38 NEWSWEEK.COM
POLITICSEl-Sayed and other Muslim candidates in 2018—
and they’ve all endorsed him this year in return.
“Bernie Sanders offers an authentic message that
has stood the test of time,” McCaw says. “Also, it’s
not just that he speaks to Muslim issues. He em-
braces Muslims speaking for his campaign in a way
that I have not seen another candidate do.”An Agenda That Works
sanders’ appeal goes beyond his outspoken
opposition to bigotry against Muslims and U.S. inter-
ference in the affairs of Muslim-majority countries.
A 2016 exit poll by CAIR found Muslims rated civil
rights, education and the economy as issues of even
greater concern than opposition to Trump’s pro-
posed Muslim ban or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So the rest of Sanders’ creed—his drive for univer-
sal health care and free college and against income
inequality, gun violence and climate change—reso-
nates because the vast majority of Muslims in the U.S.
are also minorities living in urban areas, says Youssef
Chouhoud, a political science professor at Christo-
pher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
“A large percentage of American Muslims are at or
below the poverty line, so these economic policies ap-
peal to them as well,” Chouhoud says. “They gravitate
toward Bernie for that broader platform, first and
foremost. And then it just so happened that he has a
foreign policy that they find appealing as well.”
McCaw echoed this, noting that Muslims are
“the most ethnically diverse religious community in
the United States. Our issues are a combination of
almost every minority community’s issues, all uni-
fied around the issues of progressive social justice.”
Still, the idea that Muslim Americans want a
Jew as their standard-bearer is intriguing. Prom-
inent Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour,
a Sanders surrogate, winks at that twist when she
marvels over the fact that she “fell in love with an
old Jewish guy,” a routine laugh line in her speeches.
And far from Sanders avoiding discussion of his
faith around Muslim groups, he uses his family’s im-
migrant experience to relate to their experiences as
targets of oppression and bigotry. At the Islamic So-
ciety of North America convention in July 2019, for
instance, he opened by declaring himself the “proud
son of Jewish immigrants,” a phrase the elicited ap-
plause. The Holocaust, he told the crowd, taught him
“how important it is for all of us to speak out force-
fully wherever we see prejudice and discrimination.”
Sometimes his authenticity does risk alienating
Muslims, but audiences give him props for his con-
sistency. “I am a strong supporter of the right of
Israel to exist in independence, peace and security,”
he said later in that speech. “But I also believe that
the United States needs to engage in an even-hand-
ed approach towards that long-standing conflict
which results in ending the Israeli occupation and
enabling the Palestinian people to have indepen-
dence and self-determination in a sovereign, inde-
pendent, economically viable state of their own.”
Shakir conceded that some more socially con-
servative Muslims struggle with Sanders’ stances
on LGBTQ equality, abortion and legalized mari-
juana. But “people end up saying, ‘Hey you know
I don’t agree with Bernie Sanders on this or that,
but I know he really believes it and so I appreciate
that,’ ” Shakir says. “What brings it all together is
that he’s trustworthy, he’s compassionate, he has
the qualities that I feel comfortable with as a leader.”
Sanders surrogate Amer Zahr, a comic-activist
who last year hosted an Arab Americans For Bernie
organizing meeting in Dearborn, bristles at the idea“We actually view Bernie’s Jewishness as a positive, something that connected us more with him as being minorities in this country.”