This hasn't been picked up by the MSM but I think it's quite telling politically. Muhammad Ali Hasan, the founder of 'Muslims for Bush' and the biggest Republican organizer among American Muslims has had enough after this past election cycle's openly anti-Muslim bigotry, and has changed parties after meeting with Nancy Pelosi.
There's a long backstory here that probably needs explaining. In 2000, the majority of American Muslims voted for Bush due to his claim to be pro-religion, pro-family, pro-Arab rights, against Clinton's creation of "secret evidence" laws, and over dislike of Joe Lieberman. Bush's first term was a disaster on all counts; the man they bragged in 2000 about helping get elected did nearly the opposite of everything they hoped for. By 2004, 80% of American Muslims (a population of 6-7 million) voted for Kerry. "Muslims for Bush" persisted through the 2004 election, claiming "Bush loves Muslims" and supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The group was detested by a lot of people; their booth was vandalized at conventions, and I compared it to "Roaches for Raid" at the time. Mr. Hasan persisted in the organization (he's rumored to have made a lot of money in government contracts when Bush was re-elected), which relabeled itself "Muslims for America." He tried hard to show Muslims as supporting pro-Republican ideas, but the GOP just never really let him at their table. I suppose it's comparable to the Log Cabin Republicans with similar results. Even Tucker Carlson dug into him when he was a guest on his show despite their general agreement.
Ever since 2002, Muslim Republicans have been in a really uncomfortable position, facing a party that is increasingly vilifying them and a community that is deserting their party in droves. (Not all that different from Latinos vis-a-vis GOP)
According to the interview in the Colorado Independent, he became disillusioned with the party when he ran for Colorado Treasurer under the GOP ticket. During the GOP convention in May he came up against state Republican delegates who were convinced that he was trying to install sharia finance laws. What was a strong campaign fell apart amid smears that since he was a Muslim he was 'lying to infidels.'
“You experience bigotry sometimes but I often just think it’s probably my personality that the person doesn’t like. At the convention, though, that was the first time I felt the real thing. It was the worst experience of my life.”
Hasan suspects a whisper campaign swept the convention, sounding a warning against placing a Muslim in charge of investing the state’s revenues.
“Some goons were telling people that there’s a passage in the Koran that encourages Muslims to lie, that lying is considered a good thing in the service of advancing a Muslim or sharia agenda. I don’t know who was behind the rumor, but I’ve read the Koran, and I don’t know what they were talking about.”
Hasan said in the run up to the convention he personally called the 3,500 delegates and talked to roughly 1,500 who said he could count on their vote.
He said he ran this “informal survey” through his pollster and the numbers made sense because Hasan was getting heavy support from the Western Slope where he lives and has been active while his opponent, J.J. Ament, was pulling well from the eastern Front Range districts.
“In the end, we guessed we’d get 40 percent support at the convention as a basement estimate.”
That didn’t happen. Hasan drew roughly 20 percent of delegate support, missing the cut off to make the ballot by 10 percent.
He said the weekend of the convention he watched hundreds of supporters fall away. Delegate after delegate approached him and mentioned the Koran and said in so many words that they weren’t sure they could trust him.
“It hurt. People who had said they were voting for me were now coming up to me and saying ‘You know, I hear you could be lying to us.’ I was shocked. I got the courage to approach some of them, people I had talked to and who said they were voting for me. Here they were wearing J.J. Ament stickers. I was like, you know, wow, and they said ‘But how do I know you’re not going to assert some form of sharia law against Colorado?’”
Hasan said he was deflated after talking to one woman at length.
“I told her I started Muslims for Bush. I’m proud of that. I told her I have been a vocal fiscal conservative for years. I said I’ve given to Republican candidates on the federal and state level. I helped get Republican candidates elected to House seats in 2008 when Democrats were winning everything… Finally I asked her ‘There’s nothing I can say to win your vote because my name is Muhammad, am I right?’ and she said ‘Yeah, that’s probably right.’”
