Months after Muslim voters helped give Minnesota one of the highest “Uncommitted” rates in the Democratic primary, the state’s Muslim community remains sharply split over whom to support in the presidential race.
The fractures have played out in recent weeks with a conflicting series of endorsements by key groups, a heavy-handed effort to get local imams to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, and a survey released by a local nonprofit showing that most Somalis still back Democrats.
The debate has become so heated that many Muslim leaders are reluctant to go on the record supporting any presidential candidate, fearing they will anger some parts of their communities.
Many Muslims say they face a terrible choice at the ballot box, between the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza and former President Donald Trump’s track record of Muslim travel bans and threats to deport millions of immigrants.
“We’re just left between a rock and a hard place,” said Asma Mohammed, a progressive organizer who led the Uncommitted Minnesota campaign earlier this year, which urged voters to reject Biden during the March primary. “Our community is just really easy to come for, and we don’t know where we land right now.”
This is illustrated through diverging endorsements from Muslim-led coalitions across the state. Uncommitted Minnesota, for example, did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris but also urged voters to reject Trump. Abandon Harris, another Muslim-led organization chaired by University of Minnesota Professor Hassan Abdel Salam that earlier this year formed as Abandon Biden, formally endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
But a recent poll by the nonprofit Bayan Research Center suggests that many Somali Muslims will still end up voting for Harris.
Several Minnesota Muslims also say the atmosphere within the community surrounding this election is more tense than previous elections, and many who spoke with Sahan Journal did not want their names on the record, fearing backlash from their community.
A manufactured endorsement?
A news release circulating earlier this month suggesting that 35 Minnesota imams and Muslim scholars endorsed Harris sparked a backlash from participants.
The release came after three community meetings and included a photo showing the 35 endorsees that was taken at another event. The news was picked up by local community news outlets like Mshale and shared on X by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
But several who attended the meetings say that the news was misleading, and one of the organizers of the final meeting conceded that not all the imams and scholars who attended the meetings endorsed Harris, but instead said that the majority of them did.
Among those criticizing the news release was Imam Qudbi Dayib of Dar-Us-Salam Center Mosque in Burnsville. Qudbi, who attended the three meetings, said in Facebook post that the meetings “had NOTHING to do with endorsing a candidate” and called the news release “a baseless fabrication designed to advance a weak agenda promoted by those being manipulated by genocide supporters.”
Imam Qudbi declined to comment for this story.
“We have thousands of Falastini and Lebanese families in MN who lost their loved ones in this genocide, millions of people forced out of their homes, under siege for more than a year, deprived of food, water, and basic necessities,” Qudbi wrote. “Hundreds of mothers are giving birth daily under rubbles and in harrowing conditions inconceivable to us. Where is your empathy?! Where is your heart!!”
Several people who participated in the meetings told Sahan Journal that they were not organized to formally endorse a candidate, but instead to provide guidelines about what issues Muslims should weigh before going to the ballot box. One imam, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of community backlash, said the meetings were originally organized to discuss how to keep partisan politics outside of the mosque.
Salman Fiqy, a Republican strategist who attended the first and second meetings, argued that the third meeting was taken over by people aligned with the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, leading to the subsequent endorsement of Harris.
“They have to have some deliverables,” Salman said of the DFL-aligned interests involved in the meeting. “And that was the delivery they needed.”
Imam Abdisalan Adam, a media contact listed on the news release announcing the endorsement, disputed this narrative. He did, however, acknowledge that not everyone involved in the last meeting agreed on an endorsement of Harris.
“It’s understandable,” Imam Abdisalan said. “You don’t expect everybody to be in the same position in a very sensitive and very impactful decision. Two people may be in the same mosque, and one may agree and one may not.”
In the final meeting, attendees were broken up into several small groups, Imam Abdisalan said. Each group then discussed whether to endorse or not endorse Harris. According to one imam who asked to remain anonymous, the question was framed in a reluctant support of the lesser of two evils rather than enthusiastic support of Harris.
“Everyone spoke their mind,” Imam Abdisalan said. “Those who were against were also present, and everyone presented their point of view.”
A majority of the people in each small group voted to endorse Harris, Imam Abdisalan said, leading to the news release.
A part of the backlash, according to Imam Abdisalan, stems from the fact that so many national Muslim organizations are recommending Muslims don’t support Harris or Trump.
“There’s pressure for people to keep in line with that,” he said.
Red, blue or third party?
Speaking for himself, Imam Abdisalan said that he believed Trump would be worse in the war against Gaza, and he pointed to Trump’s travel ban and his promises to institute the largest deportation program in U.S. history as bad for Muslim immigrants. He declined to say how he’s planning to vote.
In his Facebook post, Imam Qudbi made a point that many Minnesota Muslims who spoke to Sahan Journal made: Minnesota will likely vote for Harris anyway with or without their endorsements. Minnesota hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972 — the longest Democratic Party streak in presidential elections for any state.
“MN will vote blue regardless of your opinion — why tarnish your name in the process?!” he wrote. “Why anger your own community just to appease those who are indifferent to your existence?”
For Mohammed, the likelihood of Harris winning Minnesota is helping her make her decision.
“Because Governor [Tim] Walz is the vice president’s running mate, I think it’s safe to say that the vice president is going to win Minnesota,” Mohammed said.
Because of this and the fact that Harris has not pledged to stop arming Israel, Mohammed, a lifelong Democrat, said she is planning to vote for a third-party candidate for president for the first time in her life.
“I’ve struggled with this because I know that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” she said. “Simultaneously, I have friends in Gaza who have had to escape three separate times from the places that they’ve been told to evacuate, and that’s because of U.S. policy.”
Mohammed said she’s supporting down-ballot Democrats and is actively helping Ilhan Omar’s campaign for a fourth term in Congress. She said she has Muslim friends and family members living in Wisconsin, where polls show a close race between Harris and Trump, who are also leaning toward voting third party.
Democrats still dominate
Still, a recent poll of Somalis suggests the majority will back Democrats this year. In a survey released this week by St. Anthony-based Bayan Research Center, 55% of Somalis said they plan to vote for Harris, down from 62% who said they voted for Biden four years ago.
Support for Trump grew 10 percentage points from 2020 to 23% this year. Another 10% said they would vote for a third-party candidate, while 12% said they were undecided.
The online poll, held this fall, had 343 responses; 79% were from Minnesota.
But while the poll shows a doubling of Somali support for the Republican Party in the last four years, support for Democrats still dominates in the community.
For Kenadid Abeiziz, a data analyst with Bayan Research, a few reasons play into this.
“If you look at the [Somali] members who have been elected in the state, all of them came out of the Democratic Party,” he said. “Secondly, the state is a Democratic state, and the Somali community has been here for 30-plus years, and they have grown up within the Democratic Party.”
Still, the survey results point to point to openings in the community for Republicans down the line. The top issue cited by voters was school choice, and the second most important issue was youth and family values.
“Many will tell you that they would like to have schools where kids can learn the Qur’an, or maybe cultural values,” Kenadid said.
This also comes after efforts from local Muslims to opt their kids out of LGBTQ education materials in public schools.
Few Muslims planning to vote who spoke to Sahan Journal for this election expressed enthusiasm for the upcoming election. Mohammed said she wasn’t yet sure which third party candidate she would ultimately vote for for president.
“If anything, that tells you how I feel about this,” she said. “It’s a really hard decision for me. I feel incredibly betrayed by my party, and especially by the top of the ticket.”
