Of all the Middle East peace plans that’ve been proposed since 1948, President Trump’s was the first one that featured bearded dancers and casinos. His video representation of “Trump Gaza” (that he posted online) speaks for itself:
It’s also funny. And those cocktails look yummy:
Donald Trump shares wild AI video clip of his future Gaza, featuring Elon Musk surrounded by cash and Netanyahu and the US president sipping cocktails on the beachhttps://t.co/gbu3ZxfZC9
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) February 26, 2025
But would Muslim Americans find it funny? After all, roughly two-thirds of adult Muslims in the United States were born outside of the country. Some cultural differences loom larger than others, and political humor is probably one of ‘em.
The Muslim vote has an outsized impact in presidential politics because it can flip key swing states, i.e. Michigan. As Al Jazeera noted:
In the city of Dearborn, where some 55 percent of residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Trump won with 42.48 percent of the vote over Vice President Kamala Harris, who received just 36.26 percent. The Green Party’s Jill Stein, who campaigned heavily on ending Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, received 18.37 percent. In 2020, an impressive 74.20 percent of voters in the city had cast their ballot for Biden.
Would the Trump peace plan alienate Muslim voters?
Maybe. Or maybe not: Foreign-born Muslims are actually more likely to condemn Islamic extremism than younger Muslims who were born in our country, and they often cringe at Palestinian terrorists who blaspheme their beloved Prophet’s name.
[T]here is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are more likely than older Muslim Americans to express a strong sense of Muslim identity, and are much more likely to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. [emphasis added]
Does this help explain Trump’s surprising gains with Muslim Americans?
Maybe. Or maybe not: One interpretation is that Trump’s gains in Michigan were less about MAGA and more about Muslims feeling abandoned by “their” own party:
Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan, especially in the city of Dearborn, shifted away from the Democratic Party and toward President-elect Donald Trump in 2024. The Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering military assistance to Israel—and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s willingness to continue this policy—drove Arab American voters in Michigan away from a party that the community had consistently supported since the early 2000s. Trump won the state by more than 80,000 votes after losing it to outgoing President Joe Biden by more than 150,000 votes in 2020.
Trump won Dearborn, where more than half the population is of Middle Eastern or North African descent, by capturing 42 percent of votes to Harris’s 36 percent; the Green Party’s Jill Stein also took a substantial 18 percent of the vote in the city. In neighborhoods within the city where Arab Americans are the majority, such as eastern Dearborn, Harris performed even worse.
For example, in 2020, Biden beat Trump in eastern Dearborn by nearly 10,000 votes. On Election Day this year, the Detroit Free Press reports that Trump defeated Harris in eastern Dearborn by nearly 3,700 votes, accumulating 45 percent of the vote in 2024 after receiving only 18 percent in 2020 resulting in a 27 percent swing toward Trump that demonstrates how the Democrats’ refusal to restrain Israel as it destroyed Gaza likely pushed Arab Americans to the right.
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We needed answers. And yesterday evening, the New York Post released a remarkable story: “Muslim support for Democrats plunges as group opens to Trump’s Gaza plan: poll.”
Only a third of Muslim-Americans identify as Democrats as the party reels from political setbacks with a bloc of voters it hemorrhaged in the 2024 election cycle, according to a stunning survey exclusively shared with The Post.
When asked to identify their political party, 34% of Muslim respondents said Democrat, 34% said independent and 33% said Republican, according to a survey conducted by J.L. Partners last month in partnership with the Muslim American Leadership Alliance.
Democrats have been hoping that Trump’s staunch support of Israel could help the party recover lost ground with Muslim Americans. The J.L. Partners poll showed that Dems have managed to regain the edge over Republicans but are still generally below where they were five years ago.
Perhaps the most shocking finding was that a majority of American Muslims don’t oppose Trump’s plan to transform the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Most liberals hated it, of course: A whopping 84% of Democrats opposed.
But only 49% of Muslims opposed it… despite all the leftwing hysteria about “apartheid” and Palestinian “genocide.”
Believe it or not, more than 1 in 4 Muslims — 26% — actually SUPPORTED Trump’s Gaza plan! (16% had no opinion.)
As the New York Post reported:
Many of Trump’s key policies drew support from Muslim-Americans, such as his push to deport illegal immigrants (43% support, 33% oppose), additional oil exploration (44% support, 25% oppose) and removing taxes on tipped income (62% support, 12% oppose).
Respondents also said Trump was more likely than his predecessor, Joe Biden, to broker peace in the Middle East by a margin of 52% to 48%.
While the brushstrokes were broadly positive, there’s still an unsettling minority of Muslim voters with very extreme positions:
The survey also found that a shocking 29% support Hamas the most in the conflict, while just 14% favor Israel and 44% said neither side.
Bottom line? According to Muslim Americans, Trump’s “absurd” Middle East peace plan isn’t nearly as absurd as his critics think.
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