INTRODUCTION
In recent years, American MuslimsFootnote 1 have become an unwitting focal point of political campaigns in the United States. As the 2016 electoral campaign and subsequent election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States illustrate, most of the attention leveled at them has been negative and of grave consequence. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that spikes in anti-Muslim sentiments and hate crimes are directly linked to the intensification of elite discourse against Muslims, particularly during election cycles (Mogahed Reference Mogahed2013; Levin Reference Levin2017). Though levels of discrimination and hate crimes against this group have waxed and waned, in recent years, they have reached levels not seen since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks (henceforth 9/11). According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), hate crimes against this group rose by 67% in 2015 compared with the previous year. Muslim advocacy organizations have found that these trends continued and intensified throughout the course of the campaigns and the early months of the Trump Presidency. Recently published FBI data for 2016 corroborates their findings. In fact, 2016 saw a 5% increase in the number of total hate crimes compared with the previous year, and a 20% rise in hate crimes against Muslims.
Equally telling, a majority of American Muslims perceives that there is a lot of discrimination against them, and almost half say they have experienced discrimination firsthand (Pew Research Center 2017, 13). Moreover, a plurality of Muslims rank things like discrimination, prejudice, misconceptions about their religion, and the association of Islam with terrorism as the most important issues impacting Muslims living in the United States. Not surprisingly, most also express concern about the Trump Presidency and believe that both the president and the Republican Party (GOP) are unfriendly toward them (Pew Research Center 2017, 68).
One would expect this current political climate to thwart Muslim American advocacy efforts. However, the opposite is true. Organizations representing the interests of Muslims in the United States are increasingly visible, engaged, and assertive. Targeted as outside the boundaries of the American national community, Muslim American advocacy groups have responded by demanding access to the policymaking process, making claims on behalf of U.S. Muslims, and framing those claims in terms of the pursuit of minority civil rights. While in recent years there has been a burgeoning literature on Muslim American political behavior, little attention has been paid to the groups that aim/claim to represent the interests of this community. Similarly, much of this literature has tended to emphasize the impacts of the 9/11 attacks on American Muslims, while overlooking other important events and controversies that have affected the lives of Muslims since those attacks (Calfano Lajevardi, Michelson Reference Calfano, Lajevardi and Michelson2017).
This paper begins to address these gaps by focusing on the 2016 presidential elections as a case study to examine Muslim American policy advocacy. To these ends, it asks the following two questions: how have Muslim American interest groups responded to recent spikes in anti-Muslim discrimination, particularly in the context of the 2015–2016 primary campaign season and the early months of the Trump Presidency? And, further, how have these groups helped frame the policy interests of U.S. Muslims and, consequently, the collective claims of the group on whose behalf they claim to speak? I argue that the targeting of U.S. Muslims as “other” has provided Muslim American interest groups with a number of unintended opportunities through which they have been able to present themselves as the official representatives of the Muslim American community, access the policymaking process, and, in the process, help frame and communicate a set of collective Muslim American interests.
Muslim American claims-making strategies
Methodologically, this paper draws on political ethnography, an interdisciplinary research strategy that seeks to generate contextual knowledge claims by engaging in reasoning from within social practice (Wedeen Reference Wedeen2010; Schwartz-Shea and Majic Reference Schwartz-Shea and Majic2017). Thus, I rely on in-depth participant observation I conducted with the three largest national-level Muslim Advocacy organizations: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). While I touch upon the work of some local and regional advocacy organizations (particularly local CAIR chapters), I have chosen to focus on national-level organizations for two reasons. First, I am primarily interested in examining if and how advocacy organizations are framing a unified Muslim American policy agenda. Hence, I focus on organizations that at least claim to speak on behalf of all Muslims in the United States. Whether or not this is actually the case is a separate (and important) question, but it is one that is largely inconsequential to the argument put forth in this paper. Second, many of the policies that impact the lives of Muslims in the United States are negotiated, decided, and implemented at the national level. Therefore, studying how these organizations are responding to and engaging with national-level policymaking can yield important insights regarding the structural conditions impacting the political behavior of this group. In short, national Muslim organizations “have become the public face of American Islam on national and international issues through assiduous institution building and activism” (GhaneaBassiri Reference GhaneaBassiri2010, 296). And as such, they merit further scholarly scrutiny.
The ethnographic data for this paper were collected between March 2016 and May 2017, a period that includes the height of the 2016 electoral campaigns, the Presidential Elections, the transfer of power, and President Trump's first 100 days in office. During this period, I attended a variety of events, including teach-ins, advocacy days, coalition meetings, rallies, and annual conferences organized or co-sponsored by the above-mentioned organizations. These events provided me with an entry point to Muslim American advocacy groups and the major policy issues motivating their work. Further, since the policy discourse produced and disseminated by these organizations is an important tool through which they frame and communicate their demands, I collected all publically available press releases and action alerts issued by these organizations during the same timeframe (which totaled 842). Over 90% of these press releases were issued by CAIR, reflecting its status as the largest and most active Muslim advocacy organization in the United States today.
