MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — In the days leading up to the Wisconsin presidential primary, the two leading candidates of the Republican Party doubled down on their calls for patrolling and surveilling Muslim neighborhoods and indefinitely banning most Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. They also repeated disproved myths about Muslim-dominated ‘no-go zones’ and Muslim communities protecting known terrorists.
Members of Wisconsin’s rapidly growing Muslim community have been listening to these statements; some with amusement, some with horror.
“It’s scary,” said Ameena Yusuf, a senior at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. “It makes me wonder, who next to me might be a Trump supporter? Who is looking at me and thinking I’m an extremist? After the Paris attacks, I was so scared to wear my headscarf. I started wearing a hat or a hoodie instead. I’m not ashamed, but I knew the stigma it brings.”
The president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Ahmed Quereshi, said it’s not just the candidates that worry him, but their supporters as well. “It’s a scary thing to know that this kind of bigotry can be applauded,” he said. “There’s an honest fear about what they might do if elected.”
It’s a scary thing to know that this kind of bigotry can be applauded.
Though less than one percent of Wisconsin’s voters identify as Muslim, a 2010 study found that Islam is the second-largest faith group in Wisconsin and 19 other states. Nearly 10,000 practicing Muslims live in the Milwaukee area alone, and while some local and national politicians have reached out and worked to win votes from the Islamic community, others have chosen to ignore or demonize them. Many Muslims in Wisconsin and across the U.S. used to be staunch Republicans, but students at the University of Wisconsin told ThinkProgress that the comments from GOP candidates have driven them and their families away from the party.
The problem, they say, goes far beyond Cruz and Trump. Before they dropped out of the race, for example, other GOP presidential candidates jumped on the anti-Islam bandwagon. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called for shutting down U.S. mosques and cafes where “radicals are being inspired.” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned that “non-assimilationist Muslims” are “invading” the U.S. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who is now campaigning for Trump, said Muslims should be disqualified from the presidency. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee asserted that Muslims are the only terrorists. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker opined that there are only a handful of reasonable, moderate Muslims — out of more than a billion worldwide — who don’t follow ISIS ideology.
Thanks to such rhetoric, UW-Milwaukee junior Omar Saleh said, “the Muslim community is shifting toward the Democrats.”
“A lot of Muslims backed George Bush, but since then it’s been different. When I hear what Cruz and Trump have been saying, I think, man, if you’re going to be running for higher office you need to foster an environment that’s inclusive of everyone you’re leading.”
Because Wisconsin has an open primary, the views of independent voters like Fuad Ahmad, a nurse practitioner and second generation Wisconsinite, could have a major influence on Tuesday’s outcome. “There are things conservatives say that I like. There are things liberals say that I like,” he said. “But it puts me off from even looking in the Republican direction when they’re saying, ‘Throw the Muslims out.’”
What is a Muslim neighborhood?
In a televised interview Tuesday night, Cruz stood by his call for police to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods” in the United States, but refused to answer how he would select these neighborhoods and what such patrols would look like.
Muslims in Milwaukee told ThinkProgress that the diverse city is so blended and multicultural that it would be impossible to single out any one neighborhood.
“We’re all dispersed everywhere,” UW-Milwaukee junior Bushra Fathima said. “There are other Muslims in my neighborhood, but there are just as many Christians and Jews. America’s a melting pot and the neighborhoods are as well. You’ll end up patrolling everyone, which I think everyone would not appreciate.”
Senior Firas Hamid agreed, saying that he laughed when he first heard Cruz’s comments on TV. “It was almost funny at first,” he said. “A good amount of Muslims here are doctors or engineers. Are you going to patrol the hospitals too?”
Senior Michael Sportiello, who is Christian but grew up in a majority-Muslim and Sikh neighborhood in Milwaukee’s suburbs, said he wishes the GOP candidates would spend more time in places like his hometown. “It would do them well to learn what these diverse neighborhoods are really like,” he told ThinkProgress.
