by armed gunmen, as a series of at least six deadly attacks battered the country’s southwestern province of Balochistan on Sunday night and Monday morning.
At least 74 people were killed in the attacks that marked an escalation in violence even for Balochistan, a region where a decades-long armed separatist movement has meant frequent clashes between fighters and security forces.
The separatist group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, said in a statement that it targeted security forces and took control of highways across the province.
The deadliest of the attacks occurred in the Rarasham area of Musakhel district, located near the border between Balochistan and Punjab. According to police, at least 23 people were dragged out of their vehicles, and after their identities as Punjabi migrant workers were established, were executed.
In Kalat district, 140km (87 miles) south of the provincial capital Quetta, armed fighters targeted law enforcement personnel, killing at least 10. In Bolan district, southeast of Quetta, six people were killed overnight, including four from Punjab. The Pakistani military, in its statement, said that another five security personnel — 14 in all — were killed across the attacks.
Security forces, the military said, responded and killed “21 terrorists”.
This year has already seen several earlier attacks in Balochistan, targeting civilians, law enforcement personnel and state infrastructure. Still, the latest attacks represent a shift in their scale, audacity and nature, said analysts.
“There was a major attack on security forces in May last year, but today’s events are significant. Highways were blocked, railway tracks damaged, all near Punjab,” Muhammad Amir Rana, a security analyst and director of the Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), told Al Jazeera. “The expansion of their operation is unique, as they are demonstrating their ability to extend the conflict to, or near, Punjab.”
The targeted attacks on workers from Punjab — Pakistan’s biggest, most prosperous and most politically dominant province — also add to a growing pattern, said experts. As with multiple previous attacks on Chinese nationals and projects in the province, the separatist movement wants to send the message that outsiders are not safe in Balochistan, they said.
“Besides the Chinese, Baloch nationalists also target specific groups such as security forces, Punjabi laborers, and workers involved in development projects. Their aim is to discourage these groups from coming to Balochistan to work on these initiatives,” Malik Siraj Akbar, a Balochistan expert based in Washington, DC, said.
A message in the timing
The attacks coincided with the 18th death anniversary of Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former nationalist leader.
Bugti, a former governor and chief minister of Balochistan, joined the separatist movement in 2005 and was killed in a military operation in August 2006 near his hometown of Dera Bugti.
Bugti’s anniversary is consistently marked by violence, but the recent attacks across Balochistan send a clear message: “the armed groups’ influence spans the entire province, challenging the government’s authority”, Akbar told Al Jazeera.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, is home to about 15 million of the country’s 240 million citizens, according to the 2023 census.
Despite its wealth of natural resources — including vast reserves of oil, coal, gold, copper, and gas — the province remains the nation’s most impoverished region.
Its resources contribute substantial revenue to the federal government, while the province itself languishes in economic hardship.
Balochistan also hosts Pakistan’s sole deep-sea port, Gwadar, the centrepiece of the $60bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, which aims to establish a crucial trade link between southwestern China and the Arabian Sea.
However, many in the province accuse the Pakistani state of systematically neglecting their needs and exploiting their resources, fuelling a sense of betrayal and deepening support for separatism.
“The nationalists are strongly opposed to the exploration of gold, minerals, and coal, seeing these activities as the exploitation of Balochistan’s resources,” Akbar said. “They often highlight images of coal trucks leaving the province as evidence of resources being extracted without benefiting the local population. This narrative helps to boost public support for their cause.”
For nearly two decades, Baloch armed groups have waged a protracted struggle against Pakistani security forces.
In response, the government has launched a crackdown, resulting in the deaths and disappearances of thousands of ethnic Baloch.
One group that alleges state involvement in enforced disappearances is the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), led by 31-year-old Mahrang Baloch. The BYC held a days-long protest in Islamabad in January this year, and earlier this month held a sit-in in Gwadar city, nearly 1,000km (621 miles) south of Quetta, which lasted for more than 10 days.
The government and military establishment, however, accuse the BYC of being funded by “enemies of Pakistan” and label it as a proxy for separatist groups.
Akbar argued that the government’s approach was a mistake.
“Engaging with the BYC could be a valuable opportunity to involve the Baloch in negotiations and marginalise militant groups. However, by refusing to talk to peaceful protesters, the government only strengthens the resolve of Baloch armed groups, providing them with further justification to continue their activities,” Akbar said.
Rana, the security analyst, also noted the tension in the province following the BYC’s recent protest. “In a volatile environment like Balochistan, such attacks only exacerbate the situation. The insurgency has now entered a critical phase,” he said.