This dataset was subjected to a thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke's (Reference Braun and Clarke2006) “six-phase guide” for conducting thematic analysis. Through this analysis, I sought to identify the specific claims and demands being made, and the strategies used (or suggested) to achieve them. After collecting and engaging in “repeated, immersive reading” of the press releases (Braun and Clarke's first phase), I began the process of coding and organizing the data using the Nvivo software. The initial codes were identified based on a review of the interest group literature, which yielded 17 advocacy strategies common to all interest groups. After all the data had been coded, I generated the overarching themes, analyzing the underlying ideas, assumptions and conceptualizations underpinning the patterns of meaning found in the data (Braun and Clarke Reference Braun and Clarke2006, 84). Based on this analysis, I identified three major advocacy frames used by these organizations: collaboration, confrontation, and constituent empowerment (Table 1).
The collaboration frame refers to tactics through which access to policymakers is directly or indirectly sought. These include requesting meetings with elected officials, attending hearings, advising government and law enforcement officials, and releasing research and policy reports. The confrontation frame constitutes public exposure and contestation of what is perceived as “bad” or illegal policy. Confrontational tactics include organizing protests and rallies, naming and shaming public figures, and engaging in litigation. Lastly, the constituent empowerment frame refers to strategies that seek to directly mobilize American Muslims (and their allies) to take specific actions. These include voter turnout campaigns, advocacy days, annual conferences and banquets (where constituents are asked to donate to the organizations), and coalition building.
To supplement this data, I conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with leaders and active constituents of Muslim advocacy organizations. These interviews varied in length averaging 45 minutes. Subjects were recruited by directly contacting the organizations and by asking interviewees to suggest other contacts. The questions asked during these interviews sought to gauge elite perceptions of the constrains and opportunities facing U.S. Muslims; the impacts of the 2016 elections on Muslim Americans, their organizations, and their claims-making strategies; and the main issue areas that each organization was most directly focused on. Lastly, I rely on existing public opinion data on U.S. Muslims in order to gauge existing trends in anti-Muslim discrimination, which, as I argue below, influences the advocacy work of these groups. These include the 2007, 2011, 2016, and 2017 Pew Research Center polls; the 2010 Gallup Research Center poll; and reports conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) and California University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
The remainder of the paper is divided into two main sections. The first examines the recent rise in anti-Muslim discrimination in the context of the 2016 election, tracing how manifestations of anti-Muslim bias have changed in recent years. The second looks at how Muslim advocacy groups have responded to this political context by examining the specific claims and demands they have put forth, and the advocacy strategies they have used to achieve them.
A PORTRAIT OF U.S. MUSLIMS: DIVERSITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING COMMON POLICY INTERESTS
Because the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect religious affiliation data, there are no official figures on the size of any religious group in America, including Muslims. Accordingly, the numbers we have are estimates—and, as such, are often contested. While Muslim American organizations claim that there are between 6 and 7 million Muslims in the United States (CAIR 2015a), the Pew Research Center puts the number at 3.35 million, or roughly 1% of the total population (Pew Research Center 2017, 46). Albeit small in number, U.S. Muslims are a rapidly growing population. In fact, they have increased by almost a million since Pew conducted its first survey of this community in 2007. And, if current projections are accurate, they are estimated to reach 8.1 million by 2050, making them “the second-largest religious group in the U.S., after Christians” (Pew Research Center 2016). However, it is important to highlight that, even if these estimated projections hold true, Muslims will still only comprise 2% of the total U.S. population. Two reasons are primarily driving this growth: higher fertility rates among U.S. Muslim women and immigration.
Indeed, a majority of U.S. Muslims, or 58%, are first-generation immigrants—most of them from South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The remaining 42% are second-generation immigrants, African Americans, and recent converts to Islam (Pew Research Center 2017, 22). Thus, American Muslims are one of the most racially and ethnically diverse religious groups in the United States, or, as MPAC's President, Salam Al-Marayati put it, “a microcosm of the Muslim ummah [the global Muslim community].”Footnote 2 Indeed, of the total Muslim American population, 41% identify as White (including many individuals with roots in the Middle East), 28% as Asian, 20% as African American, and 8% as Hispanic (Pew Research Center 2017, 22). Muslims in America are thus fragmented along various ethnic, racial, and denominational lines, a fact that makes mobilizing this community along common political goals more difficult. The split between African American and immigrant Muslims has proven to be particularly challenging. Indeed, the historical development of the African American Muslim community is deeply tied to that of the Black liberation movement in the United States, and, until recently, there was little convergence between African American and immigrant Muslim communities (see Curtis Reference Curtis2002; GhanneaBassiri Reference GhaneaBassiri2010). The scholarship on U.S. Muslims is equally siloed, with survey data on this community greatly lagging in its inclusion of Black Muslims (Calfano, Lajevardi, Michelson Reference Calfano, Lajevardi and Michelson2017).
In addition, Muslims span the socioeconomic and political spectrum. Their annual income is slightly lower than the U.S. average, with close to half reporting household incomes of less than $30,000, compared with 35% of the general population (Jamal and Albana Reference Jamal, Albana, Hammer and Safi2013, 100). But, while in the past Muslims tended to vote along socioeconomic and ethnic lines, since 2004 they have casted their votes overwhelmingly in favor of the Democratic Party. In fact, CAIR exit polls indicate that 74% of U.S. Muslims voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, while only 13% casted their votes in favor of Donald Trump. In 2012, Barack Obama received over 90% of the Muslim vote. This is remarkable when one thinks of the fact that the first time Muslims voted as a block in the United States, during the 2000 elections, they did so overwhelmingly to elect George W. Bush.