Rather than eat crow, Mr. Hasan held out and stuck with the GOP. While he wasn't as enthusiastic as before, he still tried campaigning against Obama, with the bizarre accusation that Obama was more anti-Muslim than Bush; "he's been more hawkish than Dick Cheney."
What made Hasan finally snap was this year's Republican blowup over Park51 (the so-called 'Ground Zero mosque'). The GOP loudly attacked Islam itself as well as American Muslims in general over Park51, putting people like Hasan in an untenable position (no Muslim wants to be associated with the Republicans when they're bashing your religion). Fellow 'Muslim for Bush' Seeme Hasan, who donated over $1 million to the Bush campaigns, said during the height of the shrill islamophobia she may leave the GOP. "The past few years in the Republican party has been constant humiliation for Muslims," she told TPM.
“I dismissed it as a joke. It was crazy people. Then it was one Republican leader after another looking to strip Constitutional rights out of just bigotry.” He was stunned by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, onetime Muslim defenders, he said, turn into the worst kind of pandering politicians. In August he wrote a piece on HuffPo comparing the attempt by politicians to ban Park51 to red-lining racist zoning laws before the Civil Rights era “I was okay after the convention. I decided all that was just an aberration and that I would just let it fade. But the 14th Amendment debate, the ugly mosque politics, that just killed my hopes.”
I feel kinda sorry for the guy after reading this, though I'm not surprised. Many in the Muslim community branded him an Uncle Tom in 2004, and I figured it was a matter of time before the GOP would push him till he broke. Somehow he weathered the many islamophobic incidents the GOP had a hand in since 2004; the controversy over Guantanamo and waterboarding, the fiasco over Dubai Ports World, the Danish cartoons, the Tea Party, the anti-mosque hysteria of 2010, etc.
After the Park51 fiasco, he emailed his friend Congressman Jared Polis. “If you want to convince me to become a Democrat, you have your chance.” Polis said he had someone he wanted Hasan to talk to and then he set up the meeting with Pelosi. It must have had some effect on him, since he told the interviewer, “I have three top political heroes: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and now Nancy Pelosi. She has such a spine, like Reagan and Bush, they all have that in common: a spine of steel that comes from conviction."
Hasan said he knows he has to put in the same “blood and sweat” for the Democratic party now that he has put into the Republican party over the years. He’s looking at running again for office in six to eight years. He said he’s “thinking in election cycles.” His first step is going to be to form a group to fight to protect the rights of and expand opportunities for minorities.
“If we fight on a Constitutional basis and not on emotion, we will win,” he said. “I don’t defend Muslims because I’m Muslim. I’m not even a good Muslim. I’m a sinner. I’m a political hack and an interfaith practitioner…. I defend Muslims because I stand against bigotry, because I don’t want bigotry to exist.”
Lastly, I want to point out how Muslims are joining the ranks of Latinos, gays, and other minorities who left the GOP in droves. For one reason or another, these are all groups that would've voted Republican a decade ago, but the GOP today is so openly against them that they’re leaving in disgust. Right-wing blogs are actually celebrating Mr. Hasan's departure, saying Muslims should be thrown out of the party first and then the US next. Way to ignore the canary in the coal mine, GOP. Here you have a guy who was vilified by Muslim Dems as an Uncle Tom for supporting Bush's wars plus Gitmo, and despite his loyalty and million-dollar donations the GOP essentially pushes him out. Bigot voters are more important than Muslim conservatives.
American Muslims are very much like Baptists in America when it comes to voting; they’re pro-family, pro-religion, pro-marriage, and uncomfortable with gay issues. That oughta be a natural voting bloc that Republicans can count on, but they threw it away in disgust. Like the Latino community, the Right-wing fringe just can't even find it in their own self-interest to work with them. The openly anti-Muslim hate speech by the Republicans, teabaggers, and those newly-freshmen congressmen really turned American Muslims off to the GOP this election cycle (though Muslims have been turned off to most Republicans since 2003).