In North Carolina, Muslim Americans look to the ballot box to fight back
With the election fast approaching, Lela Ali is hard at work boxing up freshly printed voter guides in her office, a pale blue two-storey home on a quiet residential street in Raleigh.
Etched around the building’s porch is a quote from civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” it reads.
The Light House serves as an open space for Muslim youth to gather and pursue faith-based actions that serve their community. Sophie Tremblay / The National
The Light House serves as an open space for Muslim youth to gather and pursue faith-based actions that serve their community. Sophie Tremblay / The National
This is The Light House, an open space for Muslim youth to gather and pursue faith-based activities that serve the community.
The 26-year-old is the policy director for the non-profit group Muslim Women For.
Using the quote as inspiration, she is fiercely determined to get North Carolina’s Muslims out to vote on November 3.
“What we’ve seen in the past with Muslim Americans, in general, is a lot of folks are registered to vote but they don’t actually go out and complete the voting process,” she says with a slight southern drawl.
The group is trying to make sure Muslim voices are heard in November at both the local, state and federal levels.
They are providing voters with information in English and Arabic about how to register for absentee voting and supplying voters with personal protection equipment to vote in person despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Lela Ali hands out posters with voter registration information in English and Arabic to a local Middle Eastern supermarket in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sophie Tremblay / The National
Lela Ali hands out posters with voter registration information in English and Arabic to a local Middle Eastern supermarket in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sophie Tremblay / The National
Ms Ali says the last four years have weighed heavily on the state’s Muslim community.
“The 2016 elections really brought a lot of pain and trauma to our community. The policies that we’ve seen in the last four years hit us hard and have done a lot of harm,” she says.
Some in the community have not been able to see family members from abroad because of President Donald Trump’s controversial Muslim ban targeting many of the countries that the area’s many immigrants originally come from.
But Ms Ali’s concerns extend beyond Mr Trump’s policies to his rhetoric, which she believes endangers the lives of Muslims.
One of Muslim Women For’s first events was holding a support group following Mr Trump’s election in which several women discussed whether wearing a hijab was endangering their safety.
“It makes me really anxious and scared to know folks do not feel comfortable being who they are in their skin, in their bodies, just to walk on the street, in their workplaces, at schools, in just celebrating and just being authentic with their own identities,” says Ms Ali.
Translating Islamophobia into empowerment
But the fear isn’t just about a hypothetical. Both the Light House and Muslim Women For were born from tragedy.
In February 2015, Deah Barakat, 23, his new wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her younger sister Razan, 19, were murdered inside their Chapel Hill home.
The killings attracted worldwide attention and shook the Muslim communities of Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham, an area collectively known as the Triangle, to their core.
In June 2019, Craig Hicks was sentenced to three life terms without parole.
The courts said the killing stemmed from “a parking dispute”, but relatives of the victims say it was an anti-Muslim hate crime.
Deah’s brother, Farris Barakat, has spent the last five years trying to honour his sibling’s memory by fighting Islamophobia.
He turned the rental property his brother once owned into The Light House, named after Deah, whose name translates from Arabic to “light”.
“My brother tweeted a couple of months before he was murdered: ‘I have a dream to help youth with their projects,’ and what we ended up doing is taking the house and setting up an incubator programme for youth non-profits and really just supporting and empowering local Muslim youth to put their faith into action and to kind of find a safe space to do that,” Mr Barakat tells The National.
Farris Barakat takes a group of young Muslims, along with his mother and dog AJ, kayaking on North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. Sophie Tremblay / The National
Farris Barakat takes a group of young Muslims, along with his mother and dog AJ, kayaking on North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. Sophie Tremblay / The National
With indoor public gatherings at The Light House put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Barakat has been taking Muslim youth kayaking on North Carolina’s many rivers so they can keep accessing the support network they usually find at The Light House.
“For me, it’s powerful but it’s simple. Get them outdoors. We don’t have to live with anxiety and depression. It’s a reality, but there are some ways to fight it and no one is alone,” he says.
After the Chapel Hill shootings, there have been a number of alarming Islamophobic incidents in the state.
In 2017, shortly after President Trump announced the travel ban, a group calling itself the North Carolina Pastors Network paid for a highway billboard that read: “Why support President Trump’s immigration ban? 19 Muslim immigrants killed, 2,977 Americans. September 11, 2001.”
In another incident, a man was recorded asking about Muslims, “Can we not kill them all?” during a meeting of a far-right group in Kernersville, a suburb of Winston-Salem that is home to a significant Arab-American Muslim population.
Muslim men perform a socially-distanced maghrib prayer at the Islamic Association of Raleigh. Willy Lowry / The National
Muslim men perform a socially-distanced maghrib prayer at the Islamic Association of Raleigh. Willy Lowry / The National
These incidents have had both a direct and indirect effect on the community.
At the Islamic Association of Raleigh, a volunteer security guard now carries a handgun during Friday prayers.
“I think in North Carolina we continue to see the rise of anti-Muslim bigotry and across the south,” says Ms Ali.
“Personally, I think anti-Muslim bigotry is so interesting because even if you haven’t directly experienced it, when someone who identifies the same way as you experiences it, you still feel it. You still get a sense of that trauma and pain.”
But, she believes, just as it inspired her to create Muslim Women For, the rise in Islamophobic incidents is empowering the wider Muslim community in North Carolina, which her group estimates at about 40,000 registered voters, to take action.
North Carolina is considered a major swing state in the 2020 election. Recent polls show Joe Biden up by a slim margin. Sophie Tremblay / The National
North Carolina is considered a major swing state in the 2020 election. Recent polls show Joe Biden up by a slim margin. Sophie Tremblay / The National
A recent poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that across the US, American Muslims are pushing back against Islamophobia by becoming more politically active.
In 2016, only 60 per cent of Muslim Americans were registered to vote. That jumped to 78 per cent in 2020, according to the poll.
“President Trump has embraced policies like the Muslim ban, he declines to disavow white nationalist groups that target Muslims, and in the backdrop of all this we find that Muslim voter registration continues to climb,” explains Erum Ikramullah, one of the authors of the ISPU report.
Ms Ikramullah adds that their poll also finds Muslim Americans are more likely than other faith groups to attend a town hall meeting and volunteer for a political campaign.
Both Ms Ali and Mr Barakat believe that what the Muslim community has experienced is translating into action for other issues that affect US minorities, such as showing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I think, for a lot of us, the last couple of years has been a lesson in how white this country is and in white supremacy in general,” Mr Barakat explains.
“I think it’s important to be able to break that down in a safe space and to be able to channel anger, anxiety, into something that is beneficial as opposed to just letting it affect you.”
Ms Ali says she expects voter turnout among Muslims in North Carolina to be higher than it has ever been.
“It comes from a place of outrage, it comes from a place of anger and being ready for change. I mean, the last four years have been a lot. I think people here aren’t ready for another four years of what we just experienced.”
Built with Shorthand