Nevertheless, their political leanings are more diverse than their voting record suggests. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, a plurality, 38%, identifies as politically moderate, about 25% say they are conservative, and a further 27% identify as liberal (54). The post-9/11 targeting of Muslims, the domestic policies associated with the War on Terror through which they have been disproportionately targeted, and the explicitly anti-Muslim appeals of some GOP candidates, including then-candidate Donald Trump, have all but ensured that the Muslim vote would go for the Democratic candidate. However, both parties still have a long way to go in their efforts to carve out space for the meaningful inclusion of Muslim citizens (Barreto and Bozonelos Reference Barreto and Dino2009).
Given the vast demographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, and ideological diversity of this community, forming and communicating common policy interests and priorities may seem an untenable goal (ISPU 2016, 12). However, this is precisely what national Muslim advocacy organizations strive to do. Undoubtedly, the post-9/11 racialization of Muslims and Islam as a “foreign other,” as well as rising levels of anti-Muslim discrimination in recent years have helped engender a sense of “shared commonality” that scholars perceive to be conducive for the emergence of group consciousness, cohesion, and collective action (Dawson Reference Dawson1995; Chong and Rogers Reference Chong and Rogers2005; Sanchez Reference Sanchez2006; Barreto Reference Barreto2010; Sanchez and Vargas Reference Sanchez and Vargas2016). In fact, according to this literature, there is nothing natural about groups, and Muslim Americans are no exception. This paper examines how “shared circumstances encourages groups to become involved politically” and, more specifically, the role that advocacy organizations can play in framing, communicating and constructing this shared collective experience.
ANTI-MUSLIM DISCRIMINATION AND THE FORMATION OF COMMON POLICY GOALS
Like feelings toward other minority groups, sentiments about Muslims in the United States do not exist in a vacuum but are shaped and influenced by the existing political context (Hero and Tolbert Reference Hero and Tolbert1996; Pantoja and Segura Reference Pantoja and Segura2003a, Reference Pantoja and Segurab). As the recent elections have shown, the current American political climate is one marked by deep divisions, brewing resentments, and radically divergent conceptions of U.S. national identity. Many point to the election of the nation's first African American president, along with changing racial demographics for these trends. Indeed, according to recent Census data, from 2015 to 2016 the percentage of ethnic and racial minorities grew faster than that of whites (USCB 2016). And the United States is expected to become a majority-minority country by the year 2050 (Pew Research Center 2015).
While many have welcomed these predictions as evidence of American dynamism and multiculturalism, others have responded by flocking to white nationalist groups, which have experienced a boom in recruitment (Curry Reference Curry2012). According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-Muslim hate groups have also proliferated, nearly tripling from 2015 to 2016 (SPLC 2017). In recent years, bias against Muslims has also become more mainstream. Some politicians have found it an expedient way to cue constituents and tap into their racial, economic, and security anxieties at a perceivable low electoral cost (Levin Reference Levin2016). During the 2016 presidential primaries, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz called for law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.” Ben Carson claimed that Islam was “incompatible with the Constitution,” and Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” a statement many consider a prelude to his January 27 Executive Order banning immigration from 7-Muslim majority countries. And though anti-Muslim political discourse did not begin with the 2016 elections, those running for office embraced it as never before (ISPU 2016, 13). Thus, as Sahar Aziz contends, in recent years anti-Muslim bias “has mutated into a more insidious and permanent fixture in American race politics where Muslims are arguably the most disfavored group in America” (Aziz Reference Aziz2011, 490).
As will be illustrated in this paper, the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim discrimination has led to two parallel developments: (1) it has solidified the status of U.S. Muslims as a major “out-group” in American society; and (2) it has helped engender clear collective policy interests and responses among this group. These claims are in line with social identity theory, a framework developed to explain group formation and inter-group discrimination. According to the theory, differentiating between an in-group (the group to which one belong) and an out-group (external groups) helps individuals make sense of their sociopolitical environment and the other individuals that inhabit that environment. This social comparison is an important aspect in the process of individual and group identity formation, as people attempt to enhance their self-esteem by comparing perceived “out-groups” less favorably than their own (Tajfel et al. Reference Tajfel, Billig, Bundy and Flament1971; Tajfel and Turner Reference Tajfel and Turner1979). Accordingly, individuals have an in-group bias in how they think of their own identities, and are less likely to trust, accept, and relate to those who seem to belong to other groups (Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner Reference Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner2009, 2).
Though there are multiple out-groups in the American consciousness, not all are viewed in the same way, nor are their positions static. A group can certainly move from being an out-group to becoming part of the majority group—Catholics, Irish, and Italians being a prime example. However, there are important distinctions between different out-groups that help explain why, in time, some may become more accepted by the in-group than others. In particular, racial and religious out-groups—such as Jews and African Americans—are seen more positively than cultural or behaviorally defined ones—such as undocumented immigrants. As Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner (Reference Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner2009) argue, this is partly explained by the fact that whereas religious and racial out-groups have, over time, tried to assimilate to the majority-group, cultural out-groups are seen as rejecting the values and norms of the majority-group.
