Muslims in Western Politics

5. Muslim Underrepresentation in American Politics

5 Muslim Underrepresentation in American Politics Abdulkader H. Sinno Up to 2 percent of the American population is Muslim or of Muslim background, and American Muslims are, on average, more educated and affluent than the average American. Yet, there is only one Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, who was elected in 2006 from Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, no state governors or lieutenant governors, only four state legislators, and very few federal appointed officials, such as National Institutes of Health director Elias Zerhouni , and ambassadors Zalmay Khalilzad and Shirin Tahir-Kheli.1 There is extreme underrepresentation in political appointments even at lower levels, such as on the staff of members of Congress and to advisory committees. In contrast, other Western countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands have much higher proportions of parliamentarians who either are Muslim by faith or have parents from traditionally Muslim immigrant groups. In this chapter, I broadly describe Muslim representation in Western parliaments and attempt to explain American Muslim underrepresentation in comparative context. I do not assume or imply that American Muslims have consistent collective political interests, form a cohesive community, or feel that they can only be  · Abdulkader H. Sinno adequately represented by someone who is their co-religionist—even though these may very well be, or could become, reasonable generalizations. I also do not necessarily imply that a Muslim is better represented by a Muslim than a non-Muslim or that an American Muslim elected official represents his district any differently than a non-Muslim one. I simply attempt to solve the puzzle of American Muslim underrepresentation, almost complete absence, in elected and appointed positions. This underrepresentation is particularly puzzling because attitudes toward Muslims are more positive in the United States than in many European countries with higher levels of representation and because American Muslims, unlike European Muslims, have the socioeconomic advantages (advanced education, high incomes) that normally encourage incorporation into state elites. Some of the explanations I explore are American Muslims’ reluctance to participate and compete, poor understanding of the political process, the incentives of the electoral system, district size, the influence of aggressively pro-Israel and Evangelical organizations, and general public hostility toward Muslims. I argue that while electoral systems and popular hostility toward Muslims alone do not explain much, the combination of large majoritarian districts with even a moderate level of popular hostility toward members of the geographically diffuse minority is sufficient to explain American Muslim underrepresentation. Muslim Identity and American Muslim Numbers Like other authors in this volume, I do not consider “Muslim” to necessarily indicate a religious identity, but an identity that may have religious, racial, political, or cultural dimensions. This is particularly useful in studying the dynamics of political representation. The politicized identities of elected representatives, perhaps more so than the rest of us, shift with circumstances and expectations. Even those who define themselves as “culturally Muslim” or even as “secular Muslim” find themselves dealing with “Muslim” issues and being considered a “Muslim” by their own political parties when they wish to appear diverse, by minority constituents who feel connected to them or who do not trust them, by jealous rivals wishing to discredit them, by the media when they need “Muslim” voices, and by civil society’s organizations. For example, Said el-Khadraoui, Belgium’s secular and very European-looking member of the European Parliament, who was born to a mixed Moroccan-Flemish couple, was celebrated as a member of an “ethnic minority” by his colleagues on the Parliament’s newly formed Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup.2 A broader, more inclusive, definition of who is a Muslim is useful to understand the broad range of dynamics that affect Muslim representation . I therefore consider a parliamentarian to be Muslim if he or she is Muslim by faith or has at least one parent who is Muslim by faith or belongs to a group that is traditionally Muslim. Muslim Underrepresentation in American Politics ·  The number of Muslims in the United States is both difficult to estimate and subject to highly politicized debates. It is difficult to estimate the number of Muslims because survey methods are not particularly effective for counting unevenly distributed and hard-to-define small populations and because of fear of divulging identity by members of a vulnerable minority, differences in self-identification among those who belong to ethnic groups that are traditionally Muslim, and inflation of attendance numbers by...