Affad Shaikh

I am proud to have voted for President Obama, both in 2008 and again this past Tuesday.  I’m proud to be a part of his legacy of promoting equality, access to resources, and justice for all.  I recognize his flaws, but in the face of the Republican Party’s candidates propagating Islamophobic fear-mongering, I certainly had no interest in voting for the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, as Commander in Chief.  Coupled with Romney’s flip-flopping stances on almost every issue and his inability to relate to middle class Americans, there was little left for me to consider supporting him.

I’m not the only Muslim American who voted for Obama, however.  Muslim Americans overwhelmingly supported the re-election of President Barack Obama.  In fact, minority communities like ours were one of the biggest reasons why Obama was re-elected – our voice made all the difference.

But not all minority communities who voted for him were entirely pleased with Obama’s performance over the past four years.  Latino Americans are frustrated with lack of promised immigration reform – and many members of our Muslim American communities have called Obama the “lesser of two evils”, citing his inability to act on Syria, drone strikes in Pakistan, wiretapping phone lines, and the lack of closing Guantanamo, among many other concerns.

I agree – these are issues that should have been better addressed and resolved.

But by whom?

Finger pointing aside, we all play a role in accountability. The President and his Administration must be held accountable to his promises, primarily by his own integrity to maintain the promises so many of us relied on in deciding to give him our vote.  Even more importantly, our community should hold him accountable simply because it is in our best interest to do so.  Unfortunately, we just don’t have the political infrastructure to do so quite yet – we individually contribute to candidates and hope for the best, but we have yet to build a mobilized, collective voice to endorse candidates and hold them accountable if elected.

Over the next four years, it is imperative that the Muslim American community create a political advocacy system to hold leaders accountable, mobilize our community and our voice, and empower our very own leaders to be at the decision making table.  Without it, we will continue to spiral into a future of voting between the lesser of two evils.

Read other perspectives here.

Sarah Moussa is a young Arab and Muslim American community leader in Sacramento, CA.  She is currently Health Policy Advisor to Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, working to implement the Affordable Care Act across California.  Sarah has worked on local, state, and federal campaigns – and even ran as a local candidate herself!  Sarah can be reached at samoussa87@gmail.com

Leading up to Election Day, there was a tangible sense of enthusiasm to make Muslim votes relevant in national and local races from a great number of American Muslim community leaders and activists.  Since being a Muslim is not a mere label, but rather a manifestation of traits and actions that resonates from one’s faith.  As such, a critical step for Muslim leaders is to take civic participation beyond just getting out the vote.

Civic engagement is something that is welcomed by the community, but perhaps not something fully embraced or appreciated as a “core” area of activism.  I fear that is because ‘civic engagement’ is not connected to an individual’s faith, but rather seen as an independent action.

Until an individual personalizes civic engagement as an integral part of their faith, Muslims will continue to struggle with building a cohesive political strategy.

The debate on voting may have been largely settled, but the idea of how voting works in relation to the community’s political power is still vague and often leaves people uncertain how voting alone is relevant to lives of American Muslims. Consider for instance what exactly a Muslim vote means for the community?

The challenge for the 2016 Elections (or even the 2014 Mid-term Elections) is for the Muslim community to mature in its political engagement and its participation in public discourse.  Leaders and institutions need to help connect the dots between civic participation and being a Muslim.  A strategy to pick low hanging fruits might have made sense for the 2012 Elections, but looking toward 2016 (or 2014), we must build community capacity to tackle larger political challenges, beyond just voter guides and courting likely voters.

For Muslim votes to be something more than a label and be something rooted to high morals and strong values, the work starts with capacity building.   Muslims need to embrace and incorporate civic participation into their American identity and civic participation is not limited to voting.  To teach the deeper extent of civic engagement our institution’s and leaders need to risk facing challenges to (show?) the depth of the democratic process.  Our community’s votes for much more then just being cast around election time, its time to flex that political.

We have to build capacity of our community, so instead of them asking us to tell them how they should vote, they’ll be telling us how we can better represent their values.

Read other perspectives here.

Hironao Okahana is an affiliate of the Orange County Chapter of the New Leaders Council and was a 2011-2012 Fellow of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.  His work focuses on research in public policy, finance, & governance of postsecondary education, policy analysis, and community organizing.