Scholars have found that Muslims tend to hold a particularly precarious position in America, as they are perceived as members of both a religious and a cultural-behavioral outgroup (Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner Reference Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner2009; Aziz Reference Aziz2011, Reference Aziz2012). Although “Muslim” is a religious label, Muslims have been conceptualized as a foreign, culturally different/deviant and monolithic group (Abu-Ras and Suarez Reference Abu-Ras and Suarez2009; Khan and Ecklund Reference Khan and Ecklund2013). Though this process started prior to the 9/11 attacks, the government's response to those attacks helped facilitate the construction of U.S. Muslims as “suspect citizens,” further demarcating their status as outside the boundaries of the national community (Jamal and Naber Reference Jamal and Naber2008; Aziz Reference Aziz2012). Moreover, for Muslims in the United States, “religion intersects with skin tone, gender, language, and nation of origin,” further influencing how they are perceived by the broader society (Selod and Embrick Reference Selod and Embrick2013, 651). In short, Muslims in America are simultaneously considered a religious minority whose practices are believed to deviate from the Judeo-Christian tradition; a relatively recent immigrant population with foreign cultural norms; and an ethnic minority, often understood through the prism of racialized politics in the United States.
Survey data seem to support these theoretical insights. Self-reported prejudice toward Muslims is higher than prejudice against any other religious group. Indeed, the most recent survey of U.S. Muslims (conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017) asked respondents to rate Muslims on a “feeling thermometer,” ranging from 0 to 100 (where 0 indicates the most negative feelings and 100 the most positive). On average, Muslims received a rating of 48 making them the lowest ranked group, followed closely by Atheists and Mormons, who received a rating of 50 and 54, respectively. Jews, Catholics, and Mainland Protestant were the highest ranked religious groups (receiving respective ratings of 67, 66, and 65) (Pew Research Center 2017, 123). These recent findings support previous trends in the data. A 2011 Gallup Research Center poll, for example, found that 43% of Americans harbored some degree of prejudice toward Muslims. An even higher number, 53% of those polled in the same survey, said they had an unfavorable opinion of the Islamic faith. Further, a 2015 poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), found that 47% of those surveyed believed the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life, and 53% claimed that American Muslims have not done enough to oppose extremism in their own communities (Jones and Cox Reference Jones and Cox2015). In 2017, almost half (49%) of Americans believed that “at least some” of their fellow Muslim citizens were “anti-American” (Pew Research Center 2016, 126).
Equally telling, a vast majority of Muslims in America today (75%) perceive anti-Muslim discrimination to be prevalent, and 68% of them say that President Trump makes them feel worried (Pew Research Center 2017, 67). In fact, when asked to describe the most important problems facing Muslims in the United States, the majority pointed to discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping and lack of acceptance by the rest of society (Pew Research Center 2017, 75). In other words, regardless of whether Muslims are among the most disfavored groups in America, they perceive themselves to be such. These findings are significant since, according to social identity theory, perceptions of discrimination, shared threat, and perceived intergroup conflict have been found to intensify people's attachment to the targeted group (Turner Reference Turner1982; Jetten et al. Reference Jetten, Branscombe, Michael and Spears2001). Another relevant finding when thinking about how Muslims are responding to this climate is that discriminated-against minorities in the United States are also more likely to emphasize their dual identities (as both ethnic/religious minorities and citizens), especially when communicating with audiences who may question their belonging to the group and their identity claims. An environment in which actual or perceived threat is heightened has also been found to result in increased voter mobilization as a means of defense (Radcliff and Saiz Reference Radcliff and Saiz1995; Pantoja and Segura Reference Pantoja and Segura2003a; Barreto, Segura and Woods Reference Barreto, Segura and Woods2004). As Barreto, Masuoka and Sanchez (Reference Barreto, Masuoka and Sanchez2008) argue, “perceptions that members of a group share common structural constraints is the foundation of any form of politicized collective identity.” Indeed, scholars have found that previous periods of backlash against American Muslims have resulted in their increased mobilization and political participation (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr Reference Bakalian and Bozorgmehr2009; Bilici Reference Bilici2012, 132).
Perceptions of common threat have also strengthened the claims-making capacity of Muslim American advocacy organizations. In particular, manifestations of anti-Muslim discrimination have granted these organizations with an audience interested in “the Muslim American perspective” and a unifying discourse to contest: Islamophobia and the unconstitutional denial of individual and group rights. They have used these opportunities to seek access to the policymaking process, make claims on behalf of U.S. Muslims and communicate a set of common policy interests and demands.
