AMAC EXCLUSIVE
Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas has become a major liability for Joe Biden in his re-election bid, with Arab-American voters rebelling against the president in large numbers in key swing states. Now, the president’s urgent need to win back those votes may be creating an opportunity for a small number of Islamic radicals to grow bolder in their extremist rhetoric.
Islamic extremist leaders around the world appear to fully recognize the leverage that Arab American voters in the United States now hold over Biden, and are seeking to exploit it for their own gain. During his first statement during Ramadan last month, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, congratulated Muslim-American voters in Michigan on the campaign which saw more than 100,000 voters cast their ballots for “uncommitted” in the Michigan Democrat primary in February.
Those voters, centered in Dearborn, Michigan, have called on Biden to demand an unconditional cease-fire in Gaza, and have pledged to not vote for Biden unless he does so. Given that Biden won Michigan by less than 150,000 votes in 2020, and the margin is expected to be similarly slim there this fall, Biden needs these heavily-Democrat Muslim voters to turn out for him to have any chance of carrying the important swing state.
Referring to Muslim-American voters, Nasrallah said, “These people are very influential at this stage” over Biden. “He is not afraid of the world, the international community, God, history, or anything… Biden now is afraid of one thing only – that his policy and actions in Gaza will lead him to lose the presidential elections.”
In response to Biden’s collapse in support among Muslim-Americans, the White House dispatched representatives to Dearborn in an attempt to ease tensions. But the effort appeared only to inflame tensions further, with Islamic leaders leaving private meetings saying that they will still refuse to vote for Biden if he does not call for an immediate ceasefire.
Hussam Ayloush, the director of the Council of American-Islamic Affairs, even mocked the meetings in a speech posted to the group’s Facebook page. “He put together a delegation of very senior staff from his administration, and sent it. Guess where he sent it to?” Alyoush asked. “Cairo? No. Islamabad? No. Jakarta? No. Ankara? No. Riyadh? No. Abu Dhabi? No, although these are all important. Did he send them to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas? I am sure he didn’t even think about that, right? No. Where did he send it? Michigan. He sent it to Michigan, to Dearborn. Why is that?”
Ayloush went on to accuse Biden of only caring about his re-election, while also calling the war in Gaza “an American genocide.”
Professor Magnus von Durchdenwald, who advised former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on terrorism, told me that Ayloush’s comments reflect a dangerous trend of radicalism among a small number of Islamic leaders. “Such statements, if left uncorrected, can be catalysts for violence, for instance, for lone wolves,” Durchdenwald said. “Most specialists would classify it as a potential threat to national security.”
However, Ayloush’s comments are hardly the most concerning to emerge from fringe radical Muslim figures in recent months.
As reported by the Middle Eastern Research Group (MEMRI), an organization which tracks radical Islamic extremism, in early March, Dr. Jasser Auda, an Islamic scholar member of the prestigious Fiqh Council of North America with headquarters in Indiana, affirmed Islamic law’s supremacy over national and international law while discussing jihad.
“The fact that Muslim nation-states, administrative districts, areas, or kingdoms are allowed to exist does not mean that the duties of jihad for the sake of Allah – meant to defend the nation and respond to aggression against its peoples, their land and their holy places – are not incumbent upon the collective, or are nullified by the existence of the agreed-upon international borders,” Auda reportedly said. “Jihad for the sake of Allah continues to be a duty of the entire nation as a whole… [both] the rulers and the ruled, regardless of borders and ‘sovereignty.’”
The same week, an imam, Fadi Yousef Kablawi, while delivering a sermon at a mosque in Miami, Florida, said Satan led Republicans and Democrats and called the American government “Zionist supporters who are worse than Hitler.” Kablawi also asked Allah to support the people of Gaza, who he said were waging jihad, and to “bring annihilation upon the accursed Zionists.”
When asked how he would recommend handling these apparent calls to violence, Professor von Durchdenwald said he would “act swiftly” and consider deportation as a potential option, as well asshutting down the mosques breeding radical Islamic sentiment – just as the British did in the case of the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, which was led by a cleric who was found to be a terrorist and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Regardless of disagreements about what America’s approach should be to Israel’s war in Gaza, the vast majority of Arab- and Muslim-Americans do not wish for more violence on either side of the conflict, as misguided and misinformed as some may be. However, the small number of Islamic leaders who are calling for jihad against America and Israel threaten the safety and security of Muslim and non-Muslim Americans alike.
At the very least, Biden has a responsibility to condemn this rhetoric, something which he has conspicuously failed to do.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.
