Here Come the Super-Islamophobic Midterms
Republicans have declared a bigoted war on Abdul El-Sayed and it's only going to ramp up as November gets closer, writes Mehdi. Plus, we report yet another Israeli attack on a Palestinian-American.
On this day in 1782, George Washington invented the Purple Heart, the U.S. military award for those wounded or killed in action. Donald Trump, who dodged service in Vietnam, famously told one supporter who handed over his award, “Man, that’s like big stuff. I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.”
Good morning, Mehdi here, and happy Friday! It’s the weekend! Phew. Though, to be honest, in Donald Trump’s America, sadly, the week never ends. Still, what a week it has been so far. Abdul El-Sayed, whom I first interviewed when he was running for governor in 2018, is now officially the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan. And folks on the right are freaking out.
I’ll discuss that in The Lede, below. Plus, there’s more troubling news of Israeli troops brutalizing Palestinian-American citizens, and Trump is really, really pissed about the Washington Post’s report that he has fallen out with Pete Hegseth over the Iran war fiasco. Let’s read on.
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, the Muslim Boogeyman
The Republican Party’s reaction to Abdel El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate primary victory in Michigan immediately reminded me of something my friend Dalia Mogahed once told me.
Mogahed is a Muslim-American scholar, author, and former Gallup pollster who has forgotten more about American attitudes toward Islam than most of us will ever know. Not long after I moved to the United States in 2015, she explained something that upended a common assumption.
Contrary to popular belief, she said, spikes in Islamophobia weren’t primarily driven by terrorist attacks – or even by the perception of a terrorist threat.
Do you know what they did correspond to?