FRAMING GRIEVANCES: MINORITY GROUPS, CLAIMS-MAKING, AND THE DISCOURSE OF RIGHTS
There is a rich scholarly literature examining the role of minority political mobilization in the United States. This literature has been largely focused on assessing the impact of race and ethnicity on political mobilization, and centered on the three largest minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans (Danigelis Reference Danigelis1982; Dawson, Brown and Allen. Reference Dawson, Brown and Allen1990; Cho Reference Cho1999; Leighley and Vedlitz Reference Leighley and Vedlitz1999; Lien Reference Lien2004; Ramírez Reference Ramírez2013). In recent years, scholars have begun to focus on the political behavior of other minority groups, including Muslims. Existing studies have sought to gauge the impacts of the post-9/11 backlash (Ayers and Hofstetter Reference Ayers and Hofstetter2008; Bakalian and Bozargmehr Reference Bakalian and Bozorgmehr2009); the social and psychological aspects of Muslim life in America (Cainkar Reference Cainkar2004; O'Connor and Jahan Reference O'Connor and Jahan2014; Oskooii Reference Oskooii2016); and the role of religiosity and mosque involvement on political participation (Jamal Reference Jamal2005; Dana, Bryan, Barreto Reference Dana, Bryan and Barreto2017). Among the most interesting findings to emerge from these studies is that both religiosity and mosque attendance tend to foster, rather than hinder, political participation, a finding in line with the broader literature on religious institutions and political mobilization in America.
Albeit crucial to our understanding of the political behavior of U.S. Muslims, most existing studies have tended to overlook questions about Muslim American policy advocacy and claims-making. This is not entirely surprising. According to survey data, the vast majority of Muslims do not consider any of the major national-level advocacy organizations to represent their interests. When asked, “which national Muslim American organization, if any, do you feel most represents your interests?” only 23% listed CAIR, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization. And this was the highest level of support given to any organization. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) received the support of 11% and 7% of those polled, respectively (Gallup 2011, 25). Moreover, as the leaders of these organizations admit, their current ability to exert any meaningful influence in the policy process is almost non-existent.Footnote 3 These constraints may have led scholars to perceive these organizations as not only unrepresentative but also largely inconsequential. Even if this is the case, however, I argue that these organizations play a significant role in framing the collective policy demands of American Muslims and communicating those demands to the broader public. Understanding how they do this, and which frames they draw upon in order to promote their claims can, therefore, allow us to recognize the various opportunities and constraints that these interest groups face as they attempt to formulate a unified Muslim American policy agenda.
This is a significant role since the ability of groups to generate potent collective action frames is crucial to their success (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly Reference McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly2003). Simply put, in order to succeed, collective actors must be able to frame their grievances and demands in ways that resonate with their audiences. As Entman explains, frames “operate to select and highlight one feature of reality and obscure others in a way that tells a consistent story about problems, their causes, moral implications and remedies” (79). Scholars of interest groups have also highlighted the role of strategic framing as “persuasive devises” in the policy process (Baumgartner and Mahoney Reference Baumgartner and Mahoney2008). Through them, policy actors help organize experience, alert their audiences about the problems or threats they face, and propose ways to rectify them. However, in order to be effective, successful frames must present specific claims in ways that resonate with existing cultural and value norms (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000).
In the context of the United States, few such value norms have acquired the degree of recognition and acceptance that the value of rights seems to hold, leading to a broad degree of acceptance of “right-based claims” (Djupe, Lewis and Jelen Reference Djupe, Lewis and Jelen2016). Thus, groups that are able to frame policy demands around a discourse of rights can gain a degree of legitimacy for their cause, public support and, most importantly, access to the political dialogue (Domke, Shah and Wackman Reference Domke, Shah and Wackman2000; Djupe et al. Reference Djupe, Lewis, Jelen and Dahan2014, Reference Djupe, Lewis and Jelen2016). These rights claims are best understood as the calculated, public, and purposive political demand made in the name of a group on whose behalf claimants aim/claim to speak. More specifically, Koopmans et al. (Reference Koopmans, Statham, Giugni and Passy2005) define the act of claims-making as “a unit of strategic action in the public sphere” that includes, “calls to action, proposals, criticisms, or physical attacks” (254). In other words, they are the micro-level tactics that advocacy organizations use to formulate, communicate, and try to implement their advocacy goals.
Not surprisingly, the Muslim American advocacy groups I examine have overwhelmingly framed their claims around a discourse of Constitutional rights and American values. Whether advocating on foreign policy issues, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Syrian Civil War, or domestic ones, such as immigration, police brutality, and anti-Muslim discrimination, their claims are consistently based on the principles of civil rights, social justice, liberal democratic values, secularism, and the pursuit of justice for all marginalized communities. In this way, anti-Muslim discrimination is placed in the broader historical context of the civil rights struggle and presented as a threat to U.S. Constitutional values and, by extension, to all Americans. In short, through their advocacy, anti-Muslim discrimination is (re)framed as Anti-American.
MAPPING MUSLIM AMERICAN ADVOCACY
Though the focus of the present analysis is on the 2016 elections, it is crucial to highlight that Muslim advocacy did not begin with those elections. In fact, advocacy organizations began to be established in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as questions regarding the permissibility of residing in non-Muslim lands were settled in favor of integration and participation in U.S. politics. Whereas the Muslim organizations that existed prior to this point had been primarily focused on providing social services, religious education, and community outreach, the emergent politically focused organizations were motivated by a single overarching principle: having a seat at the policy table was necessary to advance the community's interests (Bakalian and Bozorgmehr Reference Bakalian and Bozorgmehr2009; Cury Reference Cury2017). The two largest Muslim Advocacy organizations today, CAIR and MPAC, were established in 1994 and 1988, respectively. However, the 9/11 attacks would prove a critical juncture in their institutional developments, ushering them into the national limelight in ways they were ill prepared to conceive of prior to those tragic events. The pressures and opportunities they faced in the decade following those events would inevitably shape their advocacy strategies and lay the groundwork for their response to the rising Islamophobia that coincided with, and came to characterize, the 2015–2016 election campaign.