A blood-soaked terrain
Since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Pakistan has seen an increasing number of violent attacks, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, both of which border Afghanistan.
In 2023 alone, there were more than 650 attacks, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), with 23 percent occurring in Balochistan, resulting in 286 deaths.
This continuous violence, according to Quetta-based analyst Muhammad Arif, is compounded by the province’s unique geography.
“Balochistan is a large area with a scattered population, which is both a blessing and a disadvantage for both the government and nationalist groups. The government cannot provide foolproof security, while nationalist groups cannot effectively claim control over large areas,” Arif told Al Jazeera.
Akbar added that the government’s seeming failure to protect its interests and public safety could lead to even more resentment from local communities.
“As these attacks escalate and the government struggles to contain them, fear will drive more of the local population to support the armed groups, further complicating the government’s efforts to control the situation,” he said.
However, Arif, a former academic at the University of Balochistan, said the government needed to avoid a heavy-handed response.
“In my opinion, Balochistan is set on fire,” he said. “The leadership must adopt sane and pragmatic policies before it’s too late. This bloodshed will devour the people here. They must realise that, in the end, war serves nobody.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/26/whats-behind-pakistans-deadly-balochistan-attacks-which-left-43-dead
World Socialist Web Site – August 26, 2024
The political lessons of Sri Lanka’s 2022 uprising for Bangladesh 2024
Pani Wijesiriwardena, SEP (Sri Lanka) presidential candidate
Just two years after the April-July 2022 popular uprising in Sri Lanka, neighbouring Bangladesh has been convulsed by mass protests during July-August 2024, sending shock waves through the ruling classes around the world.
Whatever the particular differences in origin, both uprisings were driven by the same crisis of global capitalism affecting every country. They are part and parcel of the upsurge of class struggle developing internationally as governments heap the burden of the economic crisis onto the backs of workers and the poor.
Drawing the necessary political lessons from these upheavals is essential for the working class in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and internationally in preparation for the revolutionary struggles ahead.
In 2022, protests and strikes erupted throughout Sri Lanka amid skyrocketing prices after supply chains were seriously disrupted by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and the US-NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. The crisis in Sri Lanka was particularly acute as foreign reserves plunged in early 2022, forcing the government to default on foreign debt and halt vital imports.
The government of President Gotabaya Rajapakse provided no relief as long queues formed to obtain what food, fuel and medicines were available. Lengthy power cuts became the norm each day.
The masses took to the streets with the demands that the president resign—“Gota Go Home”—along with all parliamentarians—“No to 225”. The movement spread like wild fire with the eruption of spontaneous protests and pickets. Thousands permanently occupied Galle Face Green in central Colombo and repeatedly defied the threat of state repression when Rajapakse imposed a state of emergency and curfews.
Trade unions worked desperately to prevent the working class from entering the struggle as an organised force. However, as large groups of workers began to join the protests, the union bureaucrats were compelled to call limited action—two one-day general strikes on April 28 and May 6. Millions stopped work, cutting across ethnic and sectarian lines, in opposition to attempts by the government and racists to foment communal hatred to divide the mass movement.
Faced with a mass uprising, the government collapsed and Rajapakse was forced to flee the country and resign.
However, what was to replace the Rajapakse regime was left in the hands of the defenders of capitalism—the parliamentary parties, their trade unions and fake lefts such as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). The bourgeois opposition parties called for an interim government to stabilise capitalist rule, while the trade unions and the FSP subordinated the working class to this demand.
As a result, the discredited parliament was able to anti-democratically elect pro-IMF, US stooge Ranil Wickremesinghe as executive president to replace Rajapakse. Over the last two years he has ruthlessly implemented the IMF’s austerity program using police-state repression backed by draconian legislation to suppress the opposition of workers.
As a Socialist Equality Party (SEP) election statement said: “It was not inevitable that the 2022 uprising should end in the coming to power of the Wickremesinghe regime.”
The SEP, the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), insisted there was no solution for working people within the capitalist system. The working class therefore had to take initiative in rallying the urban and rural poor in the struggle to defend democratic and social rights on the basis of socialist program.
We called workers to build action committees in every workplace, in the plantations and rural areas to take matters into their hands independent of all bourgeois parties and the pro-capitalist trade unions.
In what was a significant political advance in this fight, the SEP urged working people and youth to campaign for the convening of a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses comprised of delegates of these action committees. In contrast to parliament, which is dominated by bourgeois politicians, such a congress would provide the means for representatives of working class to thrash out a strategy to defend their vital social and democratic rights.
