‘If you’re coming after their kids, you’re coming after their religion and their well being’
By Reagan Reese
Daily Caller News Foundation
Editor’s Note: We are not implying that we have these particular issues in our area districts. This is for your information of what is occurring in other parts of the country.
With the midterm elections here, Muslims are increasingly shifting their votes to the Republican Party, members of the Muslim community told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Muslims increasingly see a parallel between Islamic fundamentals and traditional values of the Republican party, including community and religion, community members told the DCNF. Sexually explicit content in schools has become a hot-button issue among the demographic, with Muslim community members revolting in Dearborn, Michigan, against sexually explicit books found in the Dearborn School District libraries.
“There’s so much coherence between classical Republican values and basic Islamic fundamentals,” Independent Women’s Forum Senior Fellow Quanta Ahmed told the DCNF. “There’s not really much of a conflict. In America, many Republican values encompass a value of God and country.
“In Islam, we by default, must believe in God as one and overarching power and guide and we have actually three duties as Muslims, a duty to God, a duty to society and a duty to oneself. In fact, those are the two duties are not often mentioned and it said informally, that more than 90% of Islam is about serving your community,” Ahmed added. “So many of the very traditional basic Republican values, God and country, are very resonant with Muslims.”
At the Oct. 10 Dearborn School Board meeting, protestors gathered to speak out against books such as “This Book Is Gay,” a book that gives the “ins and outs of gay sex,” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a descriptive memoir of a queer, black boy, which can be found in the school libraries. Protestors chanted “vote them out” and held up signs reading “Homosexuality Big Sin” and “Keep Your Dirty Books In The Closet.”
Across the nation, Republican politicians have mirrored Muslim concerns over sexually explicit content in the classroom; Republican Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon called out Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for being silent on the presence of pornographic material in the classroom.
In Virginia, Republican Virginia Gov. Youngkin’s administration drafted model policies that would require school districts to notify parents if “sexual explicit content” is in the classroom. In May, Utah’s Republican legislature made HB 374 a law, prohibiting books with pornographic and sensitive content from the classroom.
Stephanie Butler, a parent within the Dearborn Public School District, has been working with the Muslim community to push back against sexually explicit content in the school district’s libraries.
Butler told the DCNF that Muslims want to protect their children and that the Democratic Party is threatening children.
“If you’re coming after their kids, you’re coming after their religion and their well being, then they’re going to leave,” Butler told the DCNF. “That’s where we align [with the Republican Party], our fight is the same, to protect kids and to protect our freedoms.”
From 2018 to 2020, shifts to the Republican Party appeared to be the most pronounced among the Muslim community in comparison to other faith groups such as Catholics, Jews, Protestants and Mormons, according to data by the Associated Press VoteCast.
In 2011, 46% of Muslims said they aligned with the Democratic Party, according to a Pew Research Poll. About 11% of Muslims identified with the Republican party.