For better or for worse, government initiatives associated with the war on terror, and in particular the Patriot Act, would prove foundational to their institutional development. In the process of contesting the government profiling, detentions, and surveillance that the Act facilitated, these organizations relied on the framework of the Constitution and a language of rights to make claims on behalf of U.S. Muslims. As one of my respondents described it:
We are under the lens, and what I say to people is “this is our opportunity.” All these other groups before us have defended liberty in this country. We have the African American community to thank for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which we use all the time to defend our community. Today the lens is on us, we have to hold the line and try to defend those civil liberty protections.
Being unable to meet the pressures they faced encouraged them to build partnerships and coalitions with established civil rights organizations, a process that further aided their intuitional development and positioned them in the broader framework of the American civil rights movement. These coalitional partners comprised civil and human rights organizations; faith-based organizations; and immigrant rights organizations. They include the ACLU, the Asian American Federation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, the National Immigration Law Center, and Jews United for Justice, among others. These partnerships have provided Muslim advocacy groups with important resources—including organizational knowledge, solidarity, authority, and increased legitimacy—which they were able to mobilize in the context of the recent elections.
In the decade following 9/11, Muslim organizations were primarily focused on drawing public support for their cause, litigating on behalf of individuals, and making themselves relevant to government officials. The Constitution and Bill of Rights became their primary line of defense, and the courts a major arena where their efforts would play out. Indeed, one of my respondents explicitly indicated that, following 9/11, “there was an organizational decision that legal advocacy would be the most efficient way to challenge government policies.”Footnote 4 In October 2011, CAIR became the first Muslim organization to file an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case dealing with the use of unwarranted surveillance by law enforcement, which CAIR argued, “violate[ed] the privacy rights of American Muslims [and] restricts[ed] Muslims” First Amendment rights of association, speech, and free exercise of religion” (CAIR 2015b). Muslim advocacy organizations were making their demands heard, and framing those demands around a discourse of Constitutional rights.
A Look at the 2016 Elections
In spite of their post-9/11 experiences with Islamophobia, many of the organizational elites I interviewed voiced deep concern not only about recent spikes in hate crimes, but also about the changing nature of anti-Muslim discrimination and, particularly, the explicit anti-Muslim discourse voiced by now President Donald Trump. Evidence suggests the validity of their concerns. Following 9/11, President George W. Bush reached out to the American Muslim community by visiting the Islamic Center of Washington D.C., and declaring: “Islam is peace.”Footnote 5 Data show that hate crimes against Muslims decreased following his remarks (Levin Reference Levin2017). By contrast, as a candidate, Trump consistently trafficked in anti-Muslim rhetoric and proposed policies that specifically targeted Muslims. Throughout the course of the campaign, he stated that “Islam hates us,” proposed surveilling “certain mosques,” and repeatedly claimed that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated as the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11. According to researchers at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, since coming into office, “Trump has created the most Islamophobic administration our country has seen” (Patel and Levinson-Waldman Reference Patel and Levinson-Waldman2017).
CAIR's Director of Government Affairs, Robert McCaw, described the 2016 elections as “one of the most challenging in U.S. history…an election marked by strategic discrimination against two groups singled out by Republican Party candidates: Muslim Americans and Hispanic Americans, the two groups least likely to be registered and to vote.”Footnote 6 Not surprisingly, therefore, during the period examined in this analysis, anti-Muslim discrimination became the main focus of these organizations’ advocacy efforts. Indeed, the majority of the press release communication they issued between March 2016 and May 2017 (54%) dealt with the subject of anti-Muslim discrimination. A common way they have sought to respond to the “strategic discrimination” experienced by their communities is by becoming increasingly active and visible in demanding their collective rights. As all interest groups, CAIR, MPAC, and the USCMO have relied on a variety of claims-making tactics to accomplish these goals. These tactics can be divided into three main advocacy categories, or frames: confrontation, collaboration, and constituent empowerment.
Constituent Empowerment
Throughout the course of the elections, the most common advocacy tactics employed by these organizations focused on “constituent empowerment.” Indeed, a plurality of the press releases I examined, 32%, explicitly referenced this advocacy frame. These tactics included urging constituents to contact public officials and make specific demands, organizing and promoting “get out the vote” campaigns, calling for increased civic engagement, promoting educational and “know your rights” efforts, and building a coalition and interfaith partnerships, particularly with other marginalized groups.
Indeed, constituent empowerment is of particular importance to these organizations since, even though citizenship rates among Muslims are high (82%), only 44% of them say they voted in the 2016 elections. Many of my interviewees also emphasized the importance of engaging in long-term sustainable efforts to empower, educate, and mobilize Muslims. As an organizational leader simply put it: “the best answer to this anti-Muslim rhetoric is engagement in the political process.”Footnote 7 MPAC's President, Salam Al-Marayati, echoed those sentiments, calling U.S. Muslims into action: “in the face of adverse narratives in American politics, we urge you—the American Muslim voter—to engage in multiple ways.”
