Muslim candidates are on the rise in local elections across the United States

As the United States prepares for next month’s presidential election, the idyllic New York suburb of Teaneck, New Jersey, is preparing for an election that reflects a broader trend in U.S. politics.

Two Muslim women are running for local office in Teaneck, a city of 41,000 with a significant Muslim population. They are among hundreds of Muslim candidates in local, state and federal elections across the country.

Teaneck once had a Muslim mayor, but never had a Muslim woman on the city council.

Reshma Khan, a long-time local activist of Indian origin and candidate for local council, wants to change that.

“I don’t take this lightly,” Khan, 47, said in a recent telephone interview from her makeshift promotional base in Teaneck. “As a Muslim, this is a big responsibility.”

Nadia Hussain, a Trinidadian-born American high school teacher, is the other Muslim candidate in Teaneck’s nonpartisan municipal election. She hopes to be the first Muslim woman elected to the local school board.

The two hijab-wearing, daily-working American mothers represent a growing trend of Muslim Americans seeking office and reflect a larger national pattern of more diverse candidates.

“We have a saying: ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,’ so commitment is a must,” Hussain said in an interview with VOA.

Muslim political engagement is increasing

There are around 3.5 million Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds living in the USA. Although most vote Democratic, a growing number have turned Republican in recent elections.

Muslim elected officials have been a rarity in recent years, but they have become increasingly common in recent years. Experts say this rise in political engagement is due to a mix of factors, from concerns about Islamophobia to a desire for political representation.

“If turnout by American Muslims is an indication of broader political participation, Muslims running for office appear to be following that trend,” said Nura Sediqe, an assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University.

Some experts trace the rise in Muslim political engagement to 2018, when Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib broke glass ceilings by becoming the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Their success, coupled with that of numerous local candidates, sparked a wave of Muslim political activism.

The domino effects continued in the years that followed. In 2021, Boston and New York City elected their first Muslim council members. The following year, Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a large Arab and Muslim population, installed its first Muslim mayor. State legislatures from Maine to Texas have now welcomed about 50 Muslim members into their ranks.

“With each cycle we see an increase in the number of runners,” said Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR Action, himself president of the school board near Sacramento, California. “You’re seeing more local races, more school board races and more city council races that people are running in.”

Last year, CAIR, a civil rights group that advocates for American-Islamic relations, counted 235 elected Muslims, including nearly 50 in New Jersey, home to the largest Muslim population per capita in the country. This year the group expects the total to exceed 250, a record.

Local elections such as school board and city council elections are responsible for most of the recent growth. A city council member may not have the power of a congressman, but in a country where “all politics is local,” these races can have a huge impact on local communities.

Telling voters about their talking points, Khan said: “We say: yes, the presidential elections are important, but the local elections are more important.”

A consummate activist, Khan sees a future role on the city council as an extension of her activism rather than a political position. Her goal, she said, is to inspire future generations of Muslim women.

“I’m not doing this for myself,” Khan said. “I do this for the Fatimas, the Mohammedans and the Ahmads who will come in 50 years.”

The candidate wants to challenge stereotypes

Khan wasn’t always a hijabi woman. She was born in Chennai, India and attended a Catholic school. After earning a master’s degree in business administration from an Indian university, she moved to the United States in early 2001 to take a marketing position in New Jersey.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 changed their attitudes. To refute stereotypes about Muslims, she began wearing a hijab.

“I wanted to show that there are peaceful Muslims,” she said.

Nearly 20 years ago, Khan and her husband Arif moved to Teaneck, where she became actively involved in the community: attending city council meetings, serving on the city council’s community relations board and leading a school parent-teacher association.

She then came into the spotlight in 2021 after helping to lead a ballot initiative to move local elections from May to November, when voter turnout is higher. She owes the success of the “One Town, One Vote” campaign to her marketing skills.

“At that point, I had become such an icon in Teaneck because even though the movement wasn’t started by me, I brought my marketing skills to the table,” she said.

The following year, she considered running for city council, but decided to wait while raising three young daughters. This year, however, she took the plunge, inspired by the success of other Muslim women in New Jersey and the feeling that the council wasn’t listening to her community.

“I felt like I should be the leader of my community so that my community could have a voice in American politics,” she said.

Teaneck is an ethnically and religiously diverse city where approximately 40% of the population is Jewish, more than 25% is Muslim, and the remainder are predominantly Black and Latino.

The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel last October, sparked tensions after the council passed a resolution supporting Israel, but it was not “intended to represent Palestinian voices,” it said Khan.

Teaneck’s Muslims, Khan said, “feel abandoned by local leadership because local leadership has only spoken for one community.”

Teaneck Mayor Mike Pagan did not respond to VOA’s repeated requests for comment.

A self-described “bridge builder,” Khan said she has formed a broad coalition of supporters from Teaneck’s large communities and used young canvassers to go door-to-door.

Whether that will be enough to win remains to be seen. With local elections now taking place in November, significantly more votes are required to win a seat on the local council. But whether she wins or not, Khan said she wants to be remembered “as a woman wearing a hijab, who is Muslim, and who galvanized the support of every community in the city, not because she is a Muslim, but because she is someone.” , who stands up for them.” Equity.”