CLEVELAND — As final round of US presidential elections approach, many American Muslim voters are unhappy with the choice they are forced to face between Democrats’ institutional Hilary Clinton and Republicans’ anti-Muslim Donald Trump.
“Our community feels between a rock and a hard place,” Julia Shearson, executive director of the Cleveland office of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Sandusky Register on Tuesday, July 19.
“I am seeing apathy.”
While American Muslims believe Trump has demonized them, they are not happy with Hillary Clinton either, because of her tilt toward Israel in the Middle East and her generally hawkish stance toward Muslim countries
Muslim feelings were echoed across the US, where a sense of satisfaction was overwhelming.
According to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, released on July 15, voters are grudgingly rallying around the nominees while expressing broad misgivings about the candidates, the campaign and the direction of the country.
More than half of all voters hold unfavorable views of the two major party candidates and large majorities say neither is honest and trustworthy.
More than a third of Republicans say they are disappointed or upset that Donald J. Trump, who crashed the party’s nominating process, will represent them in the fall campaign; an equal number say he does not represent the values the party should stand for.
Democrats are only marginally happier with Hillary Clinton as their party’s candidate.
A quarter of Democratic voters say they are disappointed in her as the nominee; an additional seven percent say they are upset.
Only half of voters say Clinton is prepared to be president, while an astonishing two-thirds say that Trump is not ready for the job, including four in 10 Republicans.
Though some Muslims expressed interest in Jill Stein, the Green candidate, many are worried about “wasting” their vote, especially in “swing” states such as Michigan where they could help decide the election’s outcome.
“It’s a kind of moral sickness to hate on a particular group of people, to say one religious minority is not welcome in America,” Shearson said.
“We believe in helping to defend the rights of Muslims we are defending the rights of all Americans.”