Interestingly, my respondents also voiced frustration toward members of the community for failing to sustain long-term civic engagement. They gave various reasons for this, but in general, these centered on the community being fragmented along ethnic lines; “insular” and overly focused on mosque-related affairs; and genuinely afraid to participate in civic life. One respondent put the problem simply: “Muslims in America do not speak with one voice.” At the core of what the national-level organizations here examined strive to do is attempt to rectify these shortcomings by encouraging (and facilitating) collective civic engagement, and communicating a cohesive, unified policy agenda, even when one does not necessarily exist at the grassroots level.
Though these organizations perceive the meaningful social change to take place from the top down, demonstrating the influence of U.S. Muslims is an important way through which they aim to exert pressure on policymakers and elected officials. Toward these ends, in late 2015, the USCMO, and CAIR announced a number of educational, outreach, and civic empowerment initiatives in direct response to what they deemed as “growing Islamophobia in America” (USCMO 2015). Through their One America Campaign, these organizations had a target of registering a million new Muslim voters in 2016. Similarly, CAIR described its 2016 “Muslim Vote Election Campaign” as a tool to “empower American Muslims by increasing their political capacity and presence in the general election” (CAIR 2016). Among other elements, the campaign included an election toolkit and general election questionnaire; a “religious pluralism pledge” that candidates were encourages to sign; and the establishment of a website dedicated to tracking Islamophobia in the Presidential elections.
As evidence of their desire to demonstrate the presence and influence of Muslim voters, CAIR's General Elections Questionnaire included a large pool of sample questions that individuals were encouraged to ask candidates during town hall meetings and similar events. These included:
• Do you support a welcoming environment that fosters mutual respect for all religious beliefs, traditions, and heritages?
• Do you support the right of Muslim communities to establish or expand places of worship on the same terms as other religious communities?
• Do you support Representatives Don Beyer (D-VA) and Mike Honda's (D-CA) Resolution Condemning Violence, Bigotry, and Hateful Rhetoric Toward Muslims in the United States (H.Res.569)?
The questions provide an interesting glimpse into the common policy interests and concerned being framed through these organizations’ advocacy efforts. In particular, their emphasis on questions related to religious liberty and anti-Muslim discrimination serves to emphasize the common threats impacting Muslims, which, as previously discussed, can be an important way to encourage and sustain minority group mobilization.
Through its website, the USCMO also made available a large number of free campaign material, including posters, banners, and buttons, as well as a voter registration kiosk available for sale. The items were intended to serve a practical purpose during the elections, but also, and most importantly, to make Muslim voters visible. The organization also declared Eid el-Adha—which fell on September 12 and is one of the most important Muslim Holidays—as National Muslim Voter Registration Day and provided sample khutba (religious sermon) talking points that individuals were encouraged to share with their congregations. MPAC went further, encouraging individuals to become involved and make their claims in ways other than voting, including writing op-eds, hosting debate gatherings, and conducting phone banks.
As previously discussed a major focus of these public outreach campaigns centered on combating Islamophobia and, in the process, claiming the rights of U.S. Muslims as an American minority being unjustly targeted. One of CAIR's signature projects in this respect was the establishment of Islamophobia.org, a website established in early 2015 to “monitor and combat Islamophobia.” In it, the organization makes available a number of resources, including a section tracking what it considers Islamophobic rhetoric of political candidates; lists of Islamophobic organizations and Islamophobic individuals; and anti-prejudice tools that it encourages individuals to rely on when confronted with anti-Muslim discrimination. Both CAIR and MPAC also allow individuals to report personal incidents of Islamophobia, which they can do by filling out a simple online form available on their websites.
In June of 2016, CAIR launched a satirical public awareness campaign on Islamophobia.org titled Islamophobin, to challenge what the organization referred to as “growing Islamophobia in America.” The campaign entailed the sale of a mock-medicine, Islamophobin, which promised to “treat” Islamophobia. It also featured a video explaining the affliction—an affliction that includes, “blind intolerance, irrational fear of Muslims, and U.S. Presidential Election Year scapegoating”—as well as the benefits of Islamophobin. Individuals were encouraged to join the campaign by handing out packets of the “medicine” and mailing them to political candidates asking them to pledge to combat anti-Muslim discrimination. Through campaigns like these, satire is adopted as a tool to empower Muslims to assert their belonging to their nation, reclaim their agency, and take control over the narrative of Islamophobia.
Confrontation
As is the case for other advocacy organizations, confronting what they perceive to be unjust or unlawful policies has been an important component of Muslim advocacy efforts. Not surprisingly, confrontation tactics were prevalent during the 2016 elections. 28% of the total press releases I analyzed made direct reference to these tactics. Most of these claims centered on calling on the FBI and law enforcement officials to investigate cases related to anti-Muslim discrimination; announcing the taking of legal action; and condemning Islamophobic comments made by specific elected officials and political candidates. Indeed, 11% of their press release communication either directly called out Republican candidates for their anti-Muslim remarks, or made specific reference to the GOP. By contrast, less than 1% of them referred to the Democratic Party—and those that did tended to focus on urging Democrats to take certain actions (such as reducing government surveillance, focusing on police reform, and welcoming more refugees). In fact, the only press release issued during the period I examined that overtly criticized a member of the Democratic Party was in response to President Bill Clinton's DNC remarks on American Muslims, which critics argued appeared to make Muslim citizenship conditional (CAIR 2017).