Sportiello, who represents tens of thousands of students as the student body president of UW-Milwaukee, recently wrote an open letter to the Republican Party demanding they condemn Cruz’s proposal for patrols. “Our Muslim neighbor to the left went to work every day [and] helped fight heart disease as a cardiologist,” he wrote. “That same man traveled to his birthplace of Kashmir during the 2014 floods to help the wounded and helpless. Our families happily played in the backyards together and attended the same school. Is this the kind of neighborhood you ask for my support in patrolling?”
Cruz and Trump have also called, in recent weeks, for increased spying on mosques and Muslim neighborhoods. They have both held up the New York Police Department’s years long targeted surveillance program as a model, despite the fact the program failed to generate a single lead on a terrorism investigation, eroded relations between Muslims and law enforcement, and triggered a wave of lawsuits.
Quereshi, a lifelong Wisconsinite and private attorney, said he believes Trump and Cruz’s proposals are no more than an effort to “pander to voters who have a dislike if not outright hatred for Muslims.”
But he stressed that “anyone, but especially a person with Ted Cruz’s law school background, should know it’s blatantly unconstitutional to single people out solely for their religion.”
It’s not police presence to which the community objects. The Islamic Society of Milwaukee currently hires, at significant expense, private security guards for their Friday prayers and holidays. Quereshi says they do this more often during “times of high anxiety” like the present.
“So if the police want to permanently station a car in front of our property, we’d be so happy,” he said. “But only if they’re coming to protect us, not just to do surveillance on us. Those are two different things. Surveillance is a showing of ill will and distrust.”
Fanning the flames
While Islamophobic threats and attacks have been on the rise nationally over the past few months, Muslim voters in Milwaukee stressed to ThinkProgress that they have not seen much hostility in their own communities. The rest of Wisconsin, however, has proven less tolerant.
Muslim families in Greenfield and Homestead say they’ve been harassed in public, screamed at, and spat on. Some say their children are bullied at school, while others have received death threats.
Last year, the mayor of Superior, Wisconsin wrote on social media that Michelle Obama “and her Muslim partner have destroyed the fabric of democracy.”
Factory workers in Brillion, Wisconsin were fired for taking short breaks to pray five times a day.
Even in Milwaukee, Quereshi said, women who wear a hijab are sometimes “accosted in the street and spoken to in a hostile manner.” As Cruz gains in popularity in the state ahead of Tuesday’s presidential primary, other members of the Islamic Society say they fear discrimination and violence could escalate, encouraged by the candidates’ rhetoric.
My eight-year-old has even asked, ‘Dad, if Trump gets elected, are we going to have to leave home?’
“I don’t know if they mean it, but some Muslims have expressed to me that maybe they will have to be ready to move if this country took a very wrong turn, like how they treated the Japanese during WWII, creating concentration camps and the like,” Quereshi said. “I mean, when people become frightened, they look for scapegoats and advocate for extreme actions, and people are very frightened now.”
Ahmad said he too has thought of selling his home and business and moving his family to another country.
“I’m worried about the future for my kids,” he said. “I don’t want people to hate them just for having a Muslim name. My eight-year-old has even asked, ‘Dad, if Trump gets elected, are we going to have to leave home?’ So I’m scared. But I grew up here and I don’t want to go anywhere. And at least here we have a Supreme Court and a Congress to balance a president like Trump or Cruz. Other countries don’t have that.”
Yet as much as Trump and Cruz’s anti-Islam comments have divided the state, voters told ThinkProgress those comments have also brought people together.
“With all this hate that’s going on, the amount of love that’s coming out is truly amazing,” Hamid said. “The Islamic Society has been getting numerous, numerous e-mails from churches, from Jewish temples, from Buddhists saying, ‘We feel for you guys. Don’t worry. We are by your side. Don’t let this get to you.’ So it’s been building a lot of love between different races and religions.”