However, the critical issue in any mass movement is that of political leadership. To wage a political struggle against capitalism and all its defenders, we explained that the SEP had to be built as the mass revolutionary party necessary for the working class to take power and establish a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist policies.
In Bangladesh, under the banner of Students for Anti-Discrimination (SAD), university students began their protests in early July against the regressive and divisive job quota system reenacted by the judiciary, under the aegis of Awami League government. As tens of thousands of students joined the demonstrations, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina unleashed the police and military, along with Awami League thugs, killing scores of students.
The accumulated mass anger against this bloody crackdown, and repressive measures banning internet and imposing curfews, exploded. The SAD called a march to Dhaka in early August in which millions joined, expressing deep-seated anger over grinding poverty, social inequality and the ruthless exploitation of workers. They demanded Hasina and her government resign.
Unable to hold back the tide, the military stepped in to force the prime minister to resign and flee the country to India. Then the military-installed interim administration with the backing of SAD and so-called civil groups, appointed Mohammad Younus, a former banker, as chief adviser.
Younus, who has close connections with the US and European imperialist powers, immediately made clear he would “undertake robust and far-reaching economic reforms to restore macroeconomic stability and sustained growth, with priority attached to good governance and combating corruption and mismanagement.”
“Robust and far-reaching economic reforms” has only one meaning: savage pro-market austerity measures to make working people pay to ensure the profits of big business and foreign investors. Moreover, the interim administration, backed by the military, remains in power indefinitely to ensure the measures are implemented. No election has been announced.
The right-wing Bangladesh National Party (BNP) has pledged its full support for interim rule as have the various Stalinist parties grouped in the Left Democratic Alliance and the pro-capitalist trade unions.
Like their counterparts in Sri Lanka, the Stalinist parties, which have history of backing the Awami League and the BNP, worked alongside the trade unions to prevent the working class intervening as a class in the mass uprising to fight for its independent interests.
Working people are justifiably hostile to the Awami League’s autocratic and corrupt rule over the past 15 years. Its ruthless suppression of democratic and social rights is nothing but the ugly face of the capitalist class which is determined to preserve bourgeois rule at any cost.
The onslaught on workers, young people and the rural poor will only intensify under the interim regime and whatever capitalist government finally replaces it. Behind the administration stands the capitalist state, above all the military, that will stop at nothing to suppress any opposition to its austerity policies.
The lesson from Sri Lanka in 2022 is that the working class cannot fight for its class interests outside of a political break from all the capitalist parties, their left appendages including the Stalinists, and their trade unions. Independent rank-and-file committees democratically elected by workers are necessary to prosecute any genuine struggle.
There is no solution for working people to the immense social crisis they confront within the capitalist system. In his Theory of Permanent Revolution, Leon Trotsky demonstrated that the bourgeoisie in countries of a belated capitalist development such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, tied as it is to international finance capital, is organically incapable of meeting the democratic and social aspirations of the working class and rural toilers.
What is necessary is the fight for power—for a workers’ and peasants’ government—to fundamentally refashion society to meet the needs of the masses, not the profits of the tiny wealthy elites. Such a struggle, as Trotsky explained, necessarily has to be waged on an international scale against global capital.
In the presidential election in Sri Lanka, the SEP is actively campaigning to build the unity of the working class in Sri Lanka, throughout South Asia and internationally as an integral component the ICFI’s struggle for world socialist revolution.
The recent mass uprisings in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka point to crucial issues encompassing the entire region. In 1947-1948 the British colonial imperialist rulers carved up the Indian sub-continent on a reactionary sectarian basis into a Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan to divide the working class and maintain their influence. Sri Lanka was established as a separate state as a base of British operations in the region.
The ruling classes in South Asia have only maintained their rule through the same reactionary methods—promoting divisive communalism and nationalism that has led to pogroms, civil conflict and wars. The struggles against brutal exploitation and repression that led to the establishment of Bangladesh in 1971 have resolved none of the fundamental issues facing working people.
The SEP in Sri Lanka urges workers in Bangladesh to form their own independent action committees to defend their interests against the interim administration’s austerity agenda and to link up with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees—an initiative of the ICFI to unify the struggles of workers internationally.
Above all, what is needed in Bangladesh is the building of a section of the ICFI, the international Trotskyist movement, to join with us in waging a struggle for a federation of socialist republics in South Asia as part of the struggle for international socialism.
We urge young people and workers in Bangladesh to take up this political challenge. Read the World Socialist Web Site, study our program and perspective and contact us through the WSWS. We stand ready to offer you our political assistance.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