Consequently, “naming and shaming” is an important confrontation tactic that these organizations rely on. Through this tactic, they engage in exposing, publicizing, and condemning organizations, leaders, and elected officials that are seen to explicitly promote an anti-Muslim agenda. Asides from scrutinizing the stances of political candidates and elected officials, they have focused on drawing attention to overtly anti-Muslim groups, such as Act! For America (which the SLPC lists as a hate group) and highlighting the linkages they claim exist between these groups and members of the GOP and the Trump Administration. This was something that the leaders I interviewed at CAIR and MPAC often emphasized. Nihad Awad, for example, insisted that, “the Islamophobia network is deeply connected to Republican campaigns…these are previously fringe voices that are being brought to run candidates' campaigns.”Footnote 8 Importantly, Muslim organizations are careful to clarify that “questioning Islam or Muslims” and condemning crimes committed by individual Muslims is not Islamophobia. Targeting Muslims and creating an environment where their constitutional rights are endangered is. This is an important clarification since it serves to further buttress their claims in a discourse of Constitutional rights and American values.
Perhaps the clearest instance of these organizations’ reliance on confrontation frames of advocacy was in response to President Trump January 27, 2017 “Muslim Ban” Executive Order.Footnote 9 Muslim advocacy organizations protested the ban as a clearly unconstitutional policy—and a crude manifestation of Trump's (and the GOPs) anti-Muslim agenda. One of the most common tactics through which they have sought to contest the ban is through litigation. Indeed, as of this writing, CAIR and MPAC have joined other civil rights organizations and filed multiple legal challenges on behalf of Muslim citizens and foreign nationals residing in the United States. In a press release announcing the filing of the first of these lawsuits on January 30, 2017, just 3 days after the ban was announced, Nihad Awad, CAIR's Executive Director, claimed that Trump's “policies are threatening who we are as Americans. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are in the First Amendment of our Constitution.”Footnote 10 CAIR-National attorney Gadeir Abbas added that the order amounted to religious gerrymandering that divides people into favored and disfavored groups based on their faith.Footnote 11
For its part, MPAC sought to hold public officials accountable by circulating an impressive document listing the public stances of all sitting Senators, House Representatives, Attorney Generals, and Governors regarding the order, in addition to their specific comments on the issue, the year in which they are up for re-election, and their contact information.Footnote 12 The message was clear: American Muslims would not accept being turned into second-class citizens. They would use their constitutionally granted rights to contest the ban through the courts and hold their elected officials accountable.
Collaboration
Surprisingly (and against my own expectations going into this research), less than 10% of the total press releases issues during the timeframe I examined related to strategies of collaboration (such as advising government officials, meeting with elected officials, and attending public hearings), even though every leader I interviewed consistently stressed that collaboration and, ultimately, access to the policymaking process were their organizations’ most important goals. A number of reasons can explain this dissonance. First, it is important to keep in mind that this analysis is temporally limited and may therefore not account for the entire gamut of these organizations’ strategies. Second, in the context of a contested election cycle, these organizations had to focus their limited resources on encouraging Muslim civic engagement and mobilizing the “Muslim vote,” which can explain the prevalence of the constituent empowerment frame found in this analysis. This, of course, is an important function because it allows these organizations to demonstrate their own relevance to the U.S. establishment and the broader public and, thus, help ensure their own institutional survival. Lastly, advocacy organizations do not function in a vacuum, but instead are constrained and influenced by the existing political context. As this analysis has suggested, at least during the 2015–2016 campaign, that context was not one necessarily conducive for strategies of collaboration and “engagement from within.” Though access to the policy process may be the ultimate goal, the path to get there may be a winding one indeed.
CONCLUSION
This paper has sought to examine the major advocacy frames that Muslim American interest groups have relied on to make demands on behalf of the communities they claim to represent. I find that the most common tactics used are focused on building constituent empowerment and confronting unconstitutional policies, often through litigation. Further, I demonstrate how the targeting of U.S. Muslims, particularly during the 2016 elections, has strengthened the claims making capacity of their interest groups by providing them with a unifying discourse to mobilize around and contest: Islamophobia and the denial of citizenship rights.
The changing demographics of the United States, coupled with the country's growing economic inequality suggest that the issues discussed in this paper will continue to play a role in future elections, as politicians rely on anti-minority discourses (and policies) to gain the support of economically alienated or otherwise dissatisfied voters. Though this paper has addressed how anti-Muslim discrimination in general influences Muslim American mobilization and advocacy, further research is needed to understand the specific impacts that anti-Muslim elite discourse, in particular, has on U.S. Muslims and their organized groups. Has the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim political discourse strengthened individuals’ attachments to a Muslim American collective identity? Does overt anti-Muslim political discourse aid or hinder the process of Muslim American integration and political participation? How do Muslims and their organized groups confront, contest and subvert this discourse and to what effects? Answering these questions can make important contributions to the burgeoning scholarship on Muslim American politics and yield important insights about minority politics and the process of collective identity formation more generally.
