Cooperation is one of those things. Years ago, my job as Colin Powell’s Assistant Secretary of State included going to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Jordan to train police. Lessons learned there, including how Christians and Muslims can cooperate when needed, are important for 2024.
Much ink has been spilled – largely by Democrat media – suggesting Muslim Americans, 4.45 million of our 335 million total citizens, are either unimportant, radical or reliably Democrat.
Democrats take for granted the Muslim-American community, from refugee Somalis, Iraqis, and Afghans to Pakistanis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Turks, Indonesians, and others.
Democrats imagine most Muslim-Americans model themselves on, or share the views of, radical House Democrats Rashid Talib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Talib is Palestinian-American and Omar Somali-American.
Both of these women are militant progressives, roughly Marxist, pro-socialized medicine, pro-abortion, pro-drug legalization, pro-illegal immigration, anti-Israeli, and face ethics inquiries tied to finances. Tlaib believes God is a “She,” although unclear about God’s “pronouns.”
But here is the rub. These radical Marxist politicians – who align with Harris-Walz – are way off. Despite being at college protests, evincing anti-Semitic, anti-American views, they are the opposite of older, conservative, naturalized Muslim Americans. They are misfits, not typical.
Contrary to what many think, and what these two radical politicians suggest, most Muslim-Americans get along well with local Christians and share social views despite the religious divide. This is true in America, from Virginia, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey to Michigan and Maine.
Just like the wider world, on fire with sectarian wars, with Christians persecuted in more than 40 countries, Jews in double that number, Muslims face frequent persecution, not least in China. Ironically, the reasons for persecuting the three Abrahamic, monotheistic faiths are similar.
Communist governments, China and Cuba to Laos, Venezuela, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union, see religion as a threat, no matter the faith. Moreover, just as Christians and Jews differ internally, so do Muslims, and Shi’a at odds with Sunnis, Kurds, Abadi, Sufism, Yazidi, and other strains.
Often missed – something I saw up-close in the Middle East, from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to Bahrain, UAE, and Kuwait, even in Jerusalem, then in the Neat East and Europe, Afghanistan, and Kosovo to Turkey – is how closely the values of these seriously different religions do often align.
Thus, when training tens of thousands of Iraqi police in Jordan in the 2000s, we housed every ethnic background, Yazidi, Kurd, Shi’a, Sunni, everyone in barn-sized buildings, hogan-type, no internal walls, just row on row of triple-stacked bunks, similar to US military procedure in the Green Zone.
Over the course of my time there, and well beyond, we had no ethnic or religious conflicts, none. We had cooperation in living areas, classrooms, training, firing, and driving ranges. We had peace.
At the time, I shook my head and marveled: In the warzone, they killed each other, but when making a living, protecting a shared future, and working together to secure families, everyone cooperated with all.
Now come back to 2024 America, back to this election. Here is an untold truth. I recently sat with various Muslim families in Maine, hard workers, and business owners, committed to their families, and to the way of life we love in Maine – and across America. They were proud of being Americans.
Epiphany: They were not Democrats. They do not like the modern Democrats, and will not vote for them. Despite serious religious differences, myself being a conservative Christian, these older Muslim-American families worry openly about the state of our society and want American values restored.
The demographic, unrecognized by pollsters, wants their kids to get a real education – math, writing, reading classics, strong language skills, not baloney activism – in the schools. These parents came to America, worked hard for their kids, want them to succeed. They love America.
These families and businessmen have had it with the Democrat values, redefining boys as girls, subjecting young women to loss of rights in public, downplaying the value of hard work, passing higher taxes, pushing inflation and undermining the American Dream, even mocking the Dream.
As I listened, I learned something I did not expect. Quietly spoken, I learned conservative values reside where you may not expect them, an appreciation for pluralism’s strength, the powerful nature of the American Dream, and how families and voters get taken for granted, should not be.
Just like in modern-day Jerusalem, Christians, Jews, and Muslims cooperate when they care about the same things, despite the rage of the world. Shared understanding is worth time, in election 2024 and beyond. We miss what we do not look for. Cooperation is one